stitch.rip.repeat.

Sunday, September 05, 2010

2011 Calendar sneak peek

Even though it's just the first of September, Carrie and I have been working feverishly on our 2011 Calendars. See, you have to be ahead of the game with the calendars in order to get the publicity you want. Really, if we had wanted to try to get in some magazines, we probably should have designed and printed them in May (and then gone to the National Stationery Show to hawk them).

As it is, we feel extremely productive and ahead of the game this year. Last year's calendar was a labor of love and frustration. We began printing it on Labor Day weekend, and continued printing it until almost November to get just 300 copies done. This was long before Roy and Charlie (our 2,000lb. hot hunks of iron). Now that we have modern (circa 1950) technology on our side, our 4 designs for 2011 only (haha) took about 4 days to print.

Here are the step-outs from the flowers calendar. We are learning from past mistakes when trying to line things up, but these were a challenge!

So this year we couldn't come up with any designs that we thought would be great in a 12 month calendar, and we decided to draw 4 full-page poster style calendars instead. The paper measures 11x14, and this is really the limit for how large we can print on our presses. It's a great size, though, as it's still small enough to hang with just a clip, and it's a readily available frame size.

This is my boats calendar. Jason helped out when I could think of no more boats to draw.

I'm especially pleased with my farm design. That pantone color book we bought was well worth the money. As we say, "It's gonna revolutionize our business".

Due to human error on my part and rushing to get the plates turned into the platemaker, Carrie has one more calendar that is 80% finished.

We're gonna finish it today and then do an official photo shoot. After all that, we hope to put them up in the shop.

All of this not a moment too soon. I have orders from my doctor to take it easy, and standing on concrete to print for hours is not exactly what she had in mind. So I'm taking a big camp chair with a foot rest and Carrie will be doing the heavy lifting. And Jason is going to get training. The doctor says I can be there while the printing is going on, just not actually doing it. This is so sad for me, but it's best for the baby, so I will have to deal with it! Luckily, we have most of what we need for the holiday season all wrapped up.