Our Take Note memo pad set is now available for purchase in the S&W Shop. As a promotion, the sets will be $2.00 off until Thursday, April 5. Thanks to Felt & Wire for featuring Take Note in their March Finds Collection and weekly Finds email!

February is almost here and we’ve been putting the cast iron guillotine paper cutter to work for this month’s S&W product. Here’s a project-in-progress shot.

Perfect for your favorite typophile, our new Love Letters valentine postcard sets are available for purchase in the Felt & Wire Shop. We paired a wood heart with 12 point News Gothic from our type collection to create these candy heart inspired greetings. More images of the project can be seen in the shop.

It’s a new year and we’ve got lots of new projects slated for 2012. Check back often for sneak peeks of projects in progress, giveaways, and new products for sale. You can also find us (and like us) on Facebook: www.facebook.com/smartandwiley. Go 2012!

Stop by the Craft Sabbath Holiday Boutique this Sunday from 1–5pm at Salt Lake City Library for all your local, handmade gift shopping. Smart & Wiley will have lots of letterpress prints, cards, notebooks, and holiday goodies for sale. Hope to see you there!

During the first weekend of November we attended the 2011 Wayzgoose event at the Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum in Two Rivers, Wisconsin and spent time in Chicago before and after the event. Our trip was filled with sights, sounds, and discussion of historic and contemporary letterpress printing. Here are some Chicago highlights:

• Quality time with our good friend and host Andy Rogers of Joslin Lake Design.
• Visit to Lillstreet Art Center. Saw Celene Aubry in action teaching letterpress and met master printer Tom Lucas.

• Visit with Jen Farrell at her fabulous Starshaped Press letterpress studio.
• Lunch with Jen Mayer and Chris Jennings (of kitemath design) to hear about their exciting projects and ventures.
• Stop at Columbia College’s Center for Book and Paper Arts to see the print studio and check out the Wood Type Evolved show.

• David’s lecture and demo at Northeastern Illinois University for the design students of our talented Indiana University colleague Vida Sačić (and dinner/drinks with Vida and her husband John afterwards).
• And of course, Chicago food.

Stay tuned for Part II with photos from the Hamilton Wood Type Museum!

>>Post Update: See David’s site, Letterpress Daily, for his posts on the Wood Type Museum part of our trip.

This is an image of collaborative/custom work we did for Susana Gay of Threehaus, a branding and design studio in Florida. Susana gave the collaborative experience a very nice write-up on her blog. (Photo by Susana Gay)

Smart & Wiley was asked to contribute a piece to the Uppercase Magazine Issue 8 Letterpress Sampler. Each copy of the magazine has one letterpress printed sample from a contributing printer (48 participated). You can see the entire collection of samples here.

The image above shows type-setting for the third print run with gold text.

I love how this blue turned out.

This shows the lock-up for the final press run.

Here’s a detail of the final announcement print.