currently in production

Rosemary's side of our shared work table.

We've been very busy over the past few weeks. We finished working on a custom order, we've had some houseguests and taken a few mini roadtrips. We've also been hard at work in the studio. 

L-R: new blocks in production, carving two of our Highland Park postcards, Highland Park and Silverlake postcards in production.

We've reworked a few old favorites, most notably our neon sign greeting cards. We'll be relaunching them soon! 

L-R: Robin carving out a reworked version of our Los Altos greeting card, Felix Chevrolet, proofing our newest blocks

We've also been working on a bunch of new designs, so we'll be coming out with new neighborhood postcards for Santa Monica, Culver City, Silverlake and Highland Park over the next few weeks! We'll also be launching two new sets of note cards, Some City Birds and Some More City Birds!

L-R: Some More City Birds note card blocks, Sun-Lake Drugs Silverlake postcard block, Some City Birds note card designs

We also found out that we were accepted to participate in this summer's Renegade craft fair at Los Angeles State Historic Park on July 20+21, hope to see you there!

We've been posting a lot of photos of our urban explorations and of our work process on Instagram, Tumblr and Twitter, why not follow us there too!
Rosemary+Robin

building our own bottle jack press

When we first started our printed cards, we used to print everything by hand. A little crazy we know, but we were just starting out and we were working with linoleum blocks. It was ok, because we weren't printing in very large quantities. 

Printing by hand using our fingers, a plastic "wooden" spoon and a barren.

That changed a few months ago. When we were getting ready to relaunch our press with our new name, we had to reprint all of our cards with our new name and logo printed on the back. We realized pretty quickly that we weren't going to be able to reprint all of our standing stock that we'd built up gradually by printing everything by hand. We weren't yet ready to invest in an actual press, mainly due to space restrictions but we needed something, and fast! We decided to build our own. 

L-R: Robin assembling the base, Robin threading the bolts through the top of the press, Rosemary tightening the hex nuts on the bolts, our friend Devin helping us cut down our bolts.

We looked up many different handmade presses and settled on a version of a bottle jack press using a 6-ton car jack with a few of our own modifications. We had help from some of our wonderful friends and family and managed to build it pretty quickly. 

L-R: Robin checking that everything is level, celebrating our success, our first iteration of the press.

We've made a few more modifications in the few months since we built the press, but overall, it's worked pretty well. It isn't the same as using a regular printing press, and large editions like the one we just finished working on definitely have their challenges, but overall we're pretty happy with it. 

The retrofitted press, our most recent iteration. Robin even painted our logo onto it!

At the very least, it will help us bridge the gap until we have the space for a traditional printing press setup. We've made some pretty cool new items that we've listed in the shop, why not come take a look at what we've been up to!

Rosemary+Robin

have you met our neighborhood postcards?

In a nod to the hyper-local, our neighborhood postcards allow you to share your special corner of the world with your friends and family. Our collection began in Los Angeles and launched with an Eastside and Westside set, but other cities and neighborhoods are in the works so stay tuned.

Images from the Eastside Los Angeles postcard set.

Each postcard measures 4.25” x 5.5” and is printed on Mohawk Vellum kraft paper in black block printing ink with a traditional postcard layout on the backside. Each set is comprised of 8 cards featuring four designs. The Eastside set has images from Highland Park, Silverlake, Hollywood and Koreatown. The Westside set has has images from Santa Monica, Venice Beach, Malibu and Culver City.

Images from the Westside Los Angeles postcard set.

We're already hard at work on the images we want to work with for the neighborhood sets for Santa Monica, Culver City, Hollywood and Koreatown. We've been having a lot of fun working on this project, we can't wait to spread the love to other cities and neighborhoods soon!

Rosemary+Robin

what a full and wonderful weekend we had!

Things have been very busy here at Ink+Smog, we've been working on a lot of new projects, some for the shop and others for custom orders. On saturday we had the opportunity to debut some of our new designs at Eastside Handmade in Highland Park hosted by Shopclass. 

L-R: Rosemary standing at the Ink+Smog table, our summer edition letterpress ice cream cards, the view from our table at Eastside Handmade.

It was great to meet so many fun and creative people. These kinds of events are a wonderful way to meet up with people we haven't seen in a while like Cathy Callahan from Cathy of California and Stephanie from Ok Universe, to finally meet people we'd only ever met online like Carrie from Anemone Letterpress, Elinor from Krank Press, and Erin from Cotton & Flax and to meet new people like Crystal from BlendBlend. There was so much great work, and the weather mostly cooperated, we're looking forward to more Eastside Handmade events in the future!

L-R: COVET! one of our favorite pieces in the new collection, the invitation for Kat and Roger at Platform, the collection!

After Eastside Handmade on Saturday, we walked down the street to visit our friends Kat and Roger of K&R. They were launching their new collection at Platform on York Blvd. The collection looks fantastic and we have to say, we are working on making some room in the kitchen cupboards for a piece or two...

L-R: our new Eastside Postcard collection, the Ink+Smog logo rendered in chalk by Robin, our notecard sets.

The rest of the weekend was spent working on a big custom order we're trying to get out by the end of this week. It's been a great project to work on, with many twists and turns. We're looking forward to writing a blog post about it once it's all finished and sent on it's merry way to our customer in France. We also made some time for a much needed catching up session and business consultation with Anne, Rosemary's sister who runs the amazing soap empire Dot&Lil in Montreal.  It was a very full but wonderful weekend. We're working on some really fun projects right now, looking forward to sharing them soon!

Rosemary+Robin.

Ink+Smog at Eastside Handmade in Highland Park

Just a quick heads up that we'll be at Eastside Handmade this Saturday in Highland Park hosted by Shopclass. We'll be debuting some of our latest projects before they're even listed in the shop.

Hope to see you there!

Rosemary+Robin

we've joined the mohawk paper family!

L-R: pink magnolia tree in bloom down the street, our new name and logo, re-orgazining our tests and proofs, our new paper cutter.

Spring is here and change is in the air! We've been doing a lot of cleaning up and re-arranging. As a result, you may have noticed that we've been making a lot of changes around here lately. Some of those changes have been small (we have some new work configurations, new tools and storage solutions, yay!) and some of those changes have been pretty big (hey, we have a new name!). But we've also been implementing some other changes that you may not be aware of, chief among those has been changing out our ink and paper. We are now using Mohawk paper! 

L-R: Our new Johnny's Pastrami cards printed on Mohawk Superfine, new packages of Mohawk paper, Johnny's Pastrami drying.

Mohawk started off as the Mohawk and Hudson Paper Company in upstate New York where the Hudson and Mohawk Rivers meet. It was purchased by Frank Gilbert in 1866 and renamed the Frank Gilbert Paper Company. They filed for bankruptcy in 1930 and relaunched a year later by George E. O'Connor as the Mohawk Papermakers Inc. Asides from a short stint during the early 1970s, the company has stayed in the O'Connor family ever since. They are now headquartered in Cohoes, NY.

All images from Introducing Luxe, by Moo video.

Mohawk uses renewable energy, recycles and uses sustainable sourcing practices. In 2003, they became the only paper mill and one of the first large-scale production facilities in the U.S. to offset emissions from electric power generation with the purchase of renewable energy credits (RECs) issued by wind farms. Today, 100% of the electricity used in Mohawk’s operations is matched with RECs.

Mohawk makes beautiful paper, it's used by a lot of artists and printers. It's also used by Moo to make the Luxe business cards that we LOVE (as we speak, we are somewhat patiently awaiting the arrival of new Luxe cards with our brand new logo!). So far, we love working with Mohawk Superfine and Mohawk Vellum papers. They're both so easy to work with an incredibly luscious touch! We also really like the idea that Simon Dardick, Rosemary's father used to print on Mohawk paper from time to time when Véhicule Press still used to do their own printing. It kind of brings things full circle in a nice way. We've made some other big changes, but more about those later!

a rose by any other name...

That's right, we've changed our name! We are now Ink+Smog Editions! We are so excited about our name change, we hope you like it too! 

For the moment, our designs remain the same, with some really fun new additions coming soon! Our focus will be expanding as well, no longer only inspired by the city of Los Angeles. We're really looking forward to getting to work on this new project! We'll be changing our public profiles over the next few days, can't wait to spread the new name (and our new logo!). 


See you soon!
Rosemary+Robin