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A Division of UnderConsideration

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2009
–
2017

To create a handmade wrapper that held together the invitation, reply and direction cards and the envelopes for his brother-in-law’s wedding, David Senior decided to forego both the computer and a custom stamp and instead opted for carving out his own set of linoleum stamps. While the rest of the materials were handled by a print shop, David took matters into his own hands with the wrapper, reinforcing the attitude and hobbies of the couple: the outdoors, camping, rock climbing and otherwise any kind of activity that got their hands dirty. David sure got his own share:

My process was truly trial and error for this, just sort of winged it as I went along. I had never done linoleum carving before, I may have done one project in 7th or 8th grade art class, but really can’t remember if I did or not. I printed off the names, ampersand, and heart and then traced each of them onto another sheet of paper with a pencil, then transferred that to the stamps for a guide to cut with. Then just cut along the lines. I know you can purchase a stamp for pretty cheap, but I was set on getting the handmade quality for this, with the small imperfections that come along with that.

Once the stamps were done, I started to print with the water based inks that came with a set purchased for this project. I did a few test runs of the heart, and after letting it dry, realized that it wouldn’t work. The ink smeared to the touch even after drying for a few days. I read about oil based inks and bought some. These worked exactly like I envisioned, but they took forever to dry completely. Since the ampersand overlapped the names, the names needed to be stamped first, and it needed to dry before overlapping the eggplant color. After about 2 to 3 days drying time, which caused me to lose all my basement space as a makeshift drying rack, I was finally able to start on the second color. The hearts were stamped first, and then the ampersand was last. Each inking would yield 2 or 3 stamps before needing to be re-inked. A loose guide was set up to position the names because I wanted only a little bit of the left side of the names to be over the fold. It was basically just a piece of paper, the same length as the wrapper, taped to the work surface that had pencil marks where the fold was going to be. Lined up the wrapper to the guide paper, and then stamped a little to the left of the pencil mark, and centered top to bottom. The ampersand was small enough to see exactly where it was going, and the heart was basically dead center to that panel, so I didn’t bother with making guides for them.

I really like that all the wrappers are unique, depending on David’s aim and the ink density, and they certainly add a woodsy flair that would have been really hard to convey solely through typesetting. Plus, if any future clients of David need a heart or are named Evan and Arnie, he is all set.

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Johanna’s Birthday Invitation

Arnie & Evan Wedding Invitation

Production Method

Design

David Senior

Printing

David Senior (outer wrapper only)