Last week I collaborated with my co-worker Rachel Teo (yes, we have the same first name) on a printing project for Build It Day at Steamclock Software. It’s an internal event we’ve started to have every six months to give everyone the opportunity to work on a personal project. Rach and I usually collaborate on something because we are the only ones who are not software developers.

We decided to tackle making a lino cut print as a commemorative piece of swag for everyone in the team. We chose the quote, “Whatever good things we build end up building us”, by Jim Rohn as the basis of our design to relate to Build It Day. Rach chose the typeface and composed it digitally for us to transfer onto lino for carving by hand.

I spent most of the day carving this 5″ by 5″ piece of lino with the text. We had a few setbacks in the process, which I won’t get into, and had to start over again around mid-day, but I somehow managed to get it finished and print-ready before end of day. It was difficult work because I am not an experienced carver and some of the font details were small.

While I was doing that Rach worked on our colour scheme with the selection of ink and composition of the overall design using additional rubber stamps (already carved, thank goodness!) She did all of the printing and added in the carved text once I had it completed.

The finished print looks amazing, with two different colourways to choose from. It’s not obvious from the photos but the inks used in the border design are metallic. Each print is 8″x 8″ cotton watercolour paper.

By the end of Build It Day we were exhausted but totally thrilled to have pulled off this project in one day. I’m excited to get mine into a frame and up on my wall.