Wednesday 4 July 2012

The Hangover Lounge Three EPs Box Set!

After the third Hangover Lounge EP came out, and in honour of an Independent Record Mart one Saturday, I made a super-limited (25 copies) box set of the three EPS with some spare copies of the vinyl we had. It involved some experimental printing on felt, which gives a great effect, but which presented some drying problems. I was really quite proud of how this one came out.

Here's how it looked:

1. The box itself is a 10" cardboard box with a handprinted postcard, like so, fixed to the top of the box with paper fasteners:
2. Open up the box and here's what you'll find:
Sitting on top of a hand-printed and numbered piece of felt are a specially handprinted and numbered beermat:
PLUS! a track-listing poster beautifully designed by none other than Pam Berry, who's played such an important part in making the regular EP covers so lovely:
PLUS! a selection of Hangover Lounge badges

Under the felt you'll find three beautiful pieces of vinyl, the three EPs themselves, of which we are all very proud. And, y'know, it's all about the music, man. 


At the time of writing there remain a few of these left, we're selling them for £20 a pop. I've no real idea how long they'll last. Leave a message in the comments box if you're interested and I'll get back to you.

Monday 2 July 2012

Some more celebrations!

I have made a few celebratory beermats for special occasions, including a couple of commissions (I'm open to accepting commissions, by the way, and you'd be surprised how reasonable the rates are. Yes you would.

So, first up, a set of beermats celebrating the birth of a niece of some friends of ours:


Also, my good friends Kerry and Ewan got married, and asked me to rustle up some beermats by way of wedding invitations. After playing with a few ideas, I was hit with this one , which I was amazed and delighted they liked. So, on one side we had this (I added a bit of colour to the final print run as you can see below):


Leaving the other side showing this: 


Put them together and it starts to make sense: 


A few in a row even more so:  


Here's the colour I was talking about:  

People seemed to like these a lot, I was given a little round of applause at the wedding. I was a bit worried about offending people! I made a second, less rude design for the relatives who might have been offended. As it happens, I was very pleased with the polite run, too. 


Congratulations again to the lovely Kerry and Ewan. 

The Hangover Lounge EP3

This is really late, I know but I'm trying to get this blog updated with the good stuff. So, we made the third Hangover Lounge EP. It's a doozy (musical details here, and posts thereabouts). As ever, the front cover was done beautifully by Pam Berry


My bot was the back cover as usual, and I thought it was the best of my three efforts: even this relatively limited quantity of text leaves y press, or me, or both of us, struggling a bit: 

For good measure, here are some pics of the sleeves being assembled on our rug: 




Some more Hangover Lounge Beermats

I know I've been a bad blogger. I've no excuses. A couple of updates to follow, the first of which is a bunch of beermats I've made from time to time to give away at my Sunday afternoon hangout The Hangover Lounge. They're in roughly chronological order, starting with the oldest.  Hope you like 'em. I'll see whether there are a few more to dig out at some stage, but you get the idea.


I recycled the idea for this one in the Chickfactor coasters you've already seen, if you've been paying attention:

We were pleased and proud to welcome Bob and Pete from St Etienne to the Hangover Lounge not long ago, for a playback of their excellent new LP. I made this next one rather swiftly and a little bit last minute - I was a bit embarrassed to have to tell people to watch out because the green star wasn't quite dry yet. They didn't seem to mind too much. 



The back print in yellow is my little tribute to our friend, inspiration and collaborator Pam Berry. We gave this one away on the occasion of the fourth anniversary of the Hangover Lounge.