Jane Austen is my favorite author!

I didn't print Katie's wedding programs because she told me that she wanted green ink and was pretty flexible but I wanted to try to match the green on her invites. Today she gave me a sample of her wedding stationery and I'll try to duplicate the color.

In the meantime, I was itching to print something. A while ago, I designed some Jane Austen folded note cards and had magnesium plates made. I love Austen, and I especially love Pride and Prejudice, which reread every year. There are only two known images of Austen and the silhouette is only "probably" her, but I think the best subject for letterpress. I also found a really cool Jane Austen font online, which I used to quote her:

Latest project

My friend, Katie, is getting married in July and she saw this accordion fold wedding program in Martha Stewart Weddings.


We worked together and came up with a design utilizing her theme which is a tandem bicycle. I had already ordered the magnesium plate, and I was hoping to print this weekend but the weather was so great that my husband and I ended up planting our summer garden instead! More on Katie's program in the days to come . . .

Finished wedding invites

A terrible snafu at UPS caused Bridget and Johnny's magnesium plates to be delayed. I had planned a weekend of printing at a leisurely pace. Instead, I ended up getting up at the crack of dawn today to pick the plates up at a UPS Customer Service (ha!) Center and printing madly all day. Here they are:

Wedding invites

My brother in law, Johnny, and Bridget are getting married on a beach in Malibu in a couple of months. Bridget's colors are green and purple and she has an ocean theme. We emailed back and forth about half a dozen times to refine the design, text, and font. I sent these images to Beaver Engraving last Wednesday, and expect to receive magnesium plates in time to print next weekend. Meanwhile, Johnny and Bridget are coming over for Easter dinner, and we'll nail down the colors.

Storing ink

Ink should be kept in a cool dry place. In class, we were taught us to apply a generous dollop of petroleum jelly (like Vaseline) around the opening before replacing the lid to better seal it. Sometimes, however, the top portion will get dried out despite proper storage.

When that happens, use the ink knife to carefully scrape around the edge and fold back to the dried part to expose the useable ink underneath.

What about the storage of smaller amounts of ink that you custom mixed? On his website, Dave Celani describes how to fill small tubes with ink. If that sounds like a lot of work, I think an effective - although not as elegant - technique is to simply scrape the ink onto a piece of wax paper, fold it and then place it into an airtight plastic bag. I recently used some of the brown ink from the baby announcements which I stored about a month ago, and it was fine.