Printing for peace

 Barry and I were lucky enough to have time on the weekend to print our peace weather grams for 2026. Even though International Day of Peace is not until 21 September, we head back to Scotland in the relatively near future and knew we needed to print them here before we go.

It was a great test of our new printing space with the two of us working alongside each other setting up; and then a team effort to print and set them to dry. 

I chose the simplest of phrases - Peace is beautiful.  As I went about it, I thought maybe it could begin a new series of Peace is ... but who knows?

I started with Mistral 72 point, but boy oh boy the word beautiful looked like it would go right to the edge; and it did plus more. So I thought I had better find another way.

There always plenty of problems to solve.

I left the word peace as 72pt, and then moved the rest of the words to 48pt Mistral, and think that looked better. I wanted peace to catch people's attention and then have quite a breathing space before is beautiful. I really like the handwriting stye of this, and the way it looks as if I could have scribbled it myself.

As ever, printmaking leaves you with such lovely images - the starkness of the black and white here and the ink and the tools.

We printed up a storm and our two sets of weather grams are quietly drying (with the aid of a dehumidifier given the rain and the mist we are experiencing).

Given we have had so much weather, it was no real shock to find that several of our weathergrams form years past had fallen from our peace magnolia tree (partly we think because we also recently had it pruned and everything was just a tad more exposed). So here are some fragments and some remnants resting on our chair by the front door.

And some other cheery wee ceramic stars that keep the wishes for peace alive...