fiore press

Hiatus

noreply@blogger.com (Fiore Press) — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 04:02:00 +0000

Hello friends!

It's been a while! It's been a very busy summer--after 3 sets of custom wedding invitations, 2 custom save-the-dates and 1 round of custom baby announcements, I'm still here! I'll post fotos soon. For now, check out my very first listing on etsy! Yes, I know it's very age and gender specific, but it's a darn cute card! More to come!

A few more peeks...

noreply@blogger.com (Fiore Press) — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 03:59:00 +0000

This summer's been so busy with custom projects that I haven't had time to print greeting cards from all the plates I made earlier this spring. Today though, before I cleaned the rollers, I thought I'd throw on a few plates just to run a few test prints. The first one is a personalized notecard for a very sweet little 4-year-old girl {who also happens to be my cousin's daughter} named Caitlynn. She actually drew this darling bee and her super creative mom Nikki, who runs five.thirty.one.design, finished the design. I can't wait to print the real ones! It will be in black ink, but I had brown on the press here.....

This one below will be a happy birthday card {ya think?}, but I will use a more cheery color. The design will run off the card I'm thinking, so you won't see the full circle. Can't wait to post the real one when it's made. Maybe someday soon I'll have some cards to put on the etsy site.....Anyway, this was me having fun with some pretty cool tools in Illustrator to make the design. Any suggestions for colors?

Is it too early for Valentine's Day?

noreply@blogger.com (Fiore Press) — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 04:12:00 +0000

Here are a two greeting cards I ran a test print of today. The first one means "I love you" in Swedish and the second one my 4-year-old came up to me and said out of the blue, "Mommy, I heart you." I thought it was so sweet it needed to be printed on a card!

Dahlia Save the Dates

noreply@blogger.com (Fiore Press) — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 18:40:00 +0000

I finished these save the dates I was working on this weekend and they came out so beautiful {if I do say so myself!}! The orange and blue go so nicely together. Here are a few photos....all that's left is for them to be cut. And now, I'll be taking a little printing break while I send my rollers off to be recovered. Hopefully I'll get over the separation anxiety and they'll be back before I know it!

Another Sneak Peek!

noreply@blogger.com (Fiore Press) — Sun, 31 May 2009 15:19:00 +0000

This week I've been working on some save-the-date cards for a very lovely couple who are getting married this Fall. This save-the-date will be two colors, an orange/poppy color with navy blue text. This shows the progression from plate to finished piece of the first color. To apply the second color, the ink must be cleaned off the rollers, a new plate set up, registration set up and then all the sheets need to be fed one by one again with the new color on the rollers. It's a lot of work, but well worth the effort! I love how these are turning out so far. Stay tuned for the finished piece!

A close up of the dahlia printed in a poppy color. Sorry, the photos don't do these beautiful pieces justice!

Sneak Peek

noreply@blogger.com (Fiore Press) — Fri, 08 May 2009 04:27:00 +0000

Here's a little sneak peak at just a few of the designs I've been working on. Today I sent the files in to get some plates made, so I look forward to printing these soon!

happy birthday + personalized stationery

noreply@blogger.com (Fiore Press) — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 18:54:00 +0000

I got to printing some more this weekend and was experimenting with some color. I will be putting these *happy birthday* cards in my etsy shop soon, so stay tuned!

What's that saying about a cobbler's family whose shoes are always in need of repair? I figured I would treat myself {and my daughter} and print us up some of our own personalized stationery. This monogrammed card has a reverse effect--the solid purple area is printed, leaving the monogram itself to sort of *pop.* And let's give it up for rounded corners......doesn't everything look better with rounded corners?
Here are some cards I printed for my daughter. It had to be in pink, of course!

happy birthday cards

noreply@blogger.com (Fiore Press) — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 12:57:00 +0000

I was glad to be able to do some printing yesterday!

press in action

noreply@blogger.com (Fiore Press) — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 20:49:00 +0000

I took a little video of the press here posted below to show exactly how the carriage moves down the bed of the press and how the automatic paper return tower works {so awesome!}. The tapes on the tower are to hold and carry the paper down and back. For what I was printing tonight, one of the tapes is moved over to the side so that it wouldn't get in the way {and therefore crush} the image on the plate.

moving right along....

noreply@blogger.com (Fiore Press) — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 04:02:00 +0000

For those of you that know {and/or care!} about the process of letterpress printing as well as the maintenance of a printing press, I'll post some photos of my new press and the things I am doing to get it ready for printing. The gripper bar is the part of the press that grips the paper as it carries it over the cylinder and down the bed of the press. It was pretty dirty and would stick, so I took the whole assembly apart and cleaned it.

all taken apart

soaking in a Simple Green bath

all clean!

Ciao!

noreply@blogger.com (Fiore Press) — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 01:53:00 +0000

Welcome to the official blog of Fiore Press! This has been a very exciting adventure for me and I'm thrilled to finally bring this all to life. Soon I will post some sneak previews of some new things I've been working on, but first thing's first. Have you ever tried moving an 1800lb. piece of printing equipment into your basement? Well, it's definitely harder than it looks! We used Ed Regan {from Regan Printing Machinery Movers} and he is the guy to use! After much research, we are very happy we chose Ed to move our press. He and his son did an amazing job. Here are some photos from the move. Waiting to be loaded onto the truck....

Ready to make the 15 minute drive to its new home!

How cool is this? They had it made for them--if you look closely, you can see the date it was made...

Since there are steps leading up to the doorway, they had to jack up the press little by little and put blocks underneath to raise it. This took a LONG time!

The press was anchored to a trailer.

About ready to make it down the stairs.

On its way down....

Almost there! Skids are waiting at the bottom....

Here's the press after they put the cylinder and the tower back on. There is an automatic paper return on this press {so awesome!} and this photo was taken as it was making its return to the feed board.

If you'd like to see all the pictures from the move, you can see them here on flickr. Until next time!