Things are positively hectic as we prepare for the National Stationery Show. The stress keeps mounting as we think to ourselves how in the world will we finish everything on time?  There are press kits to mail, cards to print, furniture to assemble, the list goes on! Amidst the craziness, I decided to take a walk to clear my head and came upon a local girl’s high school softball game. I stood there for a good 20 minutes, taking in the intensity of the match up and remembering my own days on my high school field hockey team — the hustling, the strategy, the team work. Even though I am light years away from that hockey field, I am part of a different sort of team today. And as we pull together the final details for the show I am reminded that the same intensity, team work, and determination applies here — just as it does on the field. Smudge Ink is comprised of such a fun, talented, creative group of people, and it’s our collective efforts that make us an effective team. I have no doubt we will make it to New York successfully.

Last Thursday, Deb and I headed to the Cape to help build walls for our 10’ x 17’ booth at the National Stationery Show. We‘re stepping it up this year and trying an alternative to our usual foam core walls. My dad enthusiastically accepted this challenging project, so we left the studio behind for a day to help him with construction and painting. Using wood allows us to hang deep shelving and reuse the walls year after year. This translates to a better looking booth and significant cost savings (yay! and yay!). Luckily, it was a gorgeous day and we accomplished almost everything on our list. It was a nice change of pace to be outside, enjoying the fresh air and physical work. Thank you Advil, Sparrow coffee, and most importantly, Dad.

Given that we’ve just launched all of our greeting cards on our online store, we thought it would be fun to ask our team to name a favorite Smudge Ink birthday card.  Read on to see our favorites and learn how to enter a contest to win your top five favorite birthday cards.

Co-owner Kate’s vote goes to TTB07.  This fun birthday card, in shades of coral and gray, depicts a camera and the greeting, “Smile, it’s your birthday!”  Kate likes the card’s overall composition, including the colors, and its clever “smile” wordplay is sure to make any recipient say, “Cheese!”.

Our designer Stephanie and office manager April both chose TTB766 depicting a sweet little snail toting a balloon.  This charming card is printed in their favorite color scheme of yellow and gray, and “it’s funny,” says April.  Stephanie adds, “The thought of a teeny-tiny balloon small enough to tie around a snail makes me smile. I also enjoy the fact that sending this card to someone would be a pun in itself…good old-fashion snail mail!”

Co-owner Deb is another TTB766 fan. “It’s cute, clean, and I like the typeface,” says Deb, adding, “I also tend to move at a snail’s pace.”

Emily, our print shop manager, prefers one of our most popular birthday cards…TTB514′s  “Have a Wild Birthday!” An adorable zebra, in graphic black & white and wearing a jaunty red party hat, is “eye catching,” says Emily.  “He’s cute and out of the ordinary, compared to the other cards.”

Lis, our fulfillment assistant, has two favorites:  TTB115′s fireflies in a jar design recaptures that joyful childhood pastime of catching lightening bugs and the wonder of summer nights.  Likewise, TTB806′s image of a purple, swirly, soft-serve ice cream cone brings to mind that cold, delectable summer treat.  “These have memories attached to them,” says Lis.

Custom wedding manager Sabrina likes the comedic touch of TTB809′s scuba diver and his bubbly underwater birthday greeting. “I get a chuckle out of it,” says Sabrina.  She also admires the blue graphic design, particularly the lattice-like rendering of the ocean.

Meghan, our printing assistant, likes our FTB425 birthday card displaying a cute, balloon-adorned bicycle. She appreciates the smaller 4 bar size, the mix of red and purple colors, and the fact that “it’s festive and can be for any age.”

Speaking of bikes, I’m drawn to TTB246.  I love vintage things, and the antique bicycle design on this card…known as a high wheeler or a “penny-farthing…” gets my vote for favorite card.  I also like the affectionate jab at aging with its “Happy Birthday, old timer,” greeting.  Whenever I come across this card when filling an order, I always think, “Good choice!”  And then I wonder, “How the heck did they ever ride those things?”

Which smudge ink birthday card is your favorite? Browse our collection and then leave a comment below. We’ll randomly choose a lucky winner by April 18, 2012. The winner will receive one of each of their top five favorite smudge ink birthday cards. And the winners are: Megan and Susie! Thanks for your participation!

Last Sunday I spent most of the day at the studio showing Samantha, my teenage niece, how to print.  At the ripe old age of 13 she’s quite the talented poet, so we spent our day printing three of her poems on the Vandercook. I hadn’t been on press for a while, so it felt good to exercise those muscles and share a little bit of what I know with her. Watching Sammy react to the letterpress printing process and the end result — her beautiful poems — was inspiring for me. I was reminded of the excitement and sense of possibility I felt when I first learned to print over 10 years ago. I was happy to share the process with her and hope we can do it again soon.

The poems she printed are shown below in the bottom photograph. I have to admit, I have a favorite which I have framed above my dresser at home:

The Wish
I pressed my face to the window,
recounting the many bus rides
so similar to this.
But this would be my last.
All of the things I have seen,
I come here to forget them.
I know, I only fly for a moment,
but it is worth something
more precious than my energy.

I am surprised and delighted at how early spring has arrived here in Boston. Weather reports this time of year typically include mention of “flurries”, “a snowy mix” or “a high of 40 degrees”. Instead, we are experiencing summer-like weather with highs in the 70s and bright blue skies. Not surprisingly, the daffodils are already in bloom. I love seeing pops of yellow happiness dotted throughout the city, not only because it’s a sign that spring is here, but also because I begin to day dream about what I might do with my window boxes in the coming months. Happy Spring everyone!

1. Photo by Smudge Ink  |  2. charlotteromance.tumblr.com  |  3. tinywhitedaisies.tumblr.com   |   4. Daffodil note card by Smudge Ink
5. bhg.com   6. lisawarninger.com  7. wedding-flowers-guide.com

Hello again! Now it’s time to tackle the second color: yellow. Just like we did with the first color, we measure to estimate where the second color will land. Once the placement is set, the polymer plate for the second color is adhered to the base, and the chase is set into the press. At this point, the ink is on the press and ready to go.  If we measured accurately, the first pull should be close to perfect. And…it is!

A few tweaks are then made for impression, color saturation and placement. Once those are set, the paper (with the first color printed) is loaded onto the feeding table. Now it’s time to begin the run and monitor it carefully to make sure registration, color and impression remain consistent. Once the run is finished, we move onto trimming and scoring.

We use a pencil, ruler and one of the cards to create a guide for trimming the entire stack.  The trim marks represent the final size of the card, and in this case it’s 4.25″ x 5.25″.   We use our trusty Polar-Mohr Eltromat 72 cutter to trim the stack. We seriously love this machine — it’s precise, dependable and solid. What more could you ask for in a cutter?

Once the cards are trimmed, we move onto scoring. Scoring allows for a much cleaner fold — which we think is pretty important around here. The cards are fed into the press that has a scoring rule set inside the chase, and the rule makes a crease in the card when the platen comes together. Given the amount of cards we score each week, this is not the most efficient way of accomplishing this task. In our ideal world, we’d have a scoring and folding machine which would score and fold at the same time, but the exact magic machine we desire is hard to find. So, we patiently wait.

Next steps: folding and packaging. We’ll return in a few days to continue the day in the life of a smudge ink greeting card. And, by the way, you can buy this snail card as all of our birthday cards are now for sale on our website.

This is just a quick note to announce that our new wedding line has finally launched! After months and months of hard work, we are so excited to share these wedding suites with you: www.smudgeink.com/weddings. Please take a peek and let us know what you think. And, please spread the word!

Given that we are a working studio, we thought it would be fun to share with you the process of how we make our greeting cards. Our fondness for letterpress printing is part of why we started this business, so it’s only appropriate that we share some letterpress love.

Once we’ve determined a card must be printed, there are a series of steps we go through to produce it, not to mention package and send it off to our retailers. In this first post, we’ll show you how we set up the press in preparation for printing and how we run the first color.

After we’ve determined how many cards to print of a specific design, we cut the parent sheets (large format paper) to smaller run size sheets (smaller format paper fit to run through the press but not the final size). Next, we use a measuring guide to determine where the first color should land on the run sheet.

We then take the polymer plate for the first color and adhere it to the base. Now it’s time to add the ink — we’re using warm grey for this particular card. The ink is applied through the ink fountain at the back of the press, a heidelberg windmill that we affectionately call Heidi. Once the ink is ready to go, the base is locked into the chase and set into the press. The pins that guide the paper during the run must be adjusted so they don’t get crushed by the base. Be sure to say hello to Christopher, Emily’s feline friend.

Now it’s time to take the first pull to see if the image is landing where we want it to. We do this several times and make many small adjustments so the card is printing perfectly in regard to color, impression and registration. Once it’s good to go, we prepare the stack of paper for the run. Adding air to the stack makes it easier for the press to suction the paper into the press.

We begin the run and monitor it carefully to make sure the color, impression and registration remain consistent. After the run is over, the stack is set side until it’s time to print the second color.

In the next post, we’ll cover the second color, trimming and scoring. Stay tuned!…and thanks for reading.

As you might have read a few posts ago, we’re gearing up to launch a brand new line of wedding invitations: Weddings by Smudge Ink. In just a few weeks we’ll be showing off our 26 new wedding suite designs all of which are designed and letterpress-printed right here in our Charlestown studio. Below is a sneak peek at some of the pieces. More to come in about 2 weeks.  Stay tuned!

The Gift Show is coming to a close today, so we finally have some time to pull together our photos and share a bit of the set-up process with you. Setting up for trade shows takes a lot of time and effort and this show was no exception. We start planning roughly 2 months in advance for our display, but admittedly much of the heavy lifting doesn’t happen until 1-2 weeks before the show begins. Below are some early stage set-up pics followed by close-ups of the sticky stars and the booth overall. Thanks a ton to Bruce at Creative Displays who stores our booth and delivered our walls, and to the Smudge Ink team whose combined efforts helped us to have a successful show.

We were pleased with how the sticky stars turned out especially because they added an interesting (and much needed) 3-D element to the booth. In terms of actual product, customers seemed particularly excited about our wrap display. Note to self: it’s good to mix up how you display your products!

The note writing desk was probably the most exciting feature of this booth. We set-up a desk where visitors could sit down, write a note, decorate/address the envelope, and post it.  Everyone here at Smudge Ink makes the time – amidst the craziness of our lives – to write notes, so this note writing station seemed like a natural extension of what we are about and why we are in business. For all those who took the time to sit down and write, thank you!, your letters have been sent. And for those of you who didn’t, we will continue to offer this service in shows to come.

Pictures of the booth all set-up…

As with any trade show we exhibit at, there are always lessons learned. Inevitably there are things that don’t work so well and things that do. We continually try to improve upon our display each year. So, alas, we make a list and tend to such issues between now and the National Stationery Show this May. Hope to see you there!