For about 3 years I have been a docent at the International Printing Museum in Carson, CA. These past few weeks I have been super busy gearing up for the L.A. Printers Fair, which took place there yesterday. Aside from printing new designs, I also had to come up with a way to display my cards at the event. After discussing it with my husband, I decided I wanted a “vintage 40’s kitchen” or “inside of a vintage trailer” look to the display. Luckily, my husbands brain has been design-synced to mine since we met back in our college days, so he knew just what I was talking about. We did some sketches and got to work. We are on a budget this summer, like the majority of people I know, but we were able to get two sheets of 1/4″ plywood from the contractor working on the house across from us, which was exactly what we were looking for. After laying out the design in Ilustrator, I tiled out a cutting plan and taped it together. Dave cut a template and routed the side boards, then sealed and shellacked everything. I also printed out an enlarged version of my Pup & Pony Logo, transfered it to the plywood and hand painted the sign.

In addition to the printing display making, I had my entire inventory to score and pack into clear envelopes. The dining room table became packing ground zero.

Finally the end of the week arrived, ready or not, and we were off to the fair! Here is the final Pup & Pony display on setup day.

Among the people selling items at the Fair were John Barrett of Letterpress Things, a frequent visitor of the museum (although he lives in Massachusetts!) and fellow docent Marjorie Wilser of Three Toad Press, who shared a space with Dave Robison (also known as the Ink In Tubes guy).

The museum had some of its own collection of things for sale- look at all those presses! And this is just part of what they had for sale!

My best friend Linda helped out at my booth all day (sorry about the blurry photo Linda), and my daughter Sadie tirelessly sold drinks for the museum all day, in the heat, without complaint.

She also bought a cool miniature book from the nice people from San Diego Book Arts, while my son Theo sold little prints for 25 cents that he made himself on my tabletop press.

For a while he was outselling me! A great time was had by all, and I got to meet super nice people, those who I have bought from but never met, like the folks from Keldon Paper, as well as people I look forward to working with in the future, like A&G Engraving, and Envelopments. Thanks to all who helped make this event a success- I can’t wait till next year!

Last week we had cheap chinese for dinner, and after dinner I opened my fortune cookie to find this:

Which I found amusing because I had sent out for copper plates for 4 new card designs, 3 of which featured fruit, just that day. Well, forward a week, the plates came, and the first one I chose to print was not the fruit at all, but the potato, (because it makes me laugh). I finished the first color, changed plates, inked up the press to print the second color- only to find that that plate was sent damaged. BUMMER! It had to get remade.
The fates obviously wanted me to print the fruit first. So here you go, sweet fruit, hot off the press.

Don’t mess with the fates. That’s all I’m saying.

So, my tiny little print shop is in what used to be the garden shed in the backyard. Outside the door of my print shop we have a quite lovely little pond. This year, the water lilies have been spectacular.

Today, after I printed a run of cards, we went on a drive with some neighbors up to the local mountains. We explored a semi dry river bed, discovered ladybug city, caught two frogs and two salamanders. We left the ladybugs to their village, but brought the frogs and salamanders home to live in the pond. I must say, they seem quite happy here!