I have just finished my first letterpress calendar. I’m kind of liking it. Hope you do too.Take a look below to peruse each month.

The drawings are from plants in my gardens, things from hikes, or vacations … except the mushrooms, I’ve always loved the texture of shitake mushrooms, so I bought those at Whole Foods to draw. Then we had them for dinner.

Hope you enjoy. If you would like to purchase a calendar visit my Etsy shop at here.

The process: Each drawing was completed in pen and ink, then scanned. I then set up the information for the months, added the scanned drawing, added color and chose an appropriate background for each. I then separated all the colors into so that I could have a piece of film negative created for each color for each month. The plates were then created using photopolymer plate material and my trusty platemaker (it took a complete day just to make the plates). Finally I was able to begin printing, 3,200 cranks later printing one color at a time on my Vandercook 4 the calendar was complete. (you can see a few photos of the process at the end of the entry). And it comes in a cloth bag that I also printed on the Vandercook.