I've spent a bit of time in the past couple of days drawing up designs for plates (and possibly my wedding invites). The above green is the main colour for my wedding palette, and a sneak peek at the 'look & feel' of the designs I'm thinking of.
Paul from Parkes Prestige Press has been working with a similar swirly artwork of mine for the past couple of days. Today he produced a test photopolyer plate, but wasn't entirely happy with the results. He's posting it to me to have a look.
Tonight's my night off from printing, which, of course, has lead me to researching on the net again. If I get too inspired, I might just have to go print something. In the meantime, here's some goodies.
Videos
YouTube has some great letterpress videos, especially for someone who's never seen a press in action. I found the following videos really useful when I decided that I wanted to know more about letterpress:
and just out of interest, a short film from Etsy Artist of the Month, Moontree Press about
binding your own little booklets.If you haven't already discovered it, have a look at Moo cards (http://www.moo.com/). Not only can you create your own cards and sticker books from your own site, such as flickr (http://www.flickr.com/) but they have existing designs that you can have printed as well. How does this benefit the letterpresser? Some of the Moo designs are colour sets (http://www.moo.com/designs/designers/colourlovers/) which are a palette of inspiration (ha ha, sigh).
And look! They even have one that's my wedding colour scheme!
Ink issues
I've been having problems with ink getting pushed out of the impression on the prints I've done so far. It leaves a subtle dark 'glow' of ink around the letters. Is this because the impression's too deep? Too much ink? Wrong type of paper? Erin, on her Adventures in Letterpress blog, noted that it might be the oil based ink.
4 comments:
I've had that ink problem...for me it was because I was using too much ink. I find that I only need the smallest little smear and it does 100 prints (or more depending on the subject). Another cool link for videos is:
http://www.swayspace.com/letterpress/
Scroll down and some of what looks like pictures are actually videos and really helpful. :)
My wife had a problem with ink spread on her latest project, along with incredibly finicky packing setup.
What fixed was this: she started out with five layers of masking tape on her rails. She consulted with a friend and wound up adding another five layers for lighter inking on the plate and more packing for a harder hit. Big improvement.
I had a look at Swayspace, Megan. They're great videos.
Adam, that's a good idea, makes sense. Will have to experiment with that myself.
Sometimes it's the rollers hitting the type too hard, as well.
I've been away all weekend, and just wanted to say that I'm really impressed with how far you've come!
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