what we've been up to lately

Thank you to everyone who turned out to see us on Saturday at Eastside Handmade in Highland Park.  As always, it's great to see you and meet you all in person!

The view from our table at Eastside Handmade.

Sorry for the lack of posts lately, we needed to take a little bit of a break from the blog after our October small business cleanse. We've also been busy getting ready for some holiday popups and getting to work on our new collection that will launch in early 2016!

L-R: our set up at Eastside Handmade with our indigo ice dyed table cloth, our 2016 indigo watercolor and letterpress California calendar.

One of the questions we've been getting a lot, both at Eastside Handmade and on social media, is how we dyed the table cloth for our new display. So we thought that we'd share a few of the pictures from our experience with ice dying. You can also take a look at the ice dying instructions from Food 52. Or check out our project idea board on Pinterest for more fun projects we're thinking about doing.

L-R: fabric covered in ice, indigo sprinkled over the ice cubes, the finished product.

Our first step was to run our fabric through a wash cycle, then we soaked everything with soda ash. After wringing our fabric out by hand, we arranged it on dollar store wire cooling racks set atop aluminum foil containers. We then covered our fabric in ice cubes, and sprinkled the indigo dye on top. It's a good idea to sprinkle lightly at first and then add a little more here and there to create areas of more intense color. As the ice melts, the dye disperses into the fabric. We let the ice and dye do their work for about 24 hours. Then we washed everything out by hand until the water ran clear and put it all through the washing machine with some soap. And that is pretty much that. It was a really fun project. And we think it matches our 2016 indigo watercolor letterpress calendar perfectly! Each calendar was embellished with a watercolor flourish before it was put back through the press. We love how they turned out. They've been super popular, but there are only a limited number of them so hurry and get yours before they run out!

L-R: 2016 calendars, Rosemary painting the watercolor flourish with help from the babe, a close up of the watercolor embellishment. 

We hope you're having a good fall, it's been on the warm side here for the past few weeks. We're very much enjoying the cool turn the weather has taken over the past few days, its just the right kind of weather for printing!

Best,
Rosemary+Robin

a great weekend at Unique!

Views of the city from the windows behind our Unique LA table.

We had a great time at The Unique USA Summer Market last weekend, thank you to everyone who came to see us, it was so great to see you! And it was so great to meet all sorts of new people and fans. We even had a few Kickstarter supporters who came by to say hi!

L-R: A close up of our silver balloon signage,  our table all set up and ready to go, a corner of our table with our new CB2 business card holder. CB2 West Hollywood moved heaven and earth to get it to us in time for the show, we really appreciate their help!

We had so much fun coming up with our new table display! Everyone responded so well to the silver balloons! It sort of feels like this was our most put together setup so far! Honestly, it wouldn't have been possible without the move to the new press. Now that we're starting to get the hang of printing on the Heidelberg, it's allowed us to print more stock at once and not spend quite so much time trying to play catch-up with demand!

L-R: We tried really hard to attend some of the Unique Classroom talks held as part of the show. We really enjoyed listening to photographer/blogger Bonnie Tsang, Rosemary models her new ceramic necklace from  local artist and maker Nicola Vruwink, we also enjoyed listening to Andrew Gibbs from The Dieline talk about current packaging design trends.

That's not to say that we haven't been super busy! It was a lot of work reprinting our entire line of paper goods for both Renegade and Unique! Everything might look exactly the same, but it isn't! It took us a long time to figure out the best way to print from our hand-carved linoleum blocks. They were purpose-carved for our old printing press and it took a lot of finessing to get them to work on the new press.

L-R: packaging Eastside Neighborhood Postcards, all neighborhood postcards back in stock and on display at Unique, stacks of Westside Neighborhood postcards ready to package. They look so good printed on the new press, it made us positively giddy as they came off the press! Finally, everything is looking the way we always knew it could!

The neighborhood postcards took the longest and we were unable to get them done in time for Renegade. We are happy to say that they are all completely back in stock now, in fact, everything is! And, we were able (by the skin of our teeth!) to add two new cards in time for the show (just barely!).

L-R: Working on our new freeway card of the 10 West as it winds its way through DTLA, proofing for the first time, the finished card now listed in the shop!

Our neon pink letterpress cards were ready for Renegade. Originally an exercise in registration, these bright neon cards have quickly become a favorite. They are available as a single card or a set of four and are now listed in the shop. Also make sure to take a look at our newest freeway card, depicting a portion of the 10 West traveling through downtown. They are also available as a single card or as a set of four. We're already preparing to send a few of these off to some of our favorite stockists. Keep an eye out for them at The Library Store at the Central Library in DTLA!

L-R: Our new prints, Helms Bakery is Culver City, Cinerama Dome in Hollywood and Highland Theatre in Highland Park. They look so good, why didn't we choose these for prints earlier??? :)

We've also made some changes to our prints. We currently offer Helms Bakery (Culver City), The Cinerama Dome (Hollywood) and The Highland Theatre (Highland Park). They are available framed or unframed. Each print is printed in black ink on white Mohawk Superfine paper. The thick black frame measures 9.5" x 12" and features a white mat. The print is registered to fit comfortably within the mat. We'll be adding more prints soon, so stay tuned!

The view from the parking garage at Home Depot in Hollywood, a place we've been spending a lot of time at lately!

We have a few things in the works for the next few weeks, but for the most part we'll be getting to work on our Kickstarter rewards (finally!), printing more stock and meeting wholesale orders.

Have a great end of summer, hopefully we'll see you soon!

Best,
Rosemary+Robin