Rubber Stamps And Rubber Wheels!

Thank you to my lovely friends Katie and Erica (Free Range Legs) who recently lent me their bike trailer. I used it for the first time to carry materials to Salt Cafe for the rubber stamp workshop. Enjoying the view of the docks along the way! 

Rubber Stamp Workshop - Salt Cafe

Lauren, Sophie and Gavin carve out their designs for their rubber stamps. Carving with a scalpel enables more precision. A house, rocket and star will soon be ready to print.

Wiggly House

Lauren creates a two-colour print of a wiggly house.

Stars and Arrows

Gavin prints a star in front of an arrow and using masking technique. 

Rocket to the Moon

Inside the pages of her hand stitched mini journal, Sophie’s rocket takes off from earth and makes it way to the moon.  

Thank you Lauren, Sophie and Gavin for your enthusiasm and adventurous creations! Thank you Al at Salt Cafe for providing delicious cups of tea and cake at while we explored the world of rubber stamping! And thanks to Stephen Fowler for passing on these fab techniques! Stephen recently launched his wonderful informative book on all things rubber stamped!

Rubber Stamping: Get creative with stamps, rollers and other printmaking techniques

Take time out to make stuff!

Come along to Salt Cafe and make your mark by carving and printing your very own rubber stamp! Find out about forthcoming rubber stamp workshops at Salt Cafe by clicking the button below. 

South Bank Arts Trail - free printing demos @ El Rincon Spanish Bar

Eightfivepress printing demos

Discover the wonderful world of traditional letterpress printing

As part of the Southbank Arts Trail, Bristol I’ll be heading over to El Rincon Spanish Bar with my adana 8 x 5.  I’ll be giving free demos on how to set type on the 1950’s table top printing press and there'll be some printed goodies to take away on the day! : ))

"PRINT, v.t. to impress, to imprint; to mark by pressure; to fix deeply, as in the memory; to stamp with coloured patterns. v.i. to practice the art of typography; to prepare and publish a book. n.a. mark made by impression; printed letters; the impression of types; a printed fabric, an engraving. n. Print’er." from Rapid Printing Made Easy - a Handbook for Users of the New Adana High Speed Printing Machine.

Saturday 14th May 12-4pm

El Rincon Spanish Bar

298 North Street

Bristol

BS3 1JU

Linocut Workshop - Springing into Nature

Lovely morning workshop with Zoe and Clair carving and printing their lino into a beautiful bird and a leaf. Spring is definitely on its way! : ))

Zoe and Clair chose grey / blue linseed oil based ink to print their carved blocks on different coloured card. Lovely to see how the different colour backgrounds affect the colour and mood of the images.     

Next Workshop

Rubber stamp workshop @ Salt Cafe

16th May 2017

10am - 12pm

£25

Maximum 6 participants

An introductory workshop for anyone wanting to have a go at rubber-stamping and hands-on printing. The opportunity to make time and space to create your very own personalised hand carved stamp and hand stamped mini journal. 

Hot off the 8 x 5 press!

Enjoying printing on my Adana 8x 5 again. It’s been a while as the last few months I’ve spent most of my energy developing my new website. So with a new website I thought it was time to make some freshly printed business cards.

eightfivepress - woodblock letterpress linocut

Typeset with Univers lead type. Printed with grey /blue linseed oil based ink.

I printed these while listening to the wonderful Debbie Millman (designmatters) in conversation with writer and adventurer Caroline Paul. 

"Debbie Millman is a is a writer, educator, artist, brand consultant and host of the radio show Design Matters”.

Debbie interviews artists, writers, educators, designers, musicians, poets, film makers, bloggers including Seth Godin,  Alain de Botton, Eileen Myles, Tim Ferriss, Alison Bechdel, Krista Tippett, Maira Kalman, Oliver Jeffers, and many many more. 

"And remember, we can talk about making a difference, we can make a difference, or we can do both." — Debbie Millman

To the moon and back and second hand books

Bloom and Curll bookshop, Bristol

Thank you Lilla Duignan at seeingthings for your inspiring blog post last week including a link to Nina Katchadourian's Sorted Books project via Brain Pickings. Over the weekend I made a trip to a few second hand bookshops in Bristol. The last shop I popped into was Bloom and Curll who's shelves were filled with delightful books beautifully arranged in colourful patterns. Jason had just received a huge pile of books about Japan, particularly Kyoto and quite a few children's stories written in Japanese and English. So here's my contribution to a kind of - sort of- sorted books!

Japanese books from Bloom and Curll

Perfect timing to stumble upon these books as I have been slowly learning Kanji for a little while now and have predicted, from how long it has taken me so far, it will be at least 6 or 7 years to complete the online course! (https://www.wanikani.com) And that's just Kanji with a bit of vocabulary. (It's supposed to take about 1 or 2 years.) These books might help to speed things up as I've imagined half way through the course I will have forgotten everything from the beginning so it could well be another 6 or 7 years to refresh my memory and then I may have forgotten the second half once I've remembered the first half so another 6 or 7 years on top of that! So in about 20 years (possible light years) I may have grasped a small bit of Kanji and tiny bit of Japanese vocabulary and even made a trip to the moon!

Luke Jerram's Moon at Bristol University