We have moved!

After much deliberation, we have moved our blog to here. If you're looking for new posts, please update your bookmark and head thataway.

Website temporarily down

Just in case you're looking for our website and have ended up here instead, we're just fixing a couple of little problems, so the site is down temporarily.

Edit: All up and running again thanks to my genius husband :)

New shelves for studio

As well as working on client work, we've been making little changes here and there to the studio. Oh, I've got big plans for it. Our latest addition is a set of 6 massive shelving units. The photo doesn't really show how big they are - only 4 of the units would fit next to the sink in the studio. That's the platemaker next to them. And yes, a gumball machine. Why? Every studio needs a gumball machine!

Master apprentice

Here's Kynan, now 10 months old, sporting one of the new Poppy Letterpress aprons.

See that little dimple on his right cheek? We call that The Ladykiller. :)

Shop Handmade opening this week!

I'm quite excited about the brand new Shop Handmade retail store that's opening this week. For those of you that don't know, the shop is the brainchild of the ever so lovely ladies that run the ever so popular Canberra Handmade Markets. There you'll be able to find so many handmade products from the talented designers that have stalls at the Markets.

We're very happy to be part of the new shop, and can't wait to see our brand new greeting card range on display (we'll be up near the counter).

Recently the girls asked us to design and print the invitations to the VIP Opening Night for Shop Handmade. I just loved printing these, the blue is just so soft.

And lookee who's behind window #14...

New platemaker

So the blog has been exceptionally quiet lately. This is mostly because for a month I was printing for up to 15 hours a day to get all our weddings and market goods ready in time. When I get a moment free, I'll post about how wonderful the Handmade Markets were, as well as finally show you all those goodies we designed and printed in record time.

In the meantime, we've been counting down the days until we could pick up our brand new photopolymer platemaker exposure/washout/drying unit. We roped in a good friend of ours for a bit of extra muscle and today headed to Sydney and back to finally pick it up (7 hours almost continuous driving, sigh). What can I say -- it's a wonderful machine! I just can't wait to get it going (neither can Adrian, who is in love with the old-school coloured buttons). It's quite a hefty unit too, weighing 180kgs and producing plates up to A2 in size. Please excuse the dodgy mobile phone photo, but I had to share :) It's not even off the truck yet, we'll have to do that when we have more muscle around tomorrow.

Please please don't email us asking to do your plates though. It will take us some time to get it all hooked up to power and producing perfect plates.

Busy in the studio

We've been busy little beavers in the studio lately. 28 A4 pages of plates to print in the next 3 weeks with more on the way next week. But I'm absolutely loving seeing the final pieces all printed and ready to send to clients.



On the press today are a few print proofs for Katharine & Murray, and Renee & Adam. Some lovely combinations of charcoal and old gold, and azalea pink and ruby red. Below are Katharine & Murray's old gold plates being printed on Collie.

Canberra Handmade Market

While the blog has been extremely quiet lately, the Poppy studio has been buzzing. We're busy printing a few weddings, as well as our entire new greeting card range (OMG!) for the Canberra Handmade Market on March 28. Now, we don't normally get into the markets scene, but I've been to the last couple of Handmades now and absolutely loved what I saw. I just can't help but get Poppy involved. Plus, it gives me an excellent excuse to print some gorgeous new cards.

Normally we print just a couple of A4 sheets worth of plates at a time, but we've got a small mountain of 28 to do so far this month! And more coming! So while it's quite here for a couple more weeks, hang tight, there will be a lot to showcase very soon. Here's a sneak peek of just one of the designs.

Poppy sponsors the Canberra Cup

Adrian and I have both been involved with the ACT Harness Racing for many many years now, so it was only fitting for Poppy Letterpress to sponsor the 2010 Cancer Council Canberra Cup on 7 February. It's been very exciting to see races named after us! And lookee - we're even on the tvc! (our logo, plus 18 seconds in, that's Adrian, Ky and myself with my father in law).

poppy Collection feature: Field of Flowers

This sweet little design has been one of our most popular over the past year. Perfectly suited to a garden wedding, the colour can be matched to your wedding colour scheme.

If a one colour design isn't for you, Field of Flowers can easily become a two colour design. For example, this is Ruby and Silver:

Poppy Collection feature: Pinstripe

This design is actually inspired by Adrian's business shirts. I love pinstripes - they have a real class about them, be it on a shirt, wallpaper, website background or printed materials. I don't know what it is that does it!

As this design is a little more formal, it works best in darker colours and as a one colour design. Which makes Pinstripe one of the most affordable designs in the Poppy Collection.

Vote for us in The Poppies!

Voting for the Favourite Papergoods category of The Poppies is up and running. Please please do vote for us! You can do so here.

Thankyou! :)

Sexy Letterpress Video

Just found this video on the Pistachio Press blog. Rachael originally found it on Sycamore Street Press blog. Snaps both Eva and Rachael for sharing their find.

I love this video, it shows how sexy letterpress printing can be (okay, I'm a printing geek so you might not find it as sexy as I do). Repeat Press use a Vandercook in this video, which is different to what we use here at Poppy -- we have platens, whereas the Vandy is a cylinder. But it still shows how easy it is to fall in love with the process of printing by hand.

Poppy Collection feature: Lovebirds

Because letterpress printing is so tactile, wedding invitations don't need to be complex. With this in mind, we created the Lovebirds design. Sweet and simple, it lets the printing do all the talking.

Isn't it beautiful how birds pair off?

Poppy Collection feature: Leaf Drops

Leaves always make a beautiful image. And they're perfect if you have a colour theme, but are unsure about using a specific pattern or graphic in your stationery.

The inspiration for this stationery suite came from all the gorgeous filigree jewellery that I've seen in stores recently. The design works well in a lot of colour combinations, making it quite versatile. Personally, it's one of my favourites. Visit our website to see the full suite.

Poppy Collection feature: Autumn Leaves

I'm a big plant lover, so a lot of our designs use branches, leaves, flowers and nature. This design is no exception. These leaves actually come from a tree in another of our designs, but I loved them so much I had to create a design just for them. Originally designed for an Autumn wedding, the colours can be modified to suit any season.

Steel, silver and royal blue for a winter wedding:

Or watermelon, sunset and apple for a summer wedding, which is my personal favourite:

2009 Christmas Card

I forgot to show you all our 2009 family Christmas Card. I must have been far too busy sending them all out. I'm sure this year I'll be far more organised and send them out at the start of December!

Nominate in The Poppies

I'm a big fan of all things handmade, so I was quite excited to see the other day that the Poppytalk blog has introduced a cute little bag of online awards called The Poppies.

There are a variety of categories and nominations close midnight tonight. If you so happen to find yourself wanting to nominate someone, might I suggest Poppy Letterpress in the Paper Goods category?

Poppy Collection feature: Maidenhair

I have a maiden hair fern that sits next to my bathroom sink, so I look at it while brushing my teeth and getting ready for the day (which, with a baby, can be mid-afternoon some days). I've always loved maiden hair ferns, but I have a real black thumb when it comes to plants, so I've also killed a few in my time as well. In November last year I decided it was time to use the fern in a new design. Mainly because I figured I'd unwillingly kill the plant soon so I should make the most of it.

So I took some photos and got to work.

Then created the illustration.


The final design is actually one of my very favourites. It's feminine without being too frilly, and would be perfect for a mild spring or summer wedding. These ferns look so fresh, and I think that lends well to the design.

I'm not sure why, but the fern has taken off. It's now far too big to sit next to my bathroom sink, and I actually have to move it if I want to wash my hands. I think it just likes being the centre of attention.

Claire & Adam

Last year we worked with Claire and Adam on their engagement invitations. Today we finished printing their one-colour wedding invitations, accommodation cards and rsvp slips which we recently designed.

The calligraphy was done here at Poppy. Not something we normally do, but these guys are good friends of ours :)

And we're live!

Our brand new website is finally online. There's still a lot more work to do on it though, but once it's all up and running, it will have a few swanky new features.

The most exciting of these will be an instant quote feature. This will allow visitors to the site to have a look through our designs and services, decide what they'd like, and find the pricing for it immediately. However, it's the most code-heavy part of the site, so Adrian's going to be working his magic with it over the next couple of weeks, so you'll have to stay tuned for it's arrival.

Last night we uploaded the first 4 of 36 new designs as part of our new Poppy Collection. Until now, we have only offered custom design and printing, but have had many many requests for a template collection to choose from. The Poppy Collection is ideal for couples who:

- would rather not spend time working with a designer to develop a custom design

- would like to receive their final product sooner, and

- are working to a tighter budget, but would still love to have the luxury of letterpress.

So you will be able to choose your design, choose the items you require, choose colours to match your wedding, so that we can contact you to get started straight away. It couldn't be easier!

Every day or two we will be uploading a new design to the Poppy Collection. We'll be featuring each design on the blog, so you'll be able to hear all about them right here.

We also have sections on the website for custom design - which we'll still be offering as before - and information on how to supply your own design for printing. These will hopefully be live by the end of the weekend.

Also yet to come are a stack of photos. They'll be online in the next few days too.

Phew! Busy busy!

So even though there are still a lot more goodies to pop up on the site, we'd love to get your feedback on how it looks so far. And let us know if you think the text is too small. I, for one, like it, but we've had a bit of a debate here and I think I'm losing ;)

Emerging tomorrow

The pressure's really on now to have the website ready to go live tomorrow. It may be at 11.59pm tomorrow, but it will be tomorrow! I must say that I'm stupidly excited to have a new site. We've really needed it for quite some time now, and it's far more dynamic than the last one. You'll probably all look at it and ask, "What was all the fuss about?" :)

One thing that I'm looking forward to is updating it daily for the first few weeks. You'll see what I mean tomorrow...

Sprouting...

tease, tease

Isn't it always the way? You plan and plan, only to realise that your little dream of a new website is, in reality, a huge undertaking that requires far more time than you originally anticipated.

But fear not my friends, the new website is coming. In 3 days to be precise. So while Adrian and I are being busy little bees, here's a little teaser.

2010!

Happy New Year everyone!

I hope you all had a fantastic Christmas and had a fun night last night. Have you made your new year's resolution? I'm not one for them myself, but I'm really looking forward to throwing myself into the studio and producing some gorgeous new work. Bring on 2010!