The Indie Market Artisan Craft Show took place on Artisan Alley, Deland Florida, this past Sunday, June 2. I have to thank Courtney, of Newfangled Market, for both sponsoring this show, and for the last minute adjustment she worked out which allowed us to set up our 'booth' under the shelter of the parking garage. Rain was in the forecast, not a good thing for paper goods! Despite the rain, we had a great turn-out!
The primary goal of Paper Wren Press, aside from selling our products, was to introduce ourselves to the local community. Our table featured A2 stationery cards designed by Anna Coleman, who attended the show with us, showing her original art as well as her prints. We also featured our French Empire Post Cards, and our portfolio, showing our custom work over the past few years. We also had a guest book ready for visitors.
We had some of our coasters available, too. In the photo above, you can see a little of the cross section of product offerings we featured during the show. We also had a video of the Letterpress in operation, all of which can be found on my YouTube channel "wd4nka". One of the video demonstrators, Alton Shady, came to visit with us along with his sweet wife Rebekah, from the Tampa / New Port Richey area, along with Carl Nudi and Joshua, from the Tampa Book Arts Studio, University of Tampa (TBAS), and Jan, from West Palm. (Sorry, Josh, I forgot your last name! Blame it on the hospital visit - or maybe I'm just getting old... :)
The photos above and below show the artwork of Anna Coleman, which follow an animorphistic theme: Dogs, along with common woodland creatures, each wearing something which brings out a human character to their own nature. My favourite is the hedgehog, which I think I can persuade Anna to sketch out for the next run of greeting cards.
Part of my job as Printer and co-owner, is not only to introduce Paper Wren Press, Artisan Letterpress - to the community, but also to educate the community as to what Letterpress is all about. Central Florida is a rather "Johnny Come Lately" to the Letterpress scene, most folks really don't know what Letterpress is all about. In fact, we had one person refuse to believe our greeting cards were really Letterpress printed at all, because they do not have a deep deboss. We showed how Letterpress is not defined by deep impression alone, but rather, by crispness of fine detail and excellent design. Deboss is only one characteristic of raised surface printing. Whether or not he believed us is another story . . . .(sigh).
All in all, we sold over twenty units, Anna sold a lot of her paintings, and received commisions to do custom animorphistic "portraits" of pets of some who visited our table. The greeting cards seemed to be popular, selling a lot of eight-packs and singles, and as well, we had a lot of folks asking questions about custom Wedding stationery. We'll see what the up-coming months will bring. Oh, and also, we have one QSL card commission! Thanks, Nick!
I will be adding more photos of our cards on an upcoming post. Meanwhile, I have posted, at this point, our French Correspondence Cards on our "G.Johanson Letterpress" Etsy shop site. I will be adding our other show offereings as well.
That's all for now. Stay tuned!
-gary
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