Bloomin' Flower Cards

We love printing on our seed paper. It’s so much more than a two-dimensional printed product. The embedded seeds crest the surface of the paper, creating a unique, tactile experience for the recipient, in addition to the visual one.

We constantly strive to figure out ways to refine and streamline printing on Bloomin seed paper. From different papermaking techniques to newer printing technologies, our goal is to make our customers’ finished products better, sharper, and more dynamic. Good design and layout is crucial part of printing on seed paper. We’d like to share some of the common issues we’ve seen in art submission to help you get the most from your final product:

1. Keep ink coverage below 20%.
2. If possible, avoid gradients, fills, and photos.
3. Use a minimum font size of 8 pts.; 10 pt. for reversed text.
4. Avoid extremely fine detail.
5. Be responsible with your border and line use.
6. Include planting instructions.
7. Two sides of seeded paper are not created equal.
8. One or two color job? Consider letterpress.
9. There’s no controlling seed placement.
10. No PMS matching on seed paper.

1. Keep ink coverage below 20%.

Much like a paper towel, our handmade seed paper is very porous and absorbent. The machines we use to print onto the paper use ink-jet technology to spray water-based ink onto the page. When you have lots of ink coverage (large blocks of color, photographs, and other solid pieces of art,) the ink will soak into the paper much more than it would onto regular paper. This can lead to a final print that is “muddy” and unreadable. Consider inverting boxes or fills (would a white box with a blue outline work, instead of a blue box that’s filled in?) and eliminating large photos and other elements which require full ink coverage. (Please add that full coverage alters the viability of the seeds.)

2. Avoid gradients, fills, and photos.

In addition to the issues mentioned in #1 above about overall ink coverage, gradients, fills, and photos can be problematic for other reasons. Photos, gradients and fills can come out looking splotchy–especially people’s faces–due to the uneven nature of the seeds embedded in the paper (see #9 below.) If your design calls for large blocks of color, consider reversing the design so that the block is outlined instead of filled. This limitation applies regardless of what color your block of artwork is. Changing a blue block of color to yellow will only mean that the lines will now be dark yellow instead of dark blue.

3. Avoid extremely fine detail.

Small details in photos, logos, or other artwork–yes, even line art–tend to lose resolution when printed onto our porous, handmade seeded paper. While we don’t have a threshold for a specific level of detail at which things start to break down, our art team will let you know if you submit artwork that’s too small or not suitable for seed paper printing.

4. Use fonts larger than 8 points.
More if the text is reversed.

Think of letters like little pieces of artwork, which get assembled into different combinations to make words. Tiny little images.(Like these short, punchy sentences. Please shape some of the other text around this style.) The same detail that gets lost in small, highly-detailed images from the paper soaking up the ink, is lost when text is too small. To fix this problem, the smaller your font is, the thinner a font you’ll want to use. When using reversed text (white or light text on a dark background,) you’ll need an even bigger, thinner font. This 8 point minimum isn’t hard and fast. Some fonts work as small as 5 or 6 points, and some don’t work well at all below 10 or 12 points. It depends on the font, the color, and the distribution of seeds on the paper (see #9 below.) In general, most fonts should work fine at 8 points are larger.

5. Use responsible borders and lines.

Because every sheet of Bloomin’s seed print paper is full of wildflower seeds, a lot of the production process here is done by hand.

The paper is handmade. The sheets are hand-fed into the machines that print onto the paper. The printed sheets are hand-fed into our die-cutting machines. Every piece is examined by hand to ensure there were no printing or cutting errors. The pieces are hand-assembled into the finished product. Finally, the pieces are hand-packed into boxes to be shipped out.

All this hand-processing means that some graphic elements work better than others. Lines that are parallel to and near the edge of a piece can can exaggerate that the artwork on your piece and the cut edges of your piece will not be 100% lined up and square. Mathematical precision is NOT a hallmark of a handmade product.

Another thing to keep in mind is that registration isn’t 100% from from front to back. When printing onto the second side, keeping any art elements away from the edges will help make the piece look better in the end. Our art department can help with this if you have any concerns.

6. Include planting instructions.

Think about the person who receives your seed paper card. Will they know that they can plant it if you don’t mention it? Unless they’re an avid gardener, they may not realize that they can plant the paper, and flowers will grow. Feel free to use any of our suggested planting instructions.

You took the time to have your card printed on seed paper, why not show it off?

7. Two sides of seeded paper are
not created equal.

When we’re making Bloomin seed paper, the wet pulpy sheets are dried on pieces of canvas. (Here’s a recent news story about us, where you can see the process in action.) As the paper dries, the seeds start to show up as texture on the front of the sheet. Once the paper is fully dry, the paper is peeled off of the canvas. This leaves a slight imprint of a canvas pattern (or “fossil’) on the back of the paper.

So, there are two distinct sides to each sheet of paper.
Generally speaking, you’ll want to print your front side artwork onto the front side of the paper. Occasionally, a customer will have artwork which will work better if we print with the paper “upside down,” or with the canvas fossil on the front, and the seed texture on the back. If you’re not sure, we can help you determine which option is best for your artwork.

8. One or two color job?
Consider Letterpress printing.

Letterpress printing is a method of printing in which ink is rolled over raised letters on a metal plate, and the plate is pressed into paper. Remember Johannes Gutenberg and his moveable type? We use very close to the same method he did. We have better technology, and don’t have to hand set small type, thankfully. The look and feel of letterpressed seed paper is amazing. The debossing effect adds something ethereal to the printed artwork. There are some things to keep in mind when letterpress printing, but it’s more than we can cover in this post. We’ll get to that soon.

9. Wildflower seeds are wild.
(We can’t control their placement.)

Every square inch of Bloomin seed paper has between 10 and 20 wildflower seeds in it, which are added when the paper is still pulp. In the video I linked to under #7 above, you can see the tank full of water, paper pulp and seeds, and how the seeds are stirred around and dispersed into the paper. In effect, the seeds go where they want. This means that when it comes time to print your headshot onto the seeded paper, a random seed may line up with the tip of your nose, or the end of your chin. It’s happened before. It’s definitely not flattering, but there’s not much we can do about it. If your design relies on polka dots (or halftones, for example) which are about the same size as our seeds, then the seeds can wreak havoc on your design in the end. This is another argument to exclude fine detail #3.

10. We can’t match PMS colors on seeded paper.

Unfortunately, the machines that we use to print onto the seeded paper won’t accept PMS inks. They use 4-color process print techniques. We can get pretty close on most colors, but there are some Pantone colors which just don’t translate well to CMYK. If you’re concerned about a specific color, please be sure to note this on your order so we can test the color for you.

Let the seed paper be the hero.

Remember, you’ve chosen to use very special paper for your piece. The actual medium itself is special before your message even gets printed onto it. Don’t underestimate the power that paper with seeds in it can have to further your earth-friendly message.
Keep these 10 tips in mind, and you’ll help us to help you make the best seeded paper product you can get.

For questions about any of these, please email josh@bloomin.com.

50 new toys!

This year Bloomin’ donated 50 brand new, cool toys to the emergency Family Assistance Program  EFAA in Boulder. It was really moving to see all the needy families over there this time of year. According to the program director, all of the donated toys will be going to Boulder cnty kids who would have otherwise gone without a holiday gift. We would encourage anyone and everyone to find a way to get out and give back to their community in some small way this holiday season. Lots of Boulder County families remain in need year round, and this group really seems to serve our community well.  So… “give it away, give it away, give it away now”! Anthony Kadis – Red Hot Chile Peppers.

If you’d like to contact EFAA regarding volunteer opportunities, please contact their  Community Resources Manager, Shalon Atwood Shalon@efaa.org or call 303-951-7663 for more information on volunteering.

Don

ongrats to all the veterans that have served in our military forces, and specifically to those who are now  valuable members of our bloomin team, and. I know John, our production manager, and Shannon, our recently promoted papermaking sergeant, enjoyed their free steak at Applebees, (along with over 1,000,000 other vets) this Veteran’s Day.  Throughout our 16 years, we’ve found the work ethic and get it done mentality of those who have served to be second to none. Thanks to all of those who have served and are serving to keep the dream alive. You Rock.

Don

On Friday November 6th, we gathered toNorman tribute video celebrate Norman’s wonderful spirit and remember his very special life. He will be missed but never forgotten.

This is a video of Norman’s last recorded Dance on his Birthday in September. He was an expert on the fine details you would see michael Jackson performing on stage.

Norman, we love and miss you more than you could ever know. Thanks for the gift of your friendship over all these years.

Today was a really hard day at Bloomin’ – the hardest day we have ever known in our company’s 16 years. Our longest standing employee of 13 years, Norman Tankersley, passed away during the night at 42 years of age. Norm was  differently abled and shared his gifts with all of us in immeasurable ways. He will be missed forever by everyone he touched. He helped us all appreciate the small things and live in the moment. He greeted his coworkers each day with bear hugs and announced his arrival with boisterous ramblings over the company intercom system. He loved being a part of our team and dreaded the arrival of his bus at the end of each day. New acquaintances were often surprised by his enthusiastic handshake or romantic kiss on the back of the lucky ladies’ hands. He loved laughing out loud at our missteps, fumbles, and stumbles throughout the day, reminding everyone not to take themselves too seriously. He has been there for all of us through the good times and the bad, helping to keep everything in perspective, like no one else possibly could. We will miss him and will never forget him. We are grateful for the unselfish gifts he shared and the lessons he unknowingly (or knowingly) taught us each day. We love you Norman. We  miss you Norman!

Norm Tankersley 1966-2009

Wanting to get a sneak peak of the 2009 Bloomin’ Holiday Promotions? Come check us out at the ASI Holiday show in Las Vegas – booth 1216, at the Sands Convention center Wed and Thurs 9/16-17th. Don and Abby will be on hand to answer questions and fill you in on some of our holiday seed paper products launching at the show. It’s the first ever Holiday only ASI show, and we’ve got some of our own “first ever” Bloomin Holiday promotional items adding to the buzz. Hope to see you in Vegas!

Steve Porsborg, our seed paper making facility guru (i.e. manager) is pictured here holding a sheet of seed paper utilizing our newest process for manufacturing flat 4-color process printable paper. We can now print 4-color on most custom seed mixes (small seeds only of course)! Making nice, flat seed paper sheets with high germination rates is what we continue to do best. Still made from 100% recycled paper and flat enough to go through our inkjet printers, our seed papers continues to be the greenest and growin’est.

You asked for it, and now we’ve got it! Small batch 4-color print runs on custom seed papers (including parsley, chives, basil, grass, carrots, lettuce, and more) are now available! Of course we can always letterpress print on any of our papers with 1 or 2 colors for that old world debossed look.

We continue to find new and better ways of doing things! Innovation is alive and well at Bloomin’ and remains the secret to our 16 years of growth.

We made this paper for a promotion this spring. It was a 2″ x 3.5″ orange seed paper card embedded with carrot seeds and letterpressed with black soy ink. You gotta love the old-world debossed look that the letterpress stamps in the the seed paper. A couple of months later we see the photo below come through. We love seeing our paper grow even more than we like to look at it and touch it.

Here is a cool project we recently did for Clorox. We produced 120,000 pieces in less than 3 weeks time along with everything else we do here. It’s a twist in our regular PP product (4 x 5 two-part postcard). The card was printed on Mohawk 100% recycled cardstock made with wind-energy. The green wildflower seed paper was handmade here in Boulder, Colorado. Like always, Bloomin’s paper has the highest germination rate in the industry (this paper will grow like mad!). Guaranteed!