Coasters!

Monday I got to work, was at the office for about a half-hour, and then went home, when the governor closed down State offices due to the weather. Tuesday morning I got to work, the office was cold because the boilers were broken and off (1 in each state), so we were sent home at noon. Yesterday the assistant director of awesome went into the office at about 6 am, determined that it was still freezing cold and e-mailed us to stay home. And didn't leave the office for the night until sometime after 9 pm (at which one of the boilers had been replaced and the office was back up to reasonable temperatures). Hopefully she got home for a while in there somewhere. 

Monday afternoon, the photopolymer plates arrived. Well, plate - it was one big sheet, as shown in my previous post in the low-resolution facsimile of the PDF we sent to have it made. The plastic is relatively soft, easily cut apart with scissors.

I started printing the first pass of coasters for the Capricon Cafe, which MuseCon is sponsoring. 250 coasters later, I called it a day. Tuesday I did the other 250. The first pass looks like this:

This is one from Monday: Monday I started out with this pale green, and kept adding (evil messy) blue until I finished up with a dark pine green:

 

Tuesday I started with orange, and either orange is stubborn, or I was being restrained when I was adding red, because there isn't much change (these are from the end of the day's run):

Monday and/or Tuesday evening (I forget exactly what we did when) Ron did the backs of some business cards he'd made over the weekend for advertising the cafe:

Tuesday night we set up the text and on Wednesday I did the words on all 500 coasters. I started out with light blue, darkened it up, added red to make burgundy, then added yellow to make light brown, then black to make bronze, although these are the light blue and burgundy:

The coasters are soft and porous enough paper that that we could stack coasters as they were done. Ron came home in the early afternoon, and then we did 250 more coasters, for the MuseCon party at Wiscon. He did the words, then I grabbed stacks and did the logo. Except when we switched places, because my shoulder and back got tired, because my press is a lot bigger and heavier to run. I'd left the bronze on his press, and I loaded up mine with (evil) blue:

Then Ron did some sample business cards. Those are in the slinky-board on the left in this picture. The other 3 slinky-boards are holding about 250 coasters (if you count the ones laid on top):

Why do I keep referring to the blue ink as evil blue?  Because it is. The can got packed upside-down for shipping, but even now that the ink has settled back to the bottom of the can (its really thick), it still gets everywhere. We've wiped the outside of the can off countless times, and you still can't touch it without getting blue on your hands. And it leaps off the press onto you like no other color does. The blue is evil. Pretty, but evil. 

This post is probably long enough. I have another whole string of pictures documenting the printing process, I think those will be a separate post.