This February has been full of firsts, not the least of which was my first set of custom letterpress business cards. I made them for my sweet and wonderful friend Jina. This simple project turned out to be much more than I bargained for. After setting the type and owl design, and getting it just right in the chase, the darn owl cut wouldn’t print! And by wouldn’t print, I mean it would ink once, then die on me. Over, and over, and over again. GAH! I wanted to pull my hair out. I kept on building up the back of the block with paper and tape but nothing seemed to fix the problem. It just kept dying. After taking a break and getting a fresh pair of eyes on the subject, Doug suggested I put some scrap leading under the block instead. He thought the wood might be compressing the packing behind it so much that it was backing off the rollers just enough not to get inked. I’ll be damned if he wasn’t right. A little bit of leading behind the block and the owl starting printing!! In the end, I was able to pull the cards just fine. But it certainly was a frustrating job for my first custom business cards!

(no, I don’t have special liquified type — just protecting confidential info)

^^^^^ This is the cut in question. The most frustrating cut on the entire planet (just in case anyone was wondering who held that title).

And finally, my adorable, timeless, packaging.

And a million thanks to Jina for being my guinea pig!