Printing and progressing

I have managed to print the first run of the first print for Sydney. This required dampening the paper, inking up the small etching plate and printing 15 sheets. I am also using the etching plate in the book, so there are a few more smaller pages to be inked and printed yet.

Here they are stacked and drying in an old telephone book.

Once they are all dry and good to go, I will print the second run, the letterpress blocks.  Then when that has dried, I will add the red highlights. And then do it all gain three more times so there is a series of four!

With Barry's much appreciated help, I managed to get the covers ready for the Apex Life Member book.
This time around we chose a different binding, one where we could replace pages if needed, without having to re-do the whole book like we did last year (in a strange process the National body like to see the final book to approve it - but oftentimes say something isn't quite right and needs to be changed...tricky).

The front cover underway.

Drilling holes through the great board and the book cloth and the inside lining paper is made smooch easier by using my Japanese screw drill or drill screw, can' quite think what is the best way to describe it. Its a hand tool for punching holes.

You can see that the shaft has swirls cut into it like a drill bit, and this shaft sort of spins/.rotates and disappears up into the handle when you push on it, forcing the cutting apparatus at the front to bore a hole.

That would have to be the most non-technical description of a tool ever.

Primed ready to push down.

And funnily enough I didn't take a shot of what happened! Laugh, but you can see it up in the first hole in the second photo.

And on the way back to the house I came across this perfect droplet...I love how you can see the bare branches of the frangipani in winter reflected in it.