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November Open Studio & Art Market!
November Art Market, 12-6, Saturday the 20th!
Open for drop-ins & retail shopping!
Annual online shop clean-up!
We are still printing!

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daymoonpress

Family-owned letterpress print shop est. 1976. Founded by Maura Shapley, continued by Tess. Shop online on Etsy as DayMoonPress.

had a GREAT time this weekend delivering this broa

had a GREAT time this weekend delivering this broadside to the 2023 edition of #wordsofcourage — so nice to talk about this project & work processes with a community of printers, and see the excellent printing everyone does with the poetry. every year with WoC @pipletterpress produces a portfolio of letterpress broadsides, poetry by pediatric patients and designs done by local printers—more info at ✨ wordsofcourage.org ✨ including scans from previous years' portfolios, and in a few weeks the whole set from this year will be up there!

i had immediate design Thoughts when i read this poem—the secret world of strange creatures & powers!! 1930s illustrated fairy tales; hefty border and one (1) spot color; Beardsley's "Le Morte D'Arthur," John Austen's "Hamlet"—very happy to have gotten a chance to work with it at poetry distribution. I just wanted to make their story as cool and dramatic as it could be, like an excerpt of a larger work, part of an Artifact.

title set in Devinne, body set in Goudy; both of those cases are pretty worn but that's not necessarily bad in this instance and also i needed a pretty full case to get the body done in one go. carving was a chunk of time but a kind that i like! i left the spellcaster's clothes for last because i knew that would be the most fun part :))

#pipletterpress #letterpress #letterpressprinting #linocut #linoleumblock #handsettype #leadtype

Wedding set in Bernhard Tango & Caslon on Hahnemü

Wedding set in Bernhard Tango & Caslon on Hahnemühle Copperplate 🌿🫐

Ok those aren’t huckleberries BUT—loved the enforced irregularity in the berries. The original drawing provided was a very sweet, rough-edged watercolor style.

#letterpress #letterpressprinting #handsettype #leadtype

It’s carving tiiiiime 🎉🎉 Now if you have

It’s carving tiiiiime 🎉🎉

Now if you have an inkling of when this is due you may be thinking, Tess. Are you a little behind schedule. But I assure you all that in any given week I have multiple remote Bad Movie Dates with friends and they are all accustomed to having less than 100% of my attention and neither of my eyes.

#wordsofcourage #printmaking #linocut #letterpressprinting #letterpress

Greco Adornado was the way to go on this one but i

Greco Adornado was the way to go on this one but it needed some kind of large, embellished cap to take up enough space on the sheet—the large canvas is so that all the guests could sign on their attendance. Hopefully I’ve retained respect to the face with this block! & Melior for the rest. I looked for a serif more contemporaneous but something about the round & square & friendly of Melior kept swaying me.

#letterpress #letterpressprinting #printmaking #handsettype #linocut

Had a great time helping put this together in a sm

Had a great time helping put this together in a small two-person workshop the other day! An anniversary activity & keepsake in one. 3 hours was kind of pushing it to get it all done when we were having fun 😆 but I save a lot of inks just in case I find a use for them and here!! A lovely mango yellow-orange was nearly ready to go right out of the pot.

Set in Melior.

#handsettype #leadtype #metaltype #letterpress #letterpressprinting

Getting ready for @tacomawayzgoose tomorrow!! ✨4

Getting ready for @tacomawayzgoose tomorrow!! ✨4/15 ✨ 11-4 ✨I said self you’re going to make NEW STUFF just for this and self dang did it almost on time and everything. Come say hiiii 👋👋👋

#tacomawayzgoose #printmaking #letterpressprinting #letterpress #wayzgoose

Anniversary present set in Reporter & with an old

Anniversary present set in Reporter & with an old copper plated cut! The 9 is in fact a 6 turned upside down—there are subtle but definite differences in the brush strokes of the two figures, so it’s gotta be truly mirrored 🔃✨

#letterpress #letterpressprinting #handsettype #leadtype #metaltype

Beautiful poetry from @erstwhilde to work with her

Beautiful poetry from @erstwhilde to work with here!! An afternoon with poetry & type & good math, the dream job. Handset in Imprimatur—always happy to get to use its graceful ft ligature.

Signed prints available through @go__slow__art__club to members on 3/16 & general access on 3/17!

#poetrybroadside #livingpoetry #letterpressprinting #letterpress #handsettype

Bindery prep weeeeeeek #bookbinding #handmadebook

Bindery prep weeeeeeek

#bookbinding #handmadebook #handbound

“affection, an attribute which is inseparable fr

“affection, an attribute which is inseparable from its object; as, love, fear, and hope are affections of the mind.”

Happ Valemtime’s times 🤍🧡💛!! Text adapted from the honking big 1942 edition of Webster’s unabridged dictionary that’s been kicking around the house my whole life. We had, like, normal sized ones too. But if you could use the monstrosity WHY wouldn’t you. I have done my best adapting around less relevant definitions, extraneous examples, and deeply weird (and also faintly printed) punctuation for something generally true to text but better flowing. I quite like the shape that’s come of it.

For the stoat skull, I saw a nature thing about them a bit ago and it’s been bouncing around my brain ever since. They’ve got one of the strongest bites of any mammal in proportion to their size. I will keep chipping away at what delights me so much about the grip & not let go of them, and their well-engineered bones.

#letterpress #letterpressprinting #handsettype #metaltype #leadtype #linoleumblock #linoleumprint #happyvalentinesday

Doing lots of stuff in the treadle this week since

Doing lots of stuff in the treadle this week since the big press’ rollers are still away being redone—which is fine! I’m swapping through enough colors with all the underprinters and things that the quicker wash up is nice. I do gotta stretch out the knees after though so lunges up the hill on Stevens it is.

#lettepress #letterpressprinting #linoleumblock #linoleumprint #printmaking

(Catching up on a bunch of recordings from last su

(Catching up on a bunch of recordings from last summer that I hadn’t processed yet—cleaning my hard drive of hours of carving footage 😅)

I know each of these animals personally and I could never choose favorites of COURSE but……..I will say……..I finished the sketch of Sazi, up there in the top right corner with her head like she would have it off the edge of her cat tower, and I thought alas, I have peaked & will never do better than those big dumb eyes and floppy cat paws. I sent it to the customer and said hey, listen, it’s just a rough sketch, I can totally work on her face to make her look less………dim, and they said NO make her eyes rounder, she looks too intelligent already. So. Vacant as the void it is.

#letterpress #letterpressprinting #printmaking #reliefprint #linoleumprint #linoleumblockprint

Reprinted this beautiful block from @klepsydra.art

Reprinted this beautiful block from @klepsydra.art this week! We are approaching Court-Mandated Affection Day and I am getting prepared 🖤💛 Up-keeping the favorites, working on a new thing that I’m pretty excited about. As always: most of our Valentines-themed arts have a few thorns in them :]

#letterpress #letterpressprinting #linoleumprint #linoleumblockprint #printmaking

Elected for a slower paced feed on these cards for

Elected for a slower paced feed on these cards for @fiddlehead.gardener ! Printing to size with bleed, had to check all the backs as I went for set-off. I enjoy planning for efficiency, but that still means to me the best version, done cleanly. Anyway! it feels good to slow down for a bit and just put trust in your hands to do what they know how to do.

#letterpress #letterpressprinting

Okay this one’s going up but in fact I am still

Okay this one’s going up but in fact I am still slowly chipping away at inking the full edition 😆 I finished, like, 3 copies just in time to put all the footage together in the presentation for the Book Arts Guild, and then I diverted completely to finish that presentation, and then wrap up other work stuff through the end of the year.

Anyway! The presentation is up on the Book Arts Guild YouTube page now along with all their other recorded presentations, and that presentation has some more specific technical & design process information. Short version is I’ve named it after Wells & France, costume designers for Purple Rain, for all those completely rad & shiny matching pants & jackets, for the great shoulders & the cool hair, for the black void & dry ice & optical trickery of the stage ✨

it’s up on Etsy along with the other fabric-prints! 🤞 I get all the copies done before I gotta restock pens, the hair really does a number on em 😔

#letterpress #letterpressprinting #handsettype #leadtype #metaltype #metaltypemonday #printmaking

This is not news to anybody but Awagami papers are

This is not news to anybody but Awagami papers are a delight to print on?? I’ve never used any before, they’re just not appropriate for most of the work I do, and I didn’t even plan to use it with the customer originally—but this is why I like to get paper in person. Wander around, touch some fibers. Bought some on a whim and put it on the press to see what they thought and it’s so clean & still dense in the darks. Suffice to say we both like it better than the original plan.

One-color redraw from a family photo —> plate. Drawing is not like riding a bicycle and the things I do daily are more in type & chase so I love every chance to stay a bit better in practice. :)

#letterpress #letterpressprinting #printmaking #reliefprint

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206-721-0064

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3320 Beacon Avenue South
Seattle, WA 98144

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