Judy Boyes - Lakeland Artist

Judy Boyes, Lakeland’s leading watercolour artist has just placed an order for a print run of Fine Art Limited Edition Reproductions of her new paintings. These flexible paintings are being scanned on our drum scanner for optimum print quality.
Judy has printed here at Abacus for a couple of decades not only a comprehensive range of Fine Art Reproductions but also Giclee prints, postcards, greetings cards and brochures for her gallery.
Judy's gallery is situated in the lakeland village of Elterwater, near Langdale and offers a comprehensive collection of her prints.These are available loose,mounted or framed from the gallery or mail order. Her entire collection is also available on-line at www.judyboyes.co.uk.
Judy's prints are all printed to the exacting standards of The Fine Art Trade Guild of which Abacus is a print member. This involves an annual print test to ensure lightfastness of the special inks used solely for Fine Art Reproductions,a test which Abacus has consistently passed for the last 22 years.
Living locally to our print studio, Judy and her husband John always come and pass her new prints on the Komori printing press. This gives Judy the opportunity to fine tune the prints to her very exacting eye.
These new prints will be available before Christmas both on-line and in her gallery.



The artwork as it arrives at Abacus.



The artwork on the drum ready to be scanned.



The artwork being scanned By Danny, ready to be proofed then printed.

Jenny Jowett - Botanical Artist FSBA/PSFP

Jenny Jowett is a long standing client of Abacus (Colour Printers) Ltd. Interestingly Jenny used to be in printing and is very knowledgeable on this subject. We at Abacus always welcome her botanical watercolour paintings, as her tolerance of quality printing is so exacting. If a flower is slightly off colour and tone it can be another variety! Over the years we have printed Fine Art Reproductions, greetings cards and postcards of her beautiful flower paintings, more recently we have been printing Giclee prints of her seasons paintings, 12 pictures depicting the months of the year.

Jenny will be exhibiting her original paintings from the 6th of November 2009 at the said Business School Gallery in Oxford's University’s Botanical Gardens. Her exhibition includes not only botanical paintings but also landscapes of the UK and abroad. We always look forward to Jenny's new paintings, from which we scan directly on our state of the art drum scanner. This scanning ensures optimum print quality which enables Jenny to place orders with total confidence.

Keep checking it will be here soon!

We are struggling to get the online ordering opportunity finished. There is so much fine tuning to do as every aspect of postcard, greetings card and Christmas card ordering online has to be 100%.
When we do finally complete this you will be able to order and pay for printing of cards entirely on the internet and pay by the secure “google check out”.

This opportunity will be entirely PDF based. Your photos may now only exist as JPEGS and TIFFS, but lots of free photo editing programmes will allow you to instantly change from a JPEG to a PDF.

We see this convenient opportunity as the way forward for our existing client as well as many new ones. In 2010 we will also complete the Abacus Online designer which will encourage you to place your picture within the templates and submit the order online - so far this has taken two years of design time but is - I’m confidently told by the designers - very near completion!

However, we at Abacus will still be delighted to receive orders via the post, including original paintings to scan. Don't forget we are always here to help with any aspect of your order.

The online facility will only be for postcards, greetings cards, business cards and Christmas cards. For fine art reproductions, card catalogues, calendars and large card orders, full card sheets, Giclee prints, all of which require very large files, the existing ordering route is required.
We look forward to entering a new decade of card printing offering you additional ordering convenience.

Watch “the kettles on” for special offers on online ordering when we go live, as we need your input to tell us how you find this opportunity.

FLOODS

Thank you to everyone who has sent good wishes, and has asked how we all are in the floods! We are all well and thank goodness no one At Abacus has had their home taken from them.




The Lowick House Garden flood



Here are some pictures of John rescuing his pigs as the Crake river burst its banks. All pigs are well and rehoused on higher ground!! After John rescued his pigs the water rose another meter.










The water has subsided now and this is what is left... Although more heavy rain is forecast.

Christmas Cards, we still have time to print them for you.

Yes its not too late to place your orders for Christmas cards to send out this year.
We at Abacus work hard ensuring even the latest order arrives in time for the Christmas postal rush. But the emphasis is on you to get your 'finger out' as the sooner the order is received the cheaper is the cost [reduced rate v standard rate]
Here at Abacus we have already printed our Christmas card which is full colour two sided and is today awaiting cutting and scoring. This Christmas card features the work of John Sutcliffe the managing director and will remain a secret until it arrives in the post. If you are not yet an Abacus customer and wish to receive a copy of this limited edition Christmas card just email in your full postal address and one will be posted to you.
We print Christmas Cards for the whole gamut of clients from individuals, families, churches, companies, firms, vets, dentists, breed societies, etc etc .
Christmas cards still have a vital place in our society to say your not forgotten to old friends, raise money for charity, let customers know they are appreciated, raise awareness of a breed or to wish everyone well for the New Year [to name but a few].
As specialist card printers we at Abacus are waiting to be of assistance with your Christmas card order, but please do hurry as December is just a few days away.

This and other images can be found on David Briggs e commerce website at www.davidbriggsphoto.co.uk

Can Saddleback pigs swim? Or just look pretty on postcards?

They may need to if we get any more downpours like those experienced lately. For two consecutive weekends the monsoons have left the village of Lowick marooned. The local pubs pool table was floating around and the flood water was so deep the pub is closed for 2 months. There was so much water on the roads with all the autumnal leaves blocking the drains and the gaps in the dry stone walls that floods were up to 3 ft deep- impassable!
But did the Saddleback pigs need to swim? Fortunately not as all their arks are situated on the highest ground, but the mud is now so deep that they do need welly boots!! However the floods did wash out two of the pens inside my buildings and the slurry pit filled overnight.
Copious amounts of straw has been added to the arks so the saddlebacks have warm dry beds to sleep in. The highest placed arks were muddy inside as a months rain fell in 4 hours. Even saddlebacks hate rain and are not keen on deep cold mud so they now spend most of the days cuddling up together in their arks.
What of Jack the Saddleback boar experiencing manhood for the first time? Last week we swapped him for a new Vicount boar who knows his job. Unfortunately several of the gilts Saddleback Jack has had the opportunity of serving have returned to the Vicount boar which is really disappointing. Jack is now running with 5 young saddleback gilts vacated by the Vicount boar all of which should be in pig. It just goes to show that young boars can be a problem and are not guaranteed to do their job, in fact a lady from Ireland has a young boar who is totally uninterested in the Saddleback girls.
More rain is forecast-- and I have bought some more waterproofs!
What relevance is all this piggy talk to postcard printing you may ask?
Well Abacus prints Saddleback postcards for all the butchers who sell the Saddleback pork and promotional A4 sheets to distribute at the agricultural shows around the country.

A BREATH OF FRESH AIR PACKS YOUR POSTCARD - ABACUS GETS GREENER

To continue with our ‘green’ ethos to reduce the amount of packaging, the weight and therefore the cost, all our packaging infill is now air!

Yes we have a new machine that blows pure Lakeland air into plastic sausages. These are used to pack carefully around your printed card order to ensure they arrive in perfect condition.

We have different size air sausages (not to be eaten on arrival!) to ensure greetings cards, postcards as well as giclee prints arrive safely.

Helen is in charge of packing and is now a dab hand with the sausage machine - she also likes real rare breed pork sausages. It was National Sausage Week last week promoted by the British Sausage Appreciation Society in aid of Cystic Fibrosis Trust.
www.sausageweek.co.uk Check it out for new sausage recipes, bangers, rockets and fire works. Once again Guy Fawkes has passed with out incident although my sheep dog was so frightened by all the banging she was found hiding behind the u bend in the toilet!

Now back to real sausages - the true Cumberland sausage. My pigs www.saddlebackpigs.co.uk have been used to make award winning Cumberland sausage made by Aireys Butchers.

Air sausages, bangers, Aireys butchers - it must be a crazy week - whats next...

Abacus Online is coming soon!

Picasso watches over the Giclee department

Way back in the early 1970’s when I was a student at the Ruskin School of Drawing, Oxford University, Picasso was my God. As all gods have eventually to go to heaven I painted a small diptych of Picasso at the gates of heaven with one of his earlier wives and his beloved dog.
This diptych has remained unframed as one of my few surviving paintings of this period. It still stands today in the old barn’s ventilation hole (now blocked up in the Giclee studio) as a testimony to the artistic endeavours still prevailing in the gilcee department. To quote Picasso “I do not search I find”
I hope your searches over the internet have found this nonesense, required by modern search engines, to be be entertaining and informative.
I often look at the diptych and try to imagine just what Picasso would make of the creative opportunities offered by giclee printing. Given a computer programme and canvas on the printing machine, what might this great artist have produced?

Giclee printing is primarily to reproduce other media such as oil paintings, pastels and water colours. Too few artists use it as a creative media in its own right.

We at Abacus offer open studio facilities to creative artists to print up to 64 inches wide - on rolls up to 12 meters long. This continues our ethos of using print as a creative media in its own right not just one of reproduction.

Now you have found us, stick with us, we look forward to you order - seek no more!

The Final score Postcards 10 Emails 3

The old postcard verses email debate. The postal strike is not helping - but when postcards are received, or a greetings card is sent the message remains for a long time. Not so over the internet when an email if opened if read is quickly forgotten. Hence the longevity of a postcard far outweighs that of the email.

We here at Abacus (Colour Printers) Ltd, have been specialising in printing the most beautiful postcards and greetings cards from well over twenty years

Our Managing Director John Sutcliffe, trained as an artist at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art in Oxford, worked directly with artists for 10 years.

At his workshop in Lowick he printed limited edition lithographs, etchings and screenprints by hand.
This artistic start grew organically into Abacus (Colour Printers) Ltd, over 21years ago. From this humble artistic beginning this meagre printing service for the artistic community developed. Abacus (Colour Printers) Ltd, now offer the most comprehensive range of shapes sizes and finishes of postcards, greetings cards, Christmas cards, fine art reproductions and Giclee prints to our nationwide clientele. Quality is always the key to the continuing success of Abacus.

Watch this space as the Abacus Online ordering opportunity is almost ready. You can order all your cards online very soon.