To the bindery, baby!

Back to our favorite 6 Fat Men...and Santa (can't forget him!).  I guess that makes 7 Fat Men on their long path to your favorite needlework shops. The photo below is the press sheet I brought home yesterday after we did the final color check.

Today we visit the bindery in another part of the print building. After the big, beautiful pile of press sheets have a little time to dry, they move to the bindery.  I'm sure you noticed that all 8 designs and the embellishment tag are ganged up together on the press sheet. They're all cozy and close, but now we need to separate them...separation anxiety!

Please put on your big protective ear covers for this part of the field trip, because it's noisy in here!

Here's one of the machines that processes the big press sheet. Before we can cut the items apart, we need to SCORE them. What is scoring? Scoring actually puts long creases in the paper (in all the right places) so the folding can occur without cracking the paper. We don't want any unsightly paper cracking!, .

One more little bit of printing trivia (sorry, I love this stuff)...it is important to print with the direction of the paper whenever possible.  Yes...paper has a direction, just like fabric!  Scroll back up to the photo of the whole press sheet. You can see that all the folds will occur in the same direction, which is how we like it!

With all the scoring done, it's time to cut and fold. This time we printed 6 Flip-its, 1 Snippet, 1 Quick-it (this item won't be available until later this fall) and one embellishment pack tag. When we deliver the graphics files to the printer, they include instructions for how to trim our designs to the proper finished size.

Does anyone know the phrase "full color bleed"? No, it's not a medical term. It's the printing process that allows the color to go all the way to the edge on the printing. In order to achieve this, we actually print extra color all the way around each design. Then, it is trimmed off, so the finished project doesn't have a ring of white around the edge. (That reminds of those funny commercials from my youth about the horrors of "ring around the collar" in your laundry!). But I digress.... 

Now I'm busy at my desk, catching up on other stuff, waiting for the printer to let me know when our printing will deliver. It might be late this afternoon, but probably tomorrow morning. Whenever it gets here, we're ready to get to work assembling!!! You can't pack orders until the products are assembled.

The snowflake buttons are all nestled on their trusty Glu-Dots. There are lots of extra snowflake buttons standing by in case they are called to duty. Our helper Carmen is going to work a few extra hours to help us with the big work crunch...she's the best! 

We're still waiting for those elves to show up!