Dream Print

We promised a print that would “blow your mind” as one of our Kickstarter rewards and we really racked our brains as to what would blow minds. Pulling from our love of vintage inspired wild-west show bills, wanted posters, and early newspaper advertisements, we created a non-traditional (or perhaps too vintage traditional) dream interpretation chart printed on crinkled, torn edge, brown newspaper-esque paper. Here is our suggestion for a quick project to hang your poster in its new home.

ta-da!

Thanks again to everyone who donated we hope you love love love your rewards!

HAPPY HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL YOU LOVELY FOLKS.

We are so excited for 2013 and are looking forward to another awesome year of new projects, meeting folks to work with, expanding our workshops, blogging on the regular, printing, printing, and more printing! Cheers! xoxo.

 

Workshops! Workshops! Get your Workshops!

In lieu of a big announcement (but in accordance with a small parade, balloons, and a whole lot of confetti) we are happy to tell you all….. we are now offering workshops in our little studio!!!

Before putting the workshop out there to the real world, we were lucky to get five of our friends to take the class and give us some feedback– we called it the guinea pig class.  Side note, it turns out when you order pizza to feed your first-timin’ letterpressin’ friends, you’ll be pleasantly surprised you took one said friend’s suggestion and order pepperoni and pineapple  pizza! You will also be surprised that when handed the option of filling in one key word “butt” still prevails and our third grade selves live on.

Hosted through the bad-ass DIY school, Workshop, we sold out our first class and had a great night working with five awesome folks. You can read the class description below and if you wanna take the class you can sign up through workshop‘s website.

While the word “freshman” may conjure memories of swirlies, zits, and being stuffed inside lockers by the seniors, we at Workshop fondly use the term “freshman” to denote…your first time. And in this case, its with letterpress! Join instructors Taylor Reid and Erin Fong, owners of the newly minted Western Editions letterpress company, as they guide you through your first time using a Vandercook printing press to create a two-color letterpress poster! In this course, you will learn the basics of setting wood type and how to print from photo polymer plates. You will learn how to achieve a deep impression and register multiple colors onto paper. Lastly, you will learn the setup and clean up of the press. For your two-color poster, you will set vintage wood type to finish the sentence “Home is where the….” You will also print a decorative border around the edges of the poster. You will take home an edition of ten 8.5 X 11, two-color posters to fill your walls and gift to friends!

Eli Cash: I always wanted to be a Tenenbaum. Royal: Me too, me too.

A big thank you to everyone who came to our movie night fundraiser last week.

We had fun decking out The Bold Italic with movie seats, pillows, popcorn and a little bar too! We’re so lucky to have friends who came early to help, master poppers of popcorn, cute door gals and one classy bartender, more friends came to support, watch the movie and we met some new friends too. We already loved our community and since launching this Kickstarter project we’re just floored with the support we’ve gotten and we still have 18 days left to raise funds on Kickstarter!

 

Kickstarter Launch!

After dreaming, working, filming, meeting and talking about Kickstarter we put our dream out there to the world 2 days ago and have been BLOWN AWAY every moment since. We already feel so giddy, excited, and overwhelmingly grateful to everyone who has seen and backed our project!

You can see the project right here:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/westerneditions/western-editions-a-letterpress-printshop?ref=bjgvaw

THANK YOU! This is going to be an awesome 30 days.

AND on Thursday September 20th, join us in a movie night at The Bold Italic:

xo

Taylor and Erin

Patience is a Virtue.

Kickstarter is an online funding platform for creative projects. It helps people get their ideas to the places they need to be. Some projects are more inciting than others; a truly original idea, a rad video, a friend you want to support. We’ve been spending a lot of time working our Kickstarter project and finally submitted it for approval, we can’t wait to launch it.

More on that soon.

In the meantime, cross your fingers for us (please!)

I also wanted to share our top two favorite projects that inspired us along the way:

Post Haste, featuring Erin’s top favorite video

Thank You For Coming, probably my top favorite video

 

 

Airstream Summer Dream

Summer in San Francisco is a joke. This year has been more promising than last; though I have learned that to have some decent I’m-melting kind of weather, one must get out of town. North or South. It doesn’t matter. Just go. I chose North this weekend to the Russian River with a cabin tucked in the woods and a huge Redwood growing from the middle of the porch. The following would complete my ideal summer getaway weekend…

    French cyclist Latourneau pulling a vintage Airstream

The “flashman” axe from Best Made Co.

Vintage Poncho

  

A set of Pendelton towels

and these essentials from Anthropologie

I could go for some good bridge jumping and classic movie nights too!

Lock Your Love.

On a recent trip to visit my sister in Croatia (where I was surrounded by beautiful old buildings and materials) I took a day trip north to Slovenia.  My friend there gave me a mini tour of his town and brought me to Butchers’ Bridge. Butcher’s Bridge in Lubjiana is a gold mine of cute, old (and new)… locks.

Okay, so it’s not really a gold mine, but a brass, steel and enamel mine. The padlocks are locked by lovers (please use a Will Farrel on SNL voice) to the cables of a recently constructed footbridge in the capital city. I was in the city for less than 24 hours and came by this bridge twice to take photos. It’s not really a surprise that I was into these locks, I just kept finding a new “favorite.”

Top favs:

1. Rusty Yellow, no names

2. Super cute cursive!

3. Heart Lock

Hope you have a lock-lovely day and thanks for reading! xo, tay

Calling Cards for The Style Safari

Meet Stefanie.

Stefanie is a style blogger. She posts on her blog, The Style Safari, every. single. day. I’m so impressed. It’s cohesive, the photos are well done and she certainly owns her style! She makes stuff too, DIY projects every week. When Stefanie and I use to work together she asked me if I would design some calling cards for her. She would be moving to New York soon and wanted something classy to hand out to all her new contacts. We went back and forth a bit giving each other ideas for the design, something my style but more importantly, reflective of her style. We would shop on our lunch break and hold up items brainstorming ink colors and say, “maybe this color of green?” It was a minty seafoam green colored bracelet she found that stuck in my mind. I love color matching from memory.

Her cards turned out great and I was so happy to work with her. Since I pretty much wear the same thing every day (though sometimes the color of my v-neck t shirt varies) designing a calling card for a style blogger was a welcomed challenge for me.

You can see the finished cards here and I hope you enjoy her lovely blog!!  xo, taylor

It’s time we introduced to you…

Though it may seem like we are up to a whole lot of nothing over here at the Western Editions Home Front (I even came up with that name for when I’m creating in the home studio. How’s that for productivity!) we in fact have been printing various jobs here and there. I thought it would be nice to share  a little somethin’ somethin’ about the people we have been working with and feel inspired by their creations and passions alike.

Exhibit A:

Meet Julia Lemke. Julia is currently studying graphic design, though dabbles in a little bit of everything from jewelry making and  handbound journals to wire birdhouses and steel planters all under the guise of Auger + Ore. Nature plays a strong role in her simple aesthetics as “A lot of the objects are made from salvaged material, contrasting texture, weight, and color. It represents the lifestyle that I strive for: an appreciation of simple pleasures,” she states. I had the pleasure of printing labels for her hand-harvested Manzanita and Wildflower honey straight outta the Santa Cruz Mountain. It was a great partnering as we both appreciate creative-minded individuals, collaborations and of course, hand craftsmanship! Check out her website and store and be prepared to pack your bags to move to the Santa Cruz Mountains. Thanks for sharing Julia!

xoxo,

erin