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. 

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.

Beermats for Chickfactor

Chickfactor, one of the world's great fanzines, has been going for twenty years! They are celebrating with a series of shows this summer, and we were pleased to make a small series of beermats to commemorate the NYC and DC shows. We'll be hanging out at the New York events, and we can't wait.

Let's Dance (at the Carousel)

A new card design in advance of the Carousel craft fair tomorrow (April 2nd), noon-5pm at the Duke of Wellington. See you there!

I was delighted to be part of the project to make a deluxe edition of the recent World Of Fox CD, even if my part was the least exciting bit!

Here's how the package looks, with the CD accompanied by two beermats, beautifully screenprinted by the wonderful Ruth Green:

My part was to do the texty bits on the reverse, like so:

They're available for £10 - a bargain for an original Ruth Green screenprint, let alone the excellent record - from Where It's At Is Where You Are, or from me at the Carousel Art Fair (more of which shortly).

HLEP2

This was a real struggle - it seems that this amount of text, spread across the paper this much, pushed my little press (or my abilities) past the point of decent impression. So, it's two-colour because I had to split the design across two printings. At an edition size of 500, that's a pain in the arm.

Just you wait until you see the great work Craft Ho has done with the front cover...

Variations on a theme, number 2

A special christmas beermat for the Hangover Lounge: I'm not in love with the starry side of this (it was the first in a series of experiments in a kind of overprinting which you'll likely see again should you keep reading) but I'm delighted with the left-aligned texty side. A few weeks ago our friend Sue saw something I'd left aligned and said "ooh! Controversial!" - obviously I was going to do it again.

I reckon the Hangover Lounge wil be delightful on the 19th, by the way. 

Variations on a theme, number 1

Having had the blocks made for the lovely round Mason and Taylor logos, it seemed a shame not to have a bash at putting them on a round beermat. Getting round mats to behave (i.e. sit still while you're trying to whack them with some ink) is tricky, and it turns out that if you print circles on circles and get them more than slightly off-centre, it just looks incompetent.

The coward's choice, which I strongly considered, is to print them way off centre. I decided, for this run, at least, to be brave and take the time to centre them - I think this was close enough. These are one-sided and dead simple, but none the worse for that, I think.

Mason and Taylor is open now! Their beer menu is tremendous and I strongly recommend you go down there and drink heavily, especially on a Saturday night (followed by a curative Hangover Lounge on the Sunday...)

Mason and Taylor

Limited edition beermats in anticipation of the soon-to-open Mason and Taylor bar. The two circular designs share a reverse side. I must say, I am very much looking forward to dirtying one or two of these with a pint of delicious craft ale. Two half pints of craft ale, I should say.

Party Time!

Two complementary "Party Time" beermats... can you see the theme? The text side in each is red, but the designs come in a range of colours.

Greeting cards: a brace of birthdays

Two birthday cards, both made on the occasion of friends' birthdays, with a slightly extended run to make some available for sale.

Greeting Cards 1: Thanks and congrats

Two greeting cards I've been working on. I wanted the first to be a Thank You card without the words "thank you" on it.

The second is a variation on an old theme, wrapped and ready for sale.