Rainy Planet Press

Things are finally slowing down into their January slowness, so, nearly a month late, I am finally getting around to writing about the Boston Bazaar Bizarre. I am still flattered and overwhelmed to have been included in it; it was such a great first craft fair to sell at. Very well organized, very well attended. (The photo to the right is the line to get in, still stretching around the block at 4:40 pm, after the doors had been open for 3 hours and 40 minutes.) We got to meet lots of really great people, got lots of nice compliments on our stuff, and sold a thing or two.

We were still wrapping things up the night before, so we didn’t get to go to the vendor party, which I was a bit sad about. But we both took turns walking around and checking out what some of our fellow vendors were selling, and there were lots of really cool things. Terri also had her trusty camera there, so she has lots of fun pictures, if you want to see more.

I have little to benchmark it against from a business point of view, but the key thing for me was that we pretty much sold out of the M0l3sk1ne* notebooks that we were personalizing (we had the Kelsey there, doing blind debossing on the covers). I was worried about that, because they cost a fair bit, and I was afraid that they wouldn’t sell, and that I’d be stuck with hundreds of dollars worth of these notebooks. Luckily, they ended up easily being our biggest seller. Actually operating the press on the spot was a nice conversation piece; it brought people over to the booth and I got to talk shop with some people who do or have done letterpress themselves. We also found that working on them was actually a good advertisement: seeing me frittering away at the press made people wonder what was going on, and if the press went silent, people wouldn’t seem interested in the notebooks themselves. Had we had a significant slow period, I might have been inclined to make a few just to get interest up.

One of the best parts about making the notebooks was being privy to the personal things that people wanted printed. The best was this guy who asked “how long can my text be?” (about 20 letters was how much I estimated). He said “ok, I have to think about it; I’ll be back in a few minutes,” and he seemed like he was really going to have to do some tough wordsmithing to whittle down everything he wanted to say in that little space. When he came back, he said, “OK, I want two. One should say ‘mom’ and the other should say ‘dad’”.

I also debossed several of the notebooks for a guy who turned out to be the founder and publisher of The Dig, one of Boston’s alternative weekly papers that I have long thought is far superior to the rest (especially far superior to the biggest, the stunningly mediocre and corporate Phoenix and its bland “alternative” media empire of radio stations and concert series). I was so happy to actually be able to tell him personally about how utterly disappointed I’ve been with the Phoenix since the day I moved to Boston 10 years ago, and how great it’s been that The Dig has gotten really good (it wasn’t much when it started, but the current-and-soon-to-be-former editor-in-chief has really been great).

The stuff that didn’t sell was a surprise, too. I had a zillion of the operator cards, and we sold not one. I love the operator! (PS: We now have a nascent Etsy store, where you can buy a set of the operator cards).

Thanks to all our friends who dropped by to visit, too, and sorry if we were too busy to chat much. A super big thanks to Summervillain and Editrix who actually stuck around and helped us clean up and pack the car. And Terri obviously deserves the biggest thanks for making the whole thing happen; the whole on-the-spot-deboss would not have been possible without her to keep the transactions flowing while I was setting type and making notebooks. And she did a great job of packaging and presenting everything well (especially the colorful holiday gift tags– another near-sell-out). In addition to giving design and business help, she’s going to learn to use the press in 2007. Look out, world.

*I blank out the name of this manufacturer of those popular leatherbound notebooks because when I faxed them about buying in bulk to personalize, someone called me back to let me know that they did not permit modifying and reselling their notebooks, something about preserving the brand, blah, blah, blah. So the obfuscation is so that they can’t find me through Google so easiliy.

And I’m actually almost done with the printing. Or at least I have it the remaining bits for the next three days planned out. It’s kind of killed me the past few weeks, but it’s also gotten me off my butt to do some of the projects that I’ve been meaning to do for a while!

I would have some photos of some of those projects right now had I not broken my camera during our trip to San Francisco this September. As it is, I will have to borrow Terri’s camera and post some things between now and Saturday so that the site isn’t quite so “under construction” when I’m handing out cards with the URL at the BB.

Anyway, if you’re in driving distance of Boston, stop by at booth 88 (to your left as you walk into the Cyclorama) and say hello!

I’m so excited: we’re going to be a vendor at the 2006 Boston Bazaar Bizarre!

Time to start printing. And maybe… er… get some cooler clothes?

Let the cringing stop. I’m almost happy with the design of this blog.

I am delinquent on giving a report of the Mass Art letterpress workshop. More on that soon.

I am really sorry I haven’t gotten around to making this blog prettier. Every time I look at the default Wordpress theme here I just cringe. I will get around to fixing it up any day now.

I personalized some Moleskine notebooks to give Editrix and Summervillain “offline blogs” for their birthdays (late and early, respectively). I wasn’t entirely happy with how the silver ink failed to cling evenly to the Moleskine, though the embossing effect was nice, so I also made them some coasters while I was at it.

UPDATE, 31 May 2007: I’m now officially selling these (uninked), after what a hit they were at the 2006 Bazaar Bizarre. Check out the custom work section of the website for more details on how to order.

If you’re interested in letterpress and live within driving distance of Western Massachusetts, you’re lucky to live within range of Letterpress Things. In the recent postcard giving the dates from May-August, proprietor John Barret mentioned that he’s working on a blog. If you’re reading this, John, I highly encourage it. It’d be an ideal way to get the word out of what’s new.
If you’ve never been there, John has cases and cases of type, cuts, presses, type cases, books, various other supplies and necessary items. If you need rollers or other parts or have various particular questions, if John doesn’t have the answers, he can probably put you in touch with someone who does. You can also pick up recent copies of The Printer, free samples from AAPA bundles, and other occasional goodies.

invitation to Virginia baby shower

Originally uploaded by ezraball.

This is an invitation that Terri and I printed up (and that she assembled) for her sister Kim’s baby shower (with the private bits blurred out for privacy).

I’m a bit disappointed with the scan, because you don’t get the nice texture of the lovely cotton paper we used.

lifesaving device

Originally uploaded by ezraball.

My friend Greg and I printed up a bunch of surreal or self-contradictory cards and objects back in high school (e.g. a bookmark that said “This is not a bookmark”). I just came across this at the bottom of a box of printing stuff. I don’t remember doing it, but given the content and the very un-professional inking, it looks like something Greg and I did in that era.

Nobody I know who’s heard about the Versalaser hasn’t immediately wondered how they’re going to get the $10k to get one. It has been mentioned on Slashdot and Boing Boing. It’s basically a printer-sized laser which can cut and engrave wood, plastic, fabric, thin metal, rubber, etc, and which hooks up to your computer via a printer driver.

Now, I know I don’t have that kind of money lying around. But the Versalaser definitely came to mind when I was looking into ways of designing and making custom cuts. The current methods of doing this are making metal engravings or through a photopolymer process. Both of these are options, but from what I’ve seen, if I wanted to do enough cuts to do multiple colors, the costs can add up pretty fast. With the versalaser, the up-front cost is pretty high, but the per-unit cost for materials and processing are pretty negligable. (Actually, the up-front cost is probably still cheaper than what I think a photopolymer unit goes for, but I may be wrong on that).

So, I filled out a form on the Versalaser site requesting a free demo, to get an idea of what they could do, figuring that if they couldn’t do work precise enough to cut, say, a 6-point font, it might not be worth even pining over one. I got an email back in a few days from Greg Conyngham at Integrated CADD Services, my local Versalaser reseller. He sent me a bunch of samples, and offered a demo. I finally got around to the in-person demo this Wednesday.

Their office couldn’t have been much closer from my (day job) office. It’s a stone’s throw from Toscanini’s, and now, my question of what is in that quirky little triangular brick building has been answered.

Within a couple of minutes, Greg whipped up a little logo in CorelDraw, and burned this into wood. He also made a prototype plate in a very hard plastic material called Delrin. I still have to figure out how to mount it so that I can see how it does on the press. The versalaser is as cool as advertised, and, I have an idea that a lot of people think so, but don’t have the money to buy one. But if the prototype works out, Greg offered make custom cuts on his versalser. Which might turn out to be a better option than photopolymer or magnesium. And while not quite as cool as owning one, the fact that their office is so close probably means that I might have an easier time of getting exactly what I want, which might not be the case if I were getting custom cuts made via mail order.