Papillon Press is a letterpress and illustration studio located in Westport, Ontario, Canada that specializes in illustrated greeting cards and paper goods. Our greeting cards, note cards, gift tags, thank you cards, stickers, etc. all feature our hand-drawn illustrations and are printed by hand on our 60 year-old letterpress.
We’re very excited this year to be able to participate in 3 fantastic holiday craft fairs in three different cities, plus an open studio. Here is a list of our upcoming events:
Fat Goose When: Sunday, November 23rd – 10 to 4 Where: Grant Hall, Queen’s University, 35 University Ave – Kingston, ON Admission: $2 http://vincent-perez-o2v8.squarespace.com/
Idle Hands When: Sunday, November 23rd – 10 to 5 Where: St. Anthony’s Banquet Hall, St. Anthony Street- Ottawa ON Admission: $3 Facebook event
Papillon Press Open Studio When: Sunday, December 7th – 10 to 4 Where: 26 Spring Street – Westport, ON Admission: FREE
City of Craft When: December 12 – 6pm to 10pm December 13 – 11am to 6pm December 14 – 11am to 5pm Where: The Theatre Centre, 1115 Queen Street West – Toronto ON Admission: $2 http://cityofcraft.com
This year marked our third consecutive year exhibiting at the National Stationery Show. We made a few changes to the booth this year, expanding to a 10×10′ booth and completely revamping the look. We painted the walls white for a fresher look, the trim purple then blew up some of our drawings and painted them on the walls. Yes, you heard right: we painted them ourselves. It was a very fun process to paint the murals, a process we will most likely repeat for future shows.
The show went very well for us and we were picked up by lots of new stores in territories that are new to us.
This past weekend here in Canada was our Thanksgiving weekend and also the weekend we hosted our open studio, in conjunction with the Westport studio tour. It was a big hit! Lots and lots of people came through and viewed our letterpress demonstrations (giving me the chance to print actual orders but in front of people), bought some product and enjoyed our cake pops.
A few interesting things learned this weekend:
1. Apparently some public schools in the area used to have Heidelberg letterpresses in school classrooms, which students would run by attaching a belt to a stationary bicycle (!!!). The Heidelbergs were replaced by Vandercooks, however, because they were considered to have less moving parts for kids to get caught in. My, how things have changed.
2. Soooo many people have fathers, grandfathers and great-grandfathers who were printers. One lady told me her great-grandfather was a typesetter in Germany and died of lead-poisoning because of dealing with type his whole life (!!!).
3. Many people were very concerned for the safety of my fingers when they were watching me feed the paper into press. I then proceeded to show them all the “safety” mechanism, which lifts my arm off the platen and there were many collective sighs of relief.
4. Our Michael Jordan cardboard cut-out on the stairs really worked to prevent people from going up the steps.
Open studio attendees admiring our productDemonstrating on the press
The cake pops were devoured: "yes, it's cake on a stick, I swear!"People were able to pull their own print on our Kelsey 5x7.Happy baby with letterpress card
Happy baby with letterpress card
Open studio attendees admiring our product
Demonstrating on the press
People were able to pull their own print on our Kelsey 5×7.
The cake pops were devoured: “yes, it’s cake on a stick, I swear!”
We’re throwing open our doors on Thanksgiving weekend to show off our new digs in Westport. We’ll be running letterpress demos so you can learn about all the work that goes behind one of our greeting cards and try your hand at printing on one of our letterpresses. We’ll also be serving tasty treats to keep you going…(hint: cake on a stick).
When: Saturday, October 12, 2013 – 10 to 5 Where: 26 Spring Street, Westport, ON K0G 1X0 RSVP on Facebook
There will be 8 other open studios in Westport featuring 30+ artists during the weekend, so why not make a day of it? Check out www.westportstudiotours.ca for more info (note: we did not design this website!)
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