Blackbird LetterPress

I adore Blackbird Letterpress.  This is a company that I have been paying attention to for a little while now. Their cards are simply beautiful. Maybe, I am so in love with it all, because I did printmaking in College?

I have an appreciation for running things through a press, for pressing patterns into paper and the feel of it in your hands as it comes out the other side. The sensation in your fingertips as they gingerly touch the depressions in the paper. Or, what it feels like to peel back the layers of padding, to see how your print has turned out, after inking it for the first time.

I love paper, I love pressed paper, it gives your chosen item a vintage air and these cards certainly have that.

The yellow grizzly bear looks as if he has crawled out of the pages of your Grandmother's photo album as a memento she stuck in from their family Summer trip to Yellowstone. There is just such a simplistic beauty to these cards. I don't know if I would be able to give them away to someone; they would have to be another lover of paper items, like me.

I plan on getting a few of these and framing them to hang around my house, because one's house should never be without a fox and a grizzly bear adorning the walls!

(All images copyright: Blackbird Letterpress)

Animal Tracking: Bobcat... Coyote or Fox?

Finding tracks by a canine is pretty common, and usually easy to identify because their claws show up in the print above the toes...

the deal is, bobcat prints are very similar to that of a coyote, dog or even a fox --->
They all have 4 toes and a pad underneath, the main indicator that separates the bobcat/large feline from the canine is the claws that show up. It is rare I find a bobcat print (maybe once in my life) and the pics i took here in my muddy bog don't appear to have claws. But what do ya'll think? Bobcat? Canine? (Or maybe the infamous and disbelieved local mountain lion?)

Pictured in the black and white drawing below are a rendering of bobcat prints::::




The mammal print above is a coyote and the one below is a common fox. You can see both leave distinct claw marks in their tracks.
The track you see below is the second track, ahead of the one in the first two pictures - appeared to be a stride. These tracks were large, only a tad bit smaller then ones I have seen from a large domesticated Pit Bull Dog. Get guessing!!!!

Xoxoxo ROar! Woof! puuurrrrrr!