Hello All! My name is Rose and I am Dolce Press’s new intern. I am going to be posting about twice a week so you can look forward to plenty of new updates. Tell me you are not excited to see more exquisite work and explore more about the fascinating process of letterpress.

To tell you a little about myself, I am finishing up a Studio Arts BFA degree at SUNY Oswego. I love all kinds of art but have always been particularly attracted to printmaking. I love all sorts of mediums and styles, and papers and books of all kinds. I like the musty smell of used bookstores; I gaze slack jawed and not quite drooling in my local art supply store. But what attracts me to printmaking particularly is a combination of aesthetics, its mix of old fashioned craftsmanship and state of the art technology, and the deeply satisfying gift of being both hand-crafted and replicable. I love the feel of the good heavy paper and the bite of the inked plate as it comes off the sheet.

In my studies, I have worked with a lot of different printmaking techniques but not letterpress. Despite quite a few contemporary printers, including Dolce Press, making some really outstanding work both commercially and artwise, a lot of art departments have lost the ability to teach the method. So I would like to share with you my journey in learning all about letterpress and the beautiful things it does on paper.

Ta Ta For Now, Rose

There’s a world of difference between letterpress and embossing! People often interchange these terms, but in fact they’re complete opposites. We’re always blogging about our letterpress projects, but Dolce Press is about more than just pressing images into paper. We also can press images out of the paper, commonly referred to as embossing. Take a look at these pictures of one of our embossed pieces. Just like letterpress, embossing is another way to add dimension to a flat piece. More of our embossed work is sure to come, so stay tuned!

Our Valentine’s Day 2009 letterpress giveaway had some great engagement stories and when it came down to selecting a winner we had a hard time choosing. We picked high school sweethearts, Karlee & Benjamin, who had a great engagement story. We printed their Save the Date cards this weekend and they turned out great … at least we think they did!

The cards are printed on our 100% cotton paper (110#) using our vegetable oil based inks. We custom mixed the chartreuse and chocolate brown ink and after a little work we had these great Save the Date cards.  The scalloped circles look great pressed into the paper and we paired the Save the Date with a matching square chartreuse envelope to add a pop of color. We’re very happy to have this design and several other new invitation sets added to our wedding portfolio.

We have always made it our first priority to take care of our clients and work hard to make sure their invitations turn out even better than they imagined. So, we were happy to receive an email a few weeks ago from the Editors at Style Me Pretty inviting us to be featured in their Little Black Book. Being hand picked by Abby and her staff means a lot to us because it validates all of the hard work we’ve done up to now.

We’ve been so busy printing that it wasn’t untill this week that we were able to reply and let them know how excited we were to be chosen. If you’re in the wedding business and haven’t heard about the the Little Black Book then you’ve been living under a rock for the past few years. The book features the best vendors in the industry for invitations as well as photography, event planning, and more! You’ll find our listing in the Hamptons section under invitations, check it out and let us know what you think.

The Best Wedding Invitations in the Hamptons

To everyone visiting from Style Me Pretty: Welcome and we look forward to working with you, if you have any questions don’t hesitate to ask (contact us)

We’d like to introduce the first card of many to come in Dolce Press’ new greeting card line. This A2 (4.5″ x 5.25″) sized folded card is printed on 110# 100% cotton paper in two colors (midnight blue and silver) and reads: “you’re out of this world”. The card comes with a matching navy blue A2 envelope and highlights a whimsical silver spaceship taking off – you might even say that the spaceship is symbolic of our greeting card line taking off!

Here are two more pictures of the design close up:

We will be debuting many more cards, stationery sets, and invitations so stay tuned for more posts and pictures coming soon. In the mean time if you have any questions about our greeting cards or a custom design we are always available to answer your questions (contact us).

This is the first post of the Dolce Press blog which we setup to keep everyone up to date with what were up to. We are new to letterpressing especially when you consider that the machines we use have been around since the late 1800′s.

Stick around for more posts about the new goodies were baking up in our little upstate NY shop.

Thanks,
Alexandra Daley