Let me start out by saying thanks to those who responded, the guesses were great! That being said, other than the CD none of us were even close. It was a CD on top, but I was totally off with the band. It was Stainds’ new CD – ‘The Illusion of Progress’, a most excellent choice!

I chose to open the smaller triangle box in the middle next. I had no idea what was in the box, it was fairly light and shaking didn’t reveal any unusual noises. When I opened the package I discovered a firewood carrier to help haul the wood for my new woodstove in the print shop.

Next it was on to the large triangle-shaped box. I removed the wrapping paper from one end, cut the tape on the end piece of cardboard, removed it and looked inside – empty!

Or at least it appeared empty – upon closer inspection I discovered that the box has been constructed around the metal pipe and triangle shaped frame of the firewood carrier holder. The handles of the firewood carrier hook around the top of the frame to hold the wood – pretty cool!

So there you have it – the mystery solved for another Christmas. We were discussing the mystery gift at our traditional Christmas breakfast (eggs, sausage patties, home fries and english muffins). Karen’s daughter more than hinted that I will again be her victim of choice next Christmas. I could be wrong, but I thought that I saw a touch of evil in her smile as she spoke. I may be asking – no, begging – for everyone’s help again next year so don’t be surprised if you hear me yell HELP!

until next time…

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Every year, Karen’s daughter chooses someone to drive crazy with the way she wraps their gift. Last year she chose me, wrapping a 6-foot cardboard tube with a dowel attached to a string coming out. I pulled the string hard and out came another cardboard tube, and at the bottom of that was a gift certificate to Caminito Argentinian Steak House (yum!). Well, she enjoyed it so much she has chosen to torture me again. This year I’m enlisting your help to figure out what’s inside the box! It weighs under 15 pounds and is 2 feet high. I shook it but didn’t hear anything. The smaller triangle slides back and forth but I’m unsure on its weight. I’m pretty sure that’s a CD on top – if I had to guess I’d say Dire Straits ‘Brothers in Arms’. I’m totally baffled by the rest – HELP! (click on pictures to open larger)

Give us your best guess but hurry, I’ll be opening it Christmas morning! Enter as many times as you like by commenting below. First correct answer will receive your choice of one of our matted art prints (shipping included) – Shwing!!
*If you were involved in the wrapping of this gift you are disqualified from entering – and we know who you are!*

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Typecases are wonderful. They not only hold metal and wood type and ornaments and borders, but they also hold words, thoughts and ideas. A case can be extremely heavy with a full font of larger point-size type, or light as a feather with a half-strength font of 12 point type or smaller, but every case is full with the potential for great words.

I’m not going to wax poetic here, I’m talking about the grunt labor now! I’ve been moving everything around in the Print shop to make room for a wood stove (almost there!) so have moved quite a few typecases lately. I feel like I’m playing one of those tile puzzle games except the tiles are heavy steel type cabinets. Here’s a picture from June showing the shop layout (click on the picture for a larger view):

The wood stove will be going where the double cabinet is in the far right corner. Straight ahead are two single cabinets, one will be going against the wall in the far left corner along with the double cabinet and the other will be going out the door. I’ll probably be kicking myself a few years down the road but there is only so much space in the shop!
The steel slant-tops were removed from all the cabinets to lighten the load but even after removing all the typecases the cabinets are still pretty heavy. The temperature was 30 degrees in the shop but I was more than warm enough moving around all of the cabinets, slant-tops and typecases! Everything is now in its proper position and I am actually starting to see a little more elbow room. The stove is all set to install, most likely between Christmas and New Years – as I said in my last post I can’t wait to get it fired up! I’ll have pictures up here as soon as we’re done so you all can see the new and improved Paper Stone Printing shop!

The Dark Side – did that tag pull some of you in? Printing, at one time, was known as the Dark Art, so I feel that when someone is encouraged to connect or reconnect to letterpress printing they are drawn over to the dark side. I did such a thing recently – drew someone over to the dark side. Her name is Deb and I had worked with her for 22 years in an offset print shop before leaving my job for *gasp* the Dark Side. She was a printer long before I was, learning the craft at a local Technical school in the 80’s. She had once owned a Curtis & Mitchell but hadn’t done any hobby printing for years. After I got my Chandler & Price last year she stopped by several times to chat, but I had a deep-down feeling that she was secretly coveting my press. Karen and I mentioned a few times that she should come by and use the Chandler & Price sometime but she said she was too busy. I told her about John Barrett’s Letterpress Things, I wanted to take her along with me on a trip there but every Saturday through to December 11 was filled with craft fairs. Imagine my surprise when she sent me an e-mail on November 29 telling me that she had gone to John’s with her husband and bought a Prouty 8×12 letterpress! She fell in love with the press and with Letterpress Things – she didn’t know where to turn first! She did some shopping, then her and her husband picked the press up the following weekend. She’s been busy but has started to clean it up – here’s a look:

8x12 Prouty

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Whew! We made it through the Fall/Holiday craft season and can now take a breath before focusing on some much-needed work around the home and shop. As I look out the window at the snow falling I can’t help but wonder where the Fall went! So many projects left to do outside before we’re covered by a thick blanket of cold and snow, things that are normally done before Halloween. Some will now have to wait until spring but others cannot so it is to those we now turn our focus; buttoning up the back porch, putting the lawn mowers to bed and pulling out the snow blower, shielding the evergreens from the big, mean snowplows that would otherwise bury them, and to top it off we lost 2 8-foot tall sections of boundary fence during the last high winds we had. Never enough hours in the day, never enough days in the week. It’s already December and we are very fortunate that we haven’t had a staying snowstorm yet, otherwise we’d never get it all done. As I write this I can hear hammer on wood as Karen disassembles the fence – I caught a cold and am stuck inside today, but will be out there tomorrow!
We also have more work to do in the print shop; installing the last of the luan on the ceiling, finishing off the drywall and installing the woodstove. I am very excited about getting the woodstove, Karen and I both love heating with wood and have missed it terribly since moving from Worthington. It will be so nice to print with a fire crackling in the stove! We also need to do some much-needed maintenance on the Chandler & Price along with some cleaning and fine tuning of the Vandercook.
Speaking of the shop, I wanted to share a couple of pictures of a mascot in the shop – he obviously thought that I wasn’t using my 24 point Goudy often enough so I named him ‘Goudy’

Here’s a look at our newest Holiday card – ‘Winter House’ – Karen’s pen & ink art surrounded by a lovely twig border by Skyline type

Winter House Holiday card
Printed in green and red on
ecru 100% cotton paper on a
1903 Chandler & Price letterpress. Card size 5x4 1/2, comes with ecru cotton envelope.
Can be customized with
your personal message. Original art by Paper Stone Printing
$4.00

Winter House close up

This past year has been an amazing trip as Karen and I have explored and learned the letterpress process, and it wouldn’t have been possible without the letterpress community – both local and across the country via Briarpress and letpress. A huge thanks to everyone out there for all of your help and wisdom, we certainly couldn’t have done it without you!
We want to wish everyone a very happy Holiday season with the first Holiday card we printed after getting our press last year – Peace and Joy to all!

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The Holiday rush – to me it used to be the feeling that I got when I found a parking space within a thousand yards of the entrance to the Mall on December 23rd. I was never big on getting my shopping done early – I had better things to do, why do today what you can put off until tomorrow, etc. (insert your excuse here) I’m pretty sure I was the main target for those ’something for everyone on your list’ aisles that pop up in Target and Walmart before the Thanksgiving turkey is cold. I could find the ‘perfect’ gift for anyone on my list and be out in 20 minutes! (maybe fourty, counting the wait in the checkout line) Alright, they may not have been the perfect gift, but on December 23rd perceptions are a little different. I would smile as others ran around for the weeks leading up to Christmas, content in the fact that I would always be able to find ’something’ for everyone at the last minute. That philosophy worked pretty well for me over the years with only a few hiccups. I remember a few gifts of Lottery tickets or fruit baskets in place of more meaningful gifts but when you brave the crowds that sometimes happens!
…and then I met Karen! She is an early shopper who tries to be done with her holiday shopping before Thanksgiving. She usually is done before then but has in the past been finished as early as late October. For the record, she made the last purchase on this year’s list yesterday afternoon. November 19th and finished – can you believe that? Karen has always made a lot of her gifts and I may not have quite the artistic hand that she does but it feels great to share what we can create with our friends and family. It’s so nice to give a gift like that, rather than a last-minute gift in a clamshell of plastic. What we can’t make, we try to purchase from local craftspeople and online handmade shops like Etsy.
It took a long time but I have finally discovered the Holiday rush, but this one starts in early Fall and is peaking right now. The rush that I speak of is the Holiday rush in our letterpress shop. Karen and I are enjoying the rush of designing, carving and printing new cards, prints and ornaments. Our Snowperson was a great start, so whimsical and festive! Next up, our Chipmunk Christmas card – more of Karen’s wonderful pen & ink artwork printed on cotton ragg card stock on our 1903 Chandler & Price letterpress and painted with india ink

Chipmunk Christmas card

Chipmunk close up

Pine Bough print

Pine Bough close up

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It’s a little overdue, but as promised I would like to introduce one of our Chihuahuas – Vinnie, AKA Pork Chop. He’s the youngest at 3 1/2 years old and weighs in at a whopping 4 pounds. Even that small he has claimed the title of Top Dog in our house (and in my heart!)

Morning coffee with Vinnie

Vinnie at 3 months

Vinnie

Vinnie and the Kelsey

Porkchop and the porkchop press!

On another note, I had a great time at the Handmade for Kids Holiday Fair in Cummington yesterday! It was a small and festive event with the focus on kids and families. It brought back fond memories of when my own kids were that age – I’m amazed that I had the energy to keep up with them when they were that young!
The upcoming week will bring lots of new Holiday cards and prints as we just finished our seasonal batch of plates and I’ll be busy printing all week, so if you’d like to see some eye candy keep checking back here, we’ll be uploading pictures hot off the press!
Until next time…

I was going to post these pictures tomorrow but was just too excited to wait! Karen did a most excellent job on the linocut and I laughed out loud when I pulled the first print! Without further delay I give you the Snowperson!

Snowperson Card
Linocut letterpress printed on snow white
cotton paper and painted with india ink.
Comes with a white cotton envelope.
Card size 6 5/16 x 4 inches.
Discount for multiple cards.
Original art by Paper Stone Printing
$5.00 Discount for multiple cards

Snowperson close up

I hope that you enjoy them as much as I do! As always, we can customize your cards for you and discounts are available for multiple-card orders. If you haven’t seen them already check out our linocut snowflake notecard set and we’ll also be adding more Winter/Christmas cards very soon!
Until next time…

As I said in my last post, I made the trip to John Barrett’s ‘Letterpress Things’ in Chicopee MA yesterday. After I got my Chandler & Price a year ago and tumbled down the letterpress rabbit hole I read online about John and his shop but didn’t truly understand how lucky I was to live only 33 miles away from this wonderland of letterpress supplies! Everywhere you turn there is something new to explore. Karen and I love to make the trip to talk with John and wander his ’store’, which takes up a complete warehouse floor. It is HUGE! There is no way that these pictures can do it justice, you will just have to come and experience it for yourself!
*Click on any picture for a larger view*

Some of the cuts that are there, just as many on the back side of the rack

Letterpress 'things' - all along the windows are spacers, borders by Skyline Type and more type

the Kelsey table in the foreground. then 2 slant-tops of symbols, @ signs, etc. followed by a table of letterpress books and manuals, then a table with tympan, brayers and misc., then a table of pressboard, ink, furniture, pica poles, composing sticks, brass & copper thins and quads and spacers and past that all the type

Nice selection of tabletop presses - you can see the feed table on the Chandler & Price 10x15 in the foreground, what a beauty! It's funny - when I look at all the presses I don't notice all the galley cabinets they are sitting on or the ton of California job cases behind them!

Tabletops and floor models - and a ton of california job cases! If you look waaay down the aisle you can see John with another new letterpress couple!(I believe they were looking at the 8x12 NS - have fun!)

Here we go! This first post will give everyone a little background about Paper Stone Printing – who we are and how we got here. You’ll see a lot of flashbacks in this blog but I’ll try to keep things coherent. I hate when I watch a movie and can’t tell if I’m looking at present time or a flashback!
I was a commercial offset Printer for 22 years, running a two-color Harris M-110 printing press

Harris M110

Chandler & Price offload

Finally home!