I have a thing for vintage postcards. Finally getting to use this inspiration in a little project happening now. Lucky to work with great brides with great style and great ideas!

ps. Greetings from Colorado! If you are in the Denver/Boulder area, don’t forget Concert for Cash THIS Saturday!! Featuring the Railbenders, Benefiting The Children’s Hospital all in honor of celebrating a little boy who died of SMA {the #1 genetic killer of infants}

This MAMA MONDAY goes out to a very special mommy that I am lucky enough to know. We met before children were even in the picture – and we had a ton of fun: skiing, dancing, dining, laughing. Our pregnancies overlapped, and we both gave birth to little boys, Cullin in September and Cash in January. Just this past Friday, Cullin, now 3, was at Montessori, and Teri and I spent the day in Denver – printing a poster celebrating Cash’s 3rd Annual Concert. Cash was born with Spinal Muscular Atrophy {SMA} and died when he was just 4 months old. We now honor his life and his birthday {January 18th} with a concert benefiting Nepalese Orphanages & The Children’s Hospital, where Cullin spent the first 3.5 days of his life and Cash spent the last 2.5 weeks of his.

The 3rd Annual Concert for Cash will take place at the Oriental Theater in Denver, headlined by the Railbenders and opening with the Mitch Lehn Folk Trio. There will be a silent auction filled with amazing donations including {but certainly not limited to} a snowboard from Never Summer, carseat cover from Lilly Pad, a week’s stay in San Francisco, a custom mural by artist Calvin Davis, and sooooo much more. And of course a tribute slideshow to the little boy we all wish was still with us here on earth today.

I am humbled each year to be a collaborative part of this event. Lending my skills as a graphic designer and now a letterpress printer, I have designed  – and now printed the posters for this benefit each of the three years it has been in existence. I have found such peace with being a part of the grieving and healing process along with Teri & Page in my own way, but especially this year as I immersed myself in a solid 11 hours of hand-setting wood and lead type, learning the ways of a cylinder press and most importantly, printing in honor of Cash. It is the very least I can do to contribute to the celebration of a very special little boy as I can never truly understand the loss of a child. I am thrilled that Jason, of Genghis Kern, so graciously offered his press and his space for this cause and delighted that Teri & Page were able to come and hand-crank along with me, the printing of these announcements of monumental love & loss … and love.

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ps. Seriously folks, if you are in the Denver area it is $10 to see two rockin’ bands, respect the loss of one child and instill the hope of thousands, and bid on some awesome loot for an awesome cause – Come one, Come All to the 3rd Annual Concert for Cash, January 23rd, 2010!! I am giving away two tickets, so comment here on this post, or retweet on Twitter and I will choose a winner on Wednesday, January 20th.

Another hopeful foreshadowing as 2010 gets underway, the design for Denver’s 3rd Annual Concert for Cash {get your tix here} poster will require hand-setting 54 vintage wood type letters and 168 lead type characters. Along with the process of placing each letter one-by-one, the poster layout will require an on-the-fly design modification and the shifting of multiple pieces of wood called reglets & furniture to achieve the desired placement of each element, which is a departure from my typical day of printing with only photopolymer and a Boxcar base. Genghis Kern has graciously offered his shop, his time and the use of his 1965 Asbern cylinder press {a German version of a Vandercook, if you will} for the project. Keeping my fingers crossed that Teri & Page {Cash’s Mama & Daddy} can come see the poster printing in action.