Poppy on 'holidays' 29 Aug - 1 Sept

It's about this time of year, when I'm sick of the frost and freezing mornings, that I dream of flying off to somewhere much warmer. So the fact that my husband and I are jetting off to Brisbane for 4 days is a godsend.

We'll be there for a number of reasons, including to stay with Alischa of Bespoke Press for a night, and for a bit of instruction from a printer up there who is more than willing to teach us a thing or two. It doesn't matter how much you think you know (or don't know!), a lesson from someone who's been doing it a lifetime is worth it's weight in gold. So we're looking forward to a weekend full of sun, letterpress, good wine, family (who I'm also visiting), relaxation and a funky PT Cruiser convertible which I just HAD to have for the trip :)

I'll be taking Ranga, the macbook pro, with me so I will still be answering emails and writing quotes, but not sure how much time I'll have to work on anything else.

Kelvin & Michelle

I'm very happy with how the illustration on these invites turned out. You may remember that I posted the sketch of these flowers in a previous post. We discussed printing the flowers as a blind deboss, in transparent white, or in a light beige. In the end, we went for a transparent white with a hint of beige, and the result is subtle, but still allows the ampersand to be dark enough to link the two names. The text is printed in a chocolate brown.

Design, illustration and printing by Louise Redman of Poppy Letterpress.

Susie & Matt

Our latest wedding invitations are for Susie and Matt in Brisbane. Matt's grandmother is Chinese and they wanted to incorporate some Chinese tradition without it dominating the look and feel of the wedding. Susie is a goddess of decorating and will be arranging Chinese lanterns around the restaurant for their cocktail reception, so we've kept that theme running with the invitations.

Text is printed in charcoal grey, with the lanterns in transparent white. We will be following these up with booklet covers in coming weeks.

Maria & Glen

I had a great weekend printing Maria & Glen's invites for their October wedding. There's still a few more items to come, but here are some pics of their invitation, RSVP postcard and directions map. Design is by Poppy, from Graphista Design. It was wonderful working with Poppy, as she had such beautiful artwork and it was supplied in a lovely clean file. I'm really quite particular about keeping files clean and ordered, and Poppy's artwork made my job so much easier.

Click on the images for detailed view:

The press is behaving exceptional well at the moment, and I'm thoroughly enjoying the printing process - even when it started snowing halfway through printing these cards. No, my print room doesn't have heating, it was about -1C (30F) in there on Sunday! Amazingly, the press still works fine. The ink is a lot harder to mix as it's really thick (like mixing brie), but once on the press, no problems.

Samplers and preparations

Today is yet another fabulously busy day at Poppy. I've been sending out samplers left, right and centre, and have now officially run out. I'm hoping to get some time spare on the press to run some more, but until then, photos may have to do. Above are the last of the samplers printed in transparent white, and black ink. The lanterns plate is for the gorgeous Susie of Brisbane's wedding invitations which go on the press today. The 'thankyou' is from my wedding set, but the plate seems to be indestructable, so it's used a lot for samplers these days.

Click on the photos to view in detail.

My hands are red raw now after a morning spent guillotining paper for Susie's invites, but at least I have a lot of cut paper now!



There will be quite a few exciting developments at Poppy over the next few weeks. We're looking at revamping the studio space. This was on the to-do list already because it's a small, cramped space, and less than ideal, but now it's an essential thing that need to be done sooner rather than later. Why? Because I've just bought another press :)
More on that later....