I knew this day would come someday… (I am really grateful to my customers!) I printed Live What You Love Special Edition in poster size! It was another fun thing to print, working with linoleum is always nice :)

Please enjoy the behind-the-scene photos here…

Using the tracing paper on top of the letter “O” area where the heart would be and draw the heart shape…

Trace the heart shape onto linoleum…

and curving time!

On Vandercool press — after inking, curve any excess area off so it prints clearly.

Take the first color gray poster…

and print on top — I didn’t have to adjust the placement this time :) ((aww so cute… gets me every time…))

and pink!

Here are final products…

Live What You Love Letterpress Poster Special Edition with Blue Heart:

Live What You Love Letterpress Poster Special Edition with Pink Heart:

Hope you like them!

and I am wishing you all a happy and fun 4th of July weekend!!!

Posted under letterpress, studio news

Just listed new SMILE letterpress prints in new colors! This was a request from my customer and I ended up liking the color so much! Hope you like them, too… these are very limited in quantity (15-18 each) so please grab them if you like it!

Wood type blocks set on Vandercook press:

Hot off the press:

SMILE Letterpress Print in Lavender:

Here is another color version…

Hot off the press:

SMILE Letterpress Print in Pink:

Smile :) :) :)

Posted under letterpress, studio news

Father’s day is June 20th this year — have you gotten a card for your dad yet?!

I recently reprinted my F is for Father letterpress Greeting card :) For all the hard working dad… with love <3

and my alphabet greeting cards are almost A to Z! LOVE how they look all together! Can’t wait to complete the set… soon, soon…

Posted under letterpress

The project Folded :: The Origami Collection with Jack + Jenn and Jody from Brin & Nohl came to the end! It was so fun creating something different inspired by folded origami, I hope they enjoyed creating as much as I did… :)

Since my last inspiration post, I had to try lot of different things, lot of them didn’t work well because I usually work with 110lb+ papers and they do not like to be folded… (maybe once, but no more than twice)

oh, and I had 2 ideas going on, one was the pop up cards and one was the paper flowers out of recycled papers. Well, I couldn’t decide in one direction so I tried both ideas! Here, I will share some images from the “making of” and then, later this morning, I will have the final product post so stay tuned…

After trying and failing, I decided to just use the thin papers so they fold nicely. I wanted to make an original pattern by printing with wood type… and picked a word “HELLO” — greeting word!

Wood type set on Vandercook press:

First run:

and then, I went through the paper one more time in different direction to make some overlapping and pattern…

OK, now the folding part…

Cutting and shaping…

so it makes flower like this. I love the pattern!

Keep creating the same flowers…

Now, start placing each flower onto the card…

Total of 9 flower papers…. Do you know what it’s going to be?! To be continued… :)

—————————–

Here are “in the making of” my second idea — paper flowers! I have so many misprints that I really wanted to recycle somehow and this was a perfect opportunity. Here is a Live What You Love misprint…

On the back of the print, I drew 3 6-petal-flowers.

Cut them out… (and erase the pencil mark on the back)

and start forming each layer… lots of folding over petals and gluing them together…

I took my Iris letterpress misprints and tried it, too… this time, one flower layer from one whole print…

and oh my god, I LOVE these flowers! The final post will follow…!!

Posted under project

I hope you had a nice week and that you are ready for the long Memorial Day weekend… We are probably working on our loft, picking up our new dining table (SO exciting), finishing up the origami project…

I have recently printed “HI!” cards for my shop customers :) Wood type all set on the Vandercook press here.

Hi, weekend! I’ve been waiting for you :) Have a great weekend, everyone!! xo Hijiri

Posted under letterpress

This print had been on my list of things to print and I am so happy to let you know that the HELLO Letterpress Print is now available at my etsy shop!

“Hello” is an universal word (I think everyone knows this word!) and when I see/hear the word, it always brightens up my day so I wanted to do the same for everyone. Perfect for your hallway to greet you, your family and guests :) or I have this in my studio as you may have already noticed from my new studio sneak peek photo, to welcome you in!

Wood type blocks set:

Hot off the press:

HELLO Letterpress Print in Yellow:

and Hello, another week…. please be good to me :)

p.s Have you entered the giveaway yet? It’s ending tonight!!

Posted under letterpress, studio news

I printed Live What You Love Special edition earlier this year in light grey with hot pink heart and it was gone so fast and I’d been asked about it so much that I decided to print another batch… this time in grey with red heart! One of my favorite color combinations :) To show my appreciation for all of you lovely readers and my dear supporters, I am giving away one of this prints! Thank you always so very much!!

Scenes from the studio…

The first color printed… without the heart.

Now, place the linoleum heart in the right place…

Adjust the placement and the height of the linoleum by placing papers on the bottom…

and there! Makes me smile every time :)

and here is the final product: Live What You Love Special Edition in Gray with Red Heart

To enter, please leave a comment on this post and tell me your favorite color combination — 2 colors, please — by midnight EDT on Monday, May 17th and I will pick a winner and announce one next week!

You can be anywhere in the world, I will ship it to anywhere if you win :) Also, if you tweet about it (@hijirik) or if you mention about it on your blog, that gets you more entries — make sure to tell me by leaving another messages so I can count that, too! GOOD LUCK!! A big HEART to you all!! <3<3<3

Posted under letterpress, studio news

Just wanted to let you know that I have printed the whole collection of the Live What You Love 9th edition and they are all up and available at my etsy shop!

A couple brand new colors…

I had been wanted to print it in seaform green (one of my favorite colors!) and finally did! :)

Live What You Love letterpress print in Seaform Green:

and I wanted to try some new shade of blue… I didn’t know what to call this blue so I named it “Sweet Blue” — it’s in between baby blue and light steel blue. It’s quite sweet as you can see :)

Live What You Love letterpress print in Sweet Blue:

Along with these familiar colors, too. Oh, these are all printed on 100% cotton Lettra Fluorescent White paper (I’ve been printing on Pearl White) so the colors are more vivid and sharp, I think.

Live What You Love letterpress print in Grass Green (Yellow Green):

Live What You Love letterpress print in Light Grey:

Live What You Love letterpress print in Red:

Enjoy!!

Posted under letterpress, studio news

Lindsay from Lindsay Wilson Photography had another great project for me (did you see the previous post?) to help her create custom prints with couple of quotes by Charles Bukowski. They came out so nicely, I wanted to share!

Since it was 5×7 prints, I used smaller wood type blocks. With my computer printouts, pick up all the letters and try to form sentences…

All the letters picked, spelling double-checked…

Start locking the letters. Takes a long time…

Adjusting impressions and placements… I’m printing both quotes in one paper here.

After everything is set, ink the press and print…

For his name, I ordered a polymer plate. Setting up the plate on the base, ready to print his name separately.

and here are the final products!

Yes, perfectly imperfect, I just can’t get enough of the wood type loveliness… Lindsay and her husband told me the nicest things, made me happy so much! Thank you for another fun and wonderful project!

Posted under letterpress

I printed another awesome custom prints for lovely Lindsay from Lindsay Wilson Photography the other day, I was about to share those pieces and realized that I hadn’t shared the previous custom print I made for her yet… so I wanted to share this first :)

She wanted a print with a part of this song by Priscilla Ahn “DREAM” — great song!

Type setting :: I didn’t have all the letters so I had to break up the lines and print couple lines first.

Use the same “I HAD A DREAM” setting,  move them, and print the first line:

and print the line in between separately…

and here is the final product! Came out so nice, I am very happy with the result and so is Lindsay :)

If you are interested in a custom print, please contact me!

Posted under letterpress