A few more pieces and bits

I am embarking on a preposterous project which will take up much (if not all) of my printing life for the foreseeable; more of that sometime. For now, here are some things I've printed:

My good friends Ed and Tara got married, and I made these for their wedding; art by the marvellous Kate Lyons who's a tremendous graphic designer and a better printer than I am, to boot. Oh well. The ampersand on the text-only side is a little typography joke: it's always a good thing for a wedding, with it signifying joining and also more to come; the fact that "&" is a typographical joining of the letters E and T (to spell the French "et" obviously) made it irresistible for the wedding of T to E, if you see what I mean. These were part of the place settings at the reception and most seemed to have been pocketed as souvenirs by the end of the event.

The Curiosity is not a bar, it's the home of some friends of ours. This was a thank-you for letting us stay the night. The image is a vintage block I found on eBay.

Lining up a three-colour print on circular paper is murderously difficult. That's what I learned.


Where is English we would say "A is for Apple, B is for Book..." apparently in French it's "A comme Animaux, B comme bier..." and so on. As Christmas presents for our little friends Ava (who is somewhat punk rock) and Lulu (who tells us she is is part rabbit) we made these postcard-sized gifts. The images are linocuts by Jenn (my wife), and then I added the words on the press.

Three typefaces seems rather a lot for a print job involving 11 letters. These are all about the linocuts, though.

You may have noticed that I have learned how to set type in a circle! I don't have fancy typesetting equipment to manage this: I use bottle lids and masking tape. And luck. But once you know how, it's hard not to.

Some bits and some pieces

Here are some blurry pictures of some things I've done since the last time I updated this ill-updated blog:

Two Hangover Lounge birthday celebrations, five years and six years

Here's another HL beermat, apropos of I don't remember what...

This one is something I did to celebrate a show we are putting on in collaboration with our friends at Chickfactor:

And this one is very close to my heart, celebrating my lovely wife's lovely birthday:

I've also made a number of beermats on commission, some of which have turned out very nicely, but I feel bad about posting those, since they belong to other people!

Here's a thing...

...I printed as a commission for a friend. I was very pleased with it. The "have a good great day"piece relates to a story concerning actual real famous musicians, and I'll tell you the story if I see you in the pub. It might even be true.

Dicky Knee

I couldn't go to my friend Nicky D's party, so I made him some beermats instead. I thought they came out rather nicely. Must remember to keep things simple sometimes.

Printing on celluloid

1. Yes I've been quiet here. Sorry. I haven't given up; actually I've been busy doing commissions for things like people's weddings but I can't really show you those because they're sort of private. Ah well.

2. No I haven't been actually printing on celluloid. I haven't got the correct sort of ink. And I'm not sure it is a very good idea in the first place.

3. BUT! Two little pieces of Half Pint Press work are available to see on an actual real pop video*: our good friend Darren Hayman asked for a couple of beermats to serve as the title sequence of his new video, for the excellent "Old Man, Don't Waste Your Time". You can see them here:


Old Man, Don't Waste Your Time - Darren Hayman and the Long Parliament from Darren Hayman on Vimeo.

You can read more about the song, and the record it comes from (part of the WIAIWYA 7777777 singles club) at Darren's site, and I strongly suggest you do.

*Yes I know it's video not celluloid, WHAT OF IT?

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.

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.