Letterpressing Shampoo Horns Covers

Here at Rose Metal Press we love the summer. Summer is flash fiction chapbook time, when we leave our computers behind for a few days and get our hands dirty letterpressing each and every one of the 350 limited edition covers of our latest chapbook contest winner.

This year's winner is the amazing Shampoo Horns, by Aaron Teel, a book that also revels in summer—one particular hot, dirty, electric summer in Texas, revealed in 19 short short stories.

On June 11th and 13th, we headed out to the Museum of Printing in North Andover, Mass. with our head designer (and letterpress extraordinaire) Rebecca Saraceno to print the 2-color covers on a Vandercook letterpress. Letterpress is amazing: noisy, imperfect, perfect, precise, imprecise, beautiful, and worth every bit of the work!

Here are some photos and videos of the process.    

We used these 3 inks to mix the orange and red colors we printed on the covers

This firecracker magnesium die cut was created from an illustration by Liane Behrens

The orange ink and die cut on press

The covers going through the press for first round of ink—the orange!

The text type in the lock-up waiting for the red ink!

A finished cover coming off the press with red inked type

Rebecca printing a finished cover

Finished Shampoo Horns covers drying—each one printed by hand

Shampoo Horns launches on August 15 and is now available for preorder! We only print 350 limited edition chapbooks, so it's a good idea to reserve early! Order here.