The Good Ones

I spent most of yesterday evening trying to nail down the best patterns and measurements for my ampersand stamp. I absolutely love how some of the print designs transform this stamp from something average to something abstract and almost lyrical, but getting the prints to look perfect has been a serious challenge.

Printing multiple images on a single card really ups the ante in terms of making mistakes. I rarely curse, but I transformed into a complete truck driver last night when I started destroying nearly perfect cards because of a little smudge or finger print. The printing session was a good reminder of why I chose to focus on single print cards in the beginning.

Despite many errors and destroyed cardstock, I did manage to produce a sequence of four ampersand patterns on my white cardstock and a sequence of three on my brown cards. I'm still perfecting the exact placement on some of the patterns. The two-print inverted ampersand pattern (second from the left) caused me a ridiculous amount of trouble and I still don't think I have it perfect. I do love the other angled two-print pattern thought, and I found it a lot easier to measure and stamp.

My next goal is to get these sets and a few of the other individual ampersand print cards up on my etsy shop so that I can refresh my placement in the searches and hopefully get a few more eyes on my work. Then, it's back to 8 x 10 print experiments and a few other special side projects that require some much needed attention.

Please let me know if you have any thoughts on the ampersand line. Cool, funky note cards or bizarre, not-so-awesome text prints? Brutally honest opinions welcome.

Sometimes I find it hard to keep perspective when I'm printing out polished cards because each little mark or slightly off-centre image feels like a big failure. I have to keep reminding myself that part of the intended charm of the prints is that they're not always perfect, straight-from-the-store type products. On the other hand, I don't want to put anything up for sale that is even slightly less that the best representation of what I can do.