We are feverishly elated to announce that the Mama’s Sauce Internship Program is now officially sponsored by French Paper Co.

No one shares our awkwardly intense enthusiasm for inspiring young print designers more than the fine folks at French. Together, we aim to build a program that introduces aspiring print designers to the world of spot color in a unique and hands-on sorta way.

Here’s a rundown of our new & improved educational gauntlet for Spring 2013:

French Paper Treasure Chest:

The kindly souls over at French Paper Co. will be supplying Mama’s interns with an arsenal of inspiring goods that are essential for any aspiring spot color print designer / paper geek.

Spot Color Seminar:

Learn a bit about the ins & outs of designing for spot color printing and demonstrate that learning by designing and printing a screen printed project.

French Sample Room:

Select intern projects will be proudly displayed in the French Sample Room.

Guest Professor:

Spring 2013 interns will have their portfolios personally reviewed by this semester’s Guest Professor: James White of Signalnoise Studio. This is a golden opportunity to hear a Canadian accent in a professional setting.

Hard work:

The only way to learn how to look at print is to look at print. A lot. We instill our obsession with quality in our interns by teaching them to check every single print that comes off press. Every printer at Mama’s Sauce got their start in quality control and it’s the only reason they can print the way they do.

Press Time:

Get to know letterpress and silkscreen printing by getting all up in the business of our presses. Learn to oil them, clean them, and help our pressmen run them.

The internships are unpaid, but we’ll happily work with your educational institution so that your work here is rewarded with credit. If you are not a student, don’t be afraid to throw your name in the hat!

If this sounds like something that makes you want to pee your pants, don’t fight that feeling. Click here to apply.

So I’m going to try something that requires a little discipline here… If you follow us on the Twitter and Facebook, you’ve probably seen ‘What’s on Press…’ which is basically a snapshot of whatever we have on press that day. We’re pretty good about keeping up with it and people seem to like it. Well, we print a lot more than we get to share – so each week I’m going to try and collect everything in bulk and put it out there. I really feel lucky to work with all of the wonderful designers who we print for, and hope that sharing the work that goes through our presses will help inspire you to see the possibilities that still exist with traditional print mediums. I’ll be trying to make it a Friday thing – forgive me for jumping the gun a bit early this week! Enjoy this weekly update – and if you want daily’s make sure to follow our FB & Twitter. Both links can be found in the right column of this here blog.

Click to make them big. Enjoy.

After our last blog post, I thought it prudent to kick off the ‘no more full color printing’ roll by highlighting a of a full color print that we just did! “But wait, didn’t the last post just say that you’re going all screen print and letterpress?” Yes, yes it did. If you dig deep, you’ll see that there are cases where we’ll print full color prints still. One full color type of job that qualifies would be a full color letterpress print. Yes, that’s right. A 4-color process letterpress print.

We designed this save the date with the idea of the recipients getting something authentically old in their mailboxes. Something not just designed to look old, but authentically printed to feel like a save the date just found after aging decades in the wedding album of a couple married fifty plus years.

Printed on 140# French Muscletone – this save the date was both a blast to design and print!

run on a 1950 Heidelberg Windmill. the front ran through 4 times (CMYK)

the back of the print is a 1-color black letterpress print

look at those beautiful halftone dots!

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.

I have a confession.
It’s an embarrassing one. One that would be hard to admit, that is if I hadn’t had to confess it at least once a day for the past two years. I say again, two years… That’s how long I’ve been a printer without a business card. That is exactly how long it’s been since our staff of trained professionals, who specialize in creating these seven and half square inch handy (literally) little sheets of ink and reclaimed cotton and/or tree pulp, have been operating without cards of our own.

How does one in this profession get away card-less for so long? I can’t even imagine a dairy farmer without milk in his icebox, or a taxidermist without at least one moose head over his fireplace. But then again, there is that old adage, ‘The cobbler’s children have no shoes.’ I guess that applies to printers too?

Well not anymore. This cobbler’s kids got some shoes, baby. Some rad, letterpressed shoes. Clearly put, we finally carved out some time to design and print our own cards.

Being that it was a long time coming, we thought we’d go a little over the top. A two-color letterpress card duplexed (fancy talk for glued) to a chocolate brown french paper backing… Hit number one is a light hotdog colored kiss print, which is a slight graze of ink to the surface of the paper, leaving the surface’s original dimension in place. The second hit is a deep punch of light brown that ads the 3rd dimension, which the modern letterpress printing technique has become known for… The bite if you will.

Note the two-tone sides and brown back duplex.

We’re stoked on them…

Looking for a ‘one hit’ wonder? Check out the print we rocked right after the sauce card… A simple and elegant design done by and for our good friend Aaron Martin from Superwindy. Aaron has been wanting to do business cards since we met him ages ago… Being a designer – it took awhile to get it done. I guess we’re all cursed in this area? Working for others doesn’t allow us the time to do for ourselves? Well, It has finally happened for Aaron too – and word on the street is that he’s diggin on his new beasts.