A NEW IDEA TO PROMOTE YOURSELF

CD case calendar or promotional cards

Looking for a novel way to promote your work? Then this may be the answer. Thirteen cards are printed in full colour on high quality 250gsm card which are represented in a cd display box. When opened the case folds back to create a stand.
These can be in the form of a calendar - one month per card plus a cover or alternatively images and text promoting your work.

There are numerous uses for these versatile cards - textile designers use them to launch new fabrics, photographers to illustrate their work and potters to promote a new range of ceramics ... How could you use this fantastic idea to promote yourself?

We will be happy to receive images and layout supplied as digital files ready for output in order to keep costs down.

However we are also happy to scan from your originals or transparencies and typeset the calendar for you to your own layout. Just let us have an idea of what you want to produce and we will send you an individual estimate.

How to take better digital photographs.

First of all you need to set your camera or phone on the highest picture quality and resolution settings in order to capture the maximum amount of information. This will enable us to print detailed and sharp prints with a good colour range and produce an image you will be really happy with.
The down side is because you are using the highest settings on your camera or phone you will not be able to take as many photos as you would if you chose a lower quality setting.

We are happy to accept JPEG or tif files for printing.

If you are photographing a person or your children then try to make eye contact and lower the camera to the kids eye level. This will help to pull you into the photograph and engage with the kids facial expression.

Try to use a plain background or you will lose what you are taking a photo of due to conflicting surroundings. Try to keep an eye out for background attaching itself to various parts of your favourite nieces head or sticking out of her ears!

Always get as close to your subject as possible. You don't have to stand on top of them as you can use your zoom. Try taking a few shots in quick succession as people tend to relax after the first shot and this makes for a better natural photo.

Try taking photos of landscapes or buildings from various angles - look up or down at them - and don't place your focal object in the centre of your photo. Slightly to the left or right, higher or lower will make for a more interesting shot.

Daylight will always give you the best light - try to keep the sun behind you and watch for reflections.

The best tip though is to just experiment and have fun! Don't be scared to take lots of photos and you will soon learn what works and what should be avoided!

I love the snow

Snow Snow Glorious Snow

I come from South Africa and we have beautiful sunshine, wonderful summers and at the time I thought our winters were quite cold, but they are nothing like a winter in England. The one thing we didn't get was snow. I love it when it snows. I am the only one in Abacus that loves the snow and I drive everybody else mad. I think its fabulous how it crunches under your feet and absolutely freezes your fingers if you should decide to play in it. Abacus has had a lovely snowfall. I would like to share some of the pictures that were taken between the main buildings at Abacus and the buildings where we do our scanning. We affectionately call these buildings the ‘scan farm’ as they are situated high on the fell in what used to be a shippon on a Lakeland hill farm.

Our Managing Director John Sutcliffe took these photos while driving between the scan farm and our print works with various items of work we all needed, to make sure there was no loss in time or inconvenience to our customers due to the weather.

So there is no problem with the weather - lets have more snow!

We have a Winter special offer!

January and February are the months for special offers and sales and we have a special offer for you. The special offer applies to all postcards and greetings card orders. All card orders made before the 28th 0f February 2009 will receive a FREE COLOUR AND TEXT PROOF posted out so you can check your colour image and text details before we go to print.

This makes our cards amazing value:

500 6” x 4” matt postcards including postage & packing and VAT cost only £97.75

So get your orders in quick - to be able to get high quality printing done for these prices is an opportunity that cannot be missed!

Where does our paper come from?

At Abacus we continually strive to maintain an ethos that is aware of the importance of the environment, and the impact we have on our surroundings. Being located in the Lake District we have the most beautiful countryside around us and we constantly work towards helping to sustain our natural environment.

All of our paper, or to be more specific, our board is manufactured in Scotland specially for Abacus (Colour Printers) Ltd. It is Elemental Chlorine free (ECF) and neutral PH. The pulp used to make our card is derived from planted sustainable forests and is fully F.S.C. (Forestry Stewardship Council) compliant. Some recycled pulp is also used in the cards manufacture, and there are no hardwoods.

The Forestry Stewardship Council certifies that forests are managed to ensure long term timber supplies while protecting the environment. We can purchase our papers and board with confidence that we are not contributing to global forest destruction.

Our suppliers have invested much time and effort in reducing their carbon footprint on the environment and have a stringent green ethos.

All our waste card and paper is sent for recycling.

ALL OUR INKS ARE GREEN

Eco Dri Inks

Waterless printing is already acknowledged as the most environmentally friendly print method. To add to this environmental advantage, our new inks are made from varnishes which are entirely mineral oil free. In the Nordic countries, they attract zero points on the Swan Labelling System.

The replacement for mineral oil is produced from vegetable oils. This material has the advantage of being produced from a renewable resource, and is also readily biodegradable. Mineral oils are extracted from crude oil, and are not readily biodegradable.. The mineral content of a quickset ink can be as much as 35% of the total. In the case of our eco-inks, this is replaced with a vegetable oil product.

We consider that the combination of waterless printing system and eco dri inks offers the printing industry a best practice system, that not only produces the most ecologically friendly print, but offers better quality and cost savings as well.

Giclee Printing

Abacus (Colour Printers) Ltd has been printing Giclee prints for artists and photographers for the last six and a half years. We use a Mutoh RJ8000 to print our Giclee prints, along with pigmented inks and archival papers to ensure the highest quality and permanent print. These inks and various papers have been independently tested to a minimum lightfastness of blue wool scale 6 as recommended by the Fine Art Trade Guild.

How we work is we charge an initial set up fee which includes scanning the images, colour correcting and sending our client an A4 colour proof on the paper selected for the print. We then archive the approved “set up”, leaving a completely flexible service where our client can order as few as one print at a time, or as many as required. The print run works on a sliding scale of the more you order at once, the less you pay per print, but the option of having one print printed at a time is available.

We prefer to scan the images on our drum scanner in house, as the service is then completely in our hands and we have maximum control over the colour management. We can also receive scans on a disk or digital photographs and produce beautiful quality prints.

We offer free sample packs with examples of our papers and print quality. They also have a full price list and all the information required. Please feel free to email a request for one or phone and we will pop one in the post to you. I am always at the end of the phone should you want to talk about Giclee prints.

Sarah

What to do with our Christmas Cards

What do we do with all our Christmas cards after the fesitivities are over, as we take down our decorations and put them away for next year? We all have an abundance of Christmas cards that we have received throughout the festive season and as we take them down and read them for a last time, we smile to ourselves for all the people that thought of us from far away and also next door. What should we do with them?

The Woodland Trust is running a scheme to encourage us all to recycle our Christmas cards. They have placed recycle bins in your major shops such as Tesco, TK Maxx, Marks and Spencers, WHSmith. These bins will be present in store from the 1st of January until the 31st of January.

In 2008, 73.6 million cards were recycled this way. Recycling cards through the Woodland scheme enables the Woodland Trust to plant trees. If everyone recycles one Christmas card through these stores, the Woodland Trust will be able to plant 15000 trees to create UK woodland. 15000 trees would create a woodland the size of 30 football pitches.

If these cards are just thrown away in the bin they end up in landfill - waste sent to landfill adds to our greenhouse gases. If we all recycle just one Christmas card each this would save 1570 tonnes of CO2 equivalent greenhouse gases - the same as taking 500 cars off the road for a year. Even if you do not use this particular charity, lets all recycle this years cards.

HAPPY NEW YEAR !!

We are all back at work and raring to go. Ready for a new year, refreshed from our holidays and full of new year resolutions and positive goals to make this year better than last. A new year is always such a refreshing time - a positive time. The weather has been fabulous for the Christmas break and the sun has been out. We have had frost on the ground but beautiful light blue skies and with the sun shining it makes the cold ok. I am secretly still hoping for some snow though - a good winter needs a really good snowfall.

The end of last year was quite a year for Christmas cards - more specifically personalised Christmas cards with family photos, photos of kids, images of the family home. Perhaps keep this in mind when doing this years cards or taking your photos throughout the year. There are many opportunities in the photos that you take and we will be more than happy to print cards from your digital photographs.

We are working very hard on our new on-line designer ordering service and hope to have it up and running in the very near future. This will be a fantastic addition to our web site that will make ordering on-line much easier. We look forward to receiving this years orders and printing and offering the best service we can to make this year better than last.

Margaret Walty our Artist of the Year 2008

We have selected Margaret Walty as Abacus “Artist of the Year 2008”. Margaret has printed a selection of cards and giclee prints at Abacus, and we are delighted to have used one of her images for our company Christmas card which goes out to all our clients.

Margaret has lived and worked for a number of years in the south of Scotland and exhibited widely in Britain and abroad both as a silversmith (for which she has trained at the Ecole des Arts Décoratisfs in Geneva) and now soley as a painter.

Margaret has illustrated three childrens books, a book on Celtic astrology and love, a science fiction novel and a book on Chinese tree peonies. Among her recent awards are three Silver Gilt medals and a Gold by the Royal Horticultural Society for Botanical illustration.

“The Seasons” Each of the four giclée prints are limited to an edition of 300, and are printed on German Etching 310gsm. To view the other images in the series see www.margaretwalty.co.uk for further details. The title of this image is Jack Frost, please do go and look at the others as they are really lovely.