New Font/New Look

One of the things we want for letterpress printing is a "Boxcar Base", which is a slab of machine aluminum, on which you mount photopolymer (fairly thin plastic) printing plates to bring them to the right height for presses designed for metal type. Its called a "Boxcar" base because its made/sold by Boxcar Press. The minimum order of photopolymer plate is 50 square inches, so Ron has been working on packing images that we want plates of to get our first plate run made.

One of the things we definitely wanted was an Otter Necessities logo, with the O-Otter for the O. In the past I've used Papyrus font for the words, which is a font that gets a lot of scorn. Last year I used this font, which is I like (which is good, since its one I bought), but the knockout inside the letters could be iffy to print letterpress, especially at small sizes:

 
As mentioned elsewhere about letterpress, we bought a font of Parsons in metal type. Its Art Deco, but not too over the top. A digital revival of Parsons is Parsnip NF, which includes the cool swashy capitals and italic text. Which looks like this for the basic font:

(the gray background is an artifact of generating sample text from the Linotype website) 

So, when Ron discovered that Papyrus wasn't installed on his laptop, I decided to switch to Parsons/Parsnip, and bought Parsnip. And now we're blaming MS for not installing the font in any rational way so that you can get to the cool swashy alternate capital Ns. AAARGH!

Anyway, we're also planning on having photopolymer plates made of "Letterpress printing by Otter Necessities" and our URL. Because I am feeeelthy merchant scum, yes I am. 

Ron's currently got a bunch of Christmas gift tags half-done. They fold up to about a 2"x2" square, with a picture on the outside and "To:" and "From:" on the inside. IIRC he's done 3 or 4 Santas in red ink, and a Christmas tree in green, and the insides will all be green. Now we just need a hole punch to put holes in the corners. 

Definitely working on taking orders for Victorian/Steampunk calling cards for Military History Fest. It would be cool to bring Ron's little press, but the problem is the solvents used for cleanup. Even Goo Gone/citrus oil has a certain fragrance to it. Hmm . . . Goo Gone does make "paint clean-up wipes" that could be useful. We shall see what happens.