We had to sit on this print for a while before exposing to the world, as it was for a show at Gallery 1988 – THE ROAD TO SHERMER a tribute to John Hughes – but man were we brimming with anxiousness to show everyone this rad design from the always amazing Derek Deal.

The entire sauce team are giant John Hughes fans, so it just tickled us something crazy to print this poster… Now that the show is open we’re proud to be able to share it with you… Love JH? Get you one here while they last.

So our good friends at BFG, SCAD & French Paper Co. have invited us to what promises to be an exciting new event for the south east… Band Wagon. Running in conjunction with the Savannah Record Fair, Band Wagon is going to run April 15-17. This is the first year of the event and it promises to be an exciting annual funfest centered around flat stock printing.

We’ve signed on to design a saucey pull your own poster print as well as give a little ol’ lecture of sorts. There will be workshops and talks centered around printing and designing for flat stock by some amazing printers and designers.

We’re super stoked on setting up shop and letting you pick out a French Paper stock and ink color for you to print your own poster! We bring the design and equipment, you bring your hands to pull the print… Now I can’t promise you anything on the letterpress front, but rumor has it that we may be letting you print your own 11×17 letterpress poster at our booth as well… Just sayin’

If you’re a designer, print enthusiast, student in the area, or just a good ol’ bloke or blokette who thinks this sounds fun – you should come out and jam with us for the weekend.

Check out the site as well as the other fine printin’ and design’ folks scheduled to be there… Shoot, if you’re a fine flat stock folk yourself, you may want to look into grabbing a booth for yourself!

See you in low country.

Spot color printing is a ton of work. For every job and every color we have to mix the ink, ink the press, run the color and then clean it all up before going to another color. There’s also registration, paper load, and so on and so on… The setup is tedious and rewarding, but the clean up is just tedious. Because black is a color we run all of the time, it’s feasible for us to offer a black ink special on letterpress, as we can slip your job in with other black ink prints, quite often on a gang run.

Ask around, and you’ll find that our special on letterpress business cards on cotton paper is a super deal. B&W cards are simple, elegant, and a true value.

Get a quote for your b&w letterpress card here.

Samples!

There’s so much to be said about the paper choice for your print project. Color, weight, texture, etc… The paper you choose really is a big part of bringing your design to life. Being that we love paper, we try to have as many choices as humanly possible for you to select from. Shoot, on some products we have a standard option for you to name your French Paper stock, and they have a mind boggling selection! We just don’t want to limit you in your decision, which is why we have the ability for you to request a custom quote.

To show you that you just can’t go wrong with our paper selection, here’s the same 1-color letterpress print on two different stocks. The first is Crane’s Lettra 110# Ecru and the second is .30 chipboard. The design really translates well on both. Even though the Lettra is an elegant sheet, the design really pulls it towards the rustic side of it’s character and plays off of the toothy finish very well. The chipboard is a bit more dense, but is well suited for a black hit of ink with an old-time design.

Which do you prefer? I think they both work very well.



you can find an ever-growing detailed explanation of our paper stocks here.

Chipboard is a great post-consumer product. Made from recycled scraps, it generally has a brown hue but can also range into the brown/gray arena. The board we use is .30 but we can get thicker stock if requested.

It’s durable, thick, and has the rugged feel of something that is definitely recycled.

3/3 spot with a full wash of blue on one side

A close-up of just how opaque white can go down on chipboard when screen printing

Get a quote on something like this here

There’s nothing like having a dark stock instead of laying down the color you want. There’s a real sense of authenticity that is just plain impressive when you see a card with a colored background and it’s the paper, not the ink, that is the color.

Screen printing on your business cards is a great way to do what is impossible for other processes, specially printing light colors on dark paper. White ink is a specific niche that screen printing holds over the less opaque letterpress and offset options. The other option for white on dark would be foil, which is great and has it’s place. Yes we can foil your cards, but the choice between the two is really design specific… Feel free to call us to see which we recommend for your design.

Here are a few screen printed cards on dark stocks to help inspire you for possibilities…

Duplexed to double thick 130# Neenah Epic Black, this card a 3/2 spot. The tone on tone gives the card a ‘spot uv’ feel, even though it’s just gloss ink. This paper is a rich black sheet.

A good example of how opaque our white screen print ink is.

Get your print quote here

Here’s a little pictorial journey through the process of screen printing on paper. From burning screens to mixing inks, and registration to racking each sheet – it’s truly a hand done process.

The print featured is for eboy, which is on sale at the poster cause project.

Enjoy.

One of the best things about having all this fun printing equipment is that when time permits we are able to make fun things for ourselves. So, consider this your fair warning that in addition to printing your goods, Mama’s Sauce will also be producing all sorts of short run items for you to buy and to have. Whatever it is that we dream up and do – can and will be found on our Sundries page.

And, with the soft-launch of the site, we’ve already put a few things up for you.

The photo booth picture frame collection is a line that we’re pretty excited about.
As of right now we have a few designs up from some of our favorite artists, Rifle Paper Co. being one. I know what you’re thinking, and yes, these will make great stocking stuffers. They will also be available as a custom printed product after the site leaves beta and goes full on double live in December… Planning to have a photo booth at your wedding? Yeah, exactly.

Request a quote for your custom design idea here.
You can also buy these designs from our Sundries store here.

The other day we shut down early for a very special tour group; the amazing creative staff of Publix Supermarkets.

Since most of us here at the Sauce were kids, we’ve been in love with the Florida-born grocery chain. They lure in the young with free chocolate chip cookies – no doubt the brain child of their genius founder, who could easily pass as the doppelganger for Walt Disney. If you FL people haven’t noticed that before, just check George Jenkin’s portrait in the front of your local Publix. You’ll also notice that 1920′s gentlemen have this cool about them that reigned until slayers like Cary Grant perfected the flow just a few years later.

I’m not going to lie, when Publix reached out about making a visit we were beyond flattered. Austin blushed for sure. We frequently nerd out on their incredible and clean branding, their packaging, and overall rad vibe that just owns here in FL… So needless to say, we were eager to put something special together for them.

As Publix has their own printing facilities that would put most commercial shops to shame, we decided to concentrate on the gaps that we would fill in. Our design aesthetic and unique print processes. We wanted to design something fun that we could print in front of them that they could have and use everyday. Coasters is was!

Enjoy some pics of the day and let’s do something like this together soon, ok?

Sketches from the desk of Brian at Itchy Illustration, he and Austin worked out the design.

Working out Publix’s pantone match

About to burn the white screen

The Publix team gathered around Wagner and Brooks

Loaded up in the letterpress magazine

All done. 2/0 Letterpress, Screen Print, and die cut for a live studio audience

Request a quote for your custom design idea here

new website. check.
new uniforms. check.

we’re dressed and ready to print your goods.
let’s do this thing.