printing onesies with vintage wooden type

I'm 99% sure this will stay secret from the intended recipient here, but just in case, if you're related to me and expecting a baby, this is your first and only spoiler alert.



Is she gone? Great! Then here's the low-down.

I have a collection of vintage and antique wooden type blocks that I pull out for letterpress projects now and again. I wanted to print some onesies for a new family member, so I pulled out a box of type . . .




and printed these up, with some hand-painted accents.







Of course, this one is all hand-painted.




A fun afternoon project you can pull off during naptime!


(p.s. you can make these photos bigger by clicking on them . . . but you probably knew that!)



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new coupon code for night garden etsy shops!

I'll be adding a ton of new stuff to my Etsy shops over the next several weeks; to thank you for your continued support of my endeavors (and my little boy's eventual college education), please use the coupon code FRSHIP11 for free domestic U.S. shipping now through December 25, 2011.

This code will work at all three of my Etsy shops:

Night Garden Design

Night Garden Vintage

and

Night Garden Supplies


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name — dropping

I was reminded of this story today when a friend asked for a Chuck Palahniuk book recommendation. It's kinda funny.

Back when I ran a bookstore here locally, I went to the PNBA fall book show one year. Chuck Palahniuk was the keynote speaker at the luncheon one day, and arrived wearing a tuxedo with tails in a room of casually dressed booksellers.

The jacket of the tuxedo was covered (sleeves, back, lapels, under the arms, everywhere) with vintage faux-jeweled brooches.

He delivered his speech without mentioning it; likable, quirky, if maybe a bit full of himself. At the end, he says something like, "And I've noticed you all staring at my jacket all this time. Most of these are worth only a few dollars, but one is very valuable. I'd like everyone to come up and pluck a brooch off of my jacket, and take it home with you."

Picture: a swarm of ladies + a few men surrounding Chuck Palahniuk, who's standing Christ-posed (to allow access to the underarm pins?) while they examine and start pulling at his clothes.

I hung back until the crowd thinned (it was a little too "mall-on-Christmas-Eve" for me), and he noticed a few of us brooch-less and flapped us forward with his hand. He pointed out a green one to me (right sleeve) and I thanked him and took it back to my chair. Then he thanked us, and we applauded, and he went back to his seat.

I still wonder what was up with that, whether he was just trying to give us a good show, or liked the idea of a roomful of otherwise sedate people pulling at his clothes, or wanted another good story to tell at parties. The latter of which is what I'd have, if I ever went to the sort of parties where Chuck Palahniuk is brought up in conversation (I don't).

My brooch was not the super-valuable one, but I did have it pinned to my messenger bag for awhile, until the clasp broke, and it fell off, and presumably, someone else found it and carried it home. Which might be a good story, too.