the Story: Printmaker and a Glass Artist Exchange

The LeJa Method - as Jan and I like to call it - has been created out of months of experimenting and brainstorming.

An exchange of ideas, a printmaker and a glass artist, coming together to bring traditional block printing methods to results in art glass.
Jan has carved hundreds of linoleum blocks with her original images over the years - we now sell simple glass plates showcasing her prints in different colors. The image is sealed within the glass and appears clear and crisp, little imperfections and unique qualities that speak true to hand printed imagery.
We sell a tutorial on Etsy.com that offers an inexpensive resource for the printing techniques and tips and tricks for different color results.
It started with my desire to get images into my fused glass art. Printing on the glass in my mobiles offer a new potential to tell a story, adding content and texture to my work... I am so process oriented though... so in the end it became more about the process and we really locked down on a simple and successful method of printing in glass.
I have blogged occasionally about the process and the antics - and this post is intended to be a reference - a table of contents of sorts

• Images Printed on Glass - inspiration
• Images on Glass Experiment - the fun begins
  
• Images on Glass II - early experiments
  
• Images on Glass III - and more early results
• Images on Glass IV - experimentis with copper powders
  

we play with different ink types, glass powders, glass frits, other powders and whatnot until we achieved the desired result: a clear image in a variety of colors!

I Took My First Prints...

My yoga block carvings got their first print pulled today - big Thanks to Jan for allowing me to use her press and helping me out! What fun! Now I know what needs what on these blocks... I think I may work on them later tonight. They look great and they are already good enough that I could print into glass mobiles with them... but I'd like to fine them for printing cards and whatnot...

Geeking Out With Type

I think there is an inner font geek inside my brain somewhere.There is something about looking thru drawers of type. Letterpress equipment is fun stuff to hang around, and there is something about the type in particular that is so delicious to me.
All the little metal pieces in their little compartments in drawers, little bits of ink staining the occasional well loved letter...I had my camera with me the other day while visiting Jan in her studio. She has a letterpress and many drawers of different type.
and then there is the bag of random type that is waiting on the to-do list to be put away in their drawers, Jan had a name for this bag of randomness... I don't remember it though. Visually this bag is really appealing to me, how the camera picks up on the occasional letter and the pieces that are still inked... it looks like rubble sort of metal alphabet soup :)

By the way, we have played around with using lettering in our glass process a few times, like on this little plate pictured above.

Printer Test Page

After discussing home printers with my Dad, he sent me this great link to a color print test page - its a PDF - I fgured it'd be a one page print kinda thing. Its 20 pages long!!! And pretty intense. I love it! So I had to share :)

http://www.fho-emden.de/~hoffmann/a3gencolorhigh.pdf

I did not print all 20 pages, but I printed the graph shown above and the new Canon performed spectacularly! Its a very geeky printer test, really seems to break down the ins and outs of a printer.

A Good Simple (and Cheap!) Home Printer for the Craftyperson

Holy moly - I've just plugged in my new printer, and printed out a few things - and WOW. I'm impressed - this is a good printer.

Recently, x-mas gift from Amazon, I ordered a Canon PIXMA MP620 for a steal ($109 - on sale right now) ... I simply need a new printer, my inkjet is from the '90s and its still going strong (slow slow death of the good ol' printer)

This is what I know I like in a simple home printer:

• cheap ink

• good quality image prints

• quick cheap B/W prints

• cheap efficient ink

I know, I said cheap ink twice. Its important. The last thing we all need is a printer that costs $70 to replace the ink.

This Canon had all that and its wireless and its a copier/scanner as well, and it was inexpensive to boot. So I bought it, there were many many good reviews speaking about the ease of setup.

I plugged it in and printed out a few pictures. Stunning. Biggest perk: this printer prints to the edge of the page.

Then I played around with its functions to test it out and printed some "Template" pages it had. For instance, a piece of lined notepaper, or music paper, or a piece of graph paper (it even printed in that funny blue like real graph paper) - I don't know why I am so impressed by a dumb feature like this - but I am! Did I mention it prints to the edge of the page!

Okay, so I haven't gotten it hooked up wireless yet. Supposedly that is very easy. But honestly, it took me a while to clean up and prep for the new printer in its new area... and I got the impression from the manual that you had to hook it up wired first to get it all recognized to go wireless... or that's what I'm hoping :) This computer is pretty smart (vista), so I am sure once I figure out how to plug in an IP address to the printer I will be able to print wirelessly.

Okay - so there's my super positive review so far. I will certainly pipe up about it if the printer turns out to be a lemon.

I've never had a printer that printed to the edge before, there was always that 1/4" margin that the printer used to feed the paper.