Calendar – Page 3 – Green Chair Press Blog

Prompt challenge: 2013 calendars

Last January I challenged myself to take a word a week and use it as inspiration to make a book (or, really, anything). In April I got busy with other things, and stopped. But not before I had enough ideas for a year’s worth of bookmaking. One week I made half a dozen collages and I’ve used those as the starting point for my 2013 calendar. Despite my spotty blogging since April, I’ve been slowly and steadily working away on the calendar, and yesterday I finished. They are printed, cut, collated and stored in their plastic stands, waiting to be sold this fall. That’s a pile of them on the left. As with all my other calendars, this one has a design and haiku for each month—for July (shown):

wildflower dance—
up to my knees
in pink.

Unwinding Time

I’m always intrigued by calendar objects, as opposed to the more traditional ones I make myself. Recently I ran across the calendar below (on the Moontree Letterpress blog). It’s by Angela Liguori. She also has a section of limited edition books, as well as Italian cotton ribbons on her website. (Moontree Letterpress has more pictures of the calendar here.)

2012 Calendar on Sale

I just have a few left, and my 2012 calendar is on sale, now $17 + shipping.

2012 Calendar

Yeah — I’m all done. Here’s my 2012 calendar…

My inspiration this year is the quote I included on the cover:

“Excellently observed,”
answered Candide;
“but let us cultivate our garden.”

All the months are pictured below — click here to see a much larger photo. You can order a copy here.

Iridescent Letterpress

Applying the powdered pigment

The finished calendar page

One of the haiku for my 2012 calendar starts “iridescent hummingbird” so I wanted the illustration that goes along with the poem to sparkle.

When I printed my book Winter, I had wanted to do the same thing to the stars on the cover. I tried using silver metallic oil-based ink, but the stars still looked pretty flat. Then Lisa Rappoport suggested I brush a powdered metallic pigment onto the ink before it dries to get the sparkle I was looking for. The method had worked then, so I gave it another try.

I printed the hummingbird illustration in batches of 15 or so, spread them out, and used a brush to paint on the pigment. It’s a very fine dust and painting inside the lines isn’t my forte but a squirt of compressed air to the paper got rid of the excess.

(In case you’re wondering why there are holes at the top of the sheets in the first picture, I use a pin registration system to hold the pages onto my press when printing, rather than the more traditional paper guides.)

First Try Printing with Plastic Plates

Before I converted one of my magnetic bases to take plastic plates, I bought a base from Boxcar. So I was able to compare them while printing my calendar. Most pages have 2 colors, so one base is for the first color and the second I used to register the artwork in the second color to the first color. Using the transparent plastic plates with the gridded bases has made setup and registration much easier. The pictures below are for one of the pages with fairly tight registration. I put 2 registration marks on the artwork (the little crosses you see in the 2nd and 3rd pictures). I got the first color all set up (the text and calendar), then registered the flower stem and petals on the second base in the same color. Once I was done with that, I cut off the registration marks, printed the first color (violet), cleaned the press, reinked in yellow and printed using the second base. The results are in the 4th picture below.

2 chasses	first base with haiku and calendar
flower to be registered against first base	finished printed calendar page