Concepts and cards

I've finally got the chance this weekend to sit down and get some serious design and printing work done. First on the cards are my two wedding designs, and then printing two 2-colour business card designs for Judy and Kate. Business cards are a fun and quick job to do on the press, so I'm looking forward to them.

These are the stock for the cards, sitting in the afternoon sun, all guillotined and ready for printing:

Paper

When I first got my Adana I did a lot of research and experimentation to see what papers worked best. I needed to find my own 'house' stock. It seems that most of the American letterpressers are using Crane's Lettra, a beautiful pillowy stock designed especially for letterpress. I bought a few cards from the US printed on Lettra so I could see what it was like for myself. Unfortunately, no Australian company stocks Lettra in large sheets.

I found that Arches BFK Rives is a very close match to Lettra. In fact, it's a little smoother, be still 100% cotton rag. I ended up buying a roll of Rives and I was rather pleased with myself - until I realised how difficult it was to work with a roll of paper instead of flat sheets. I annoyed one printer by asking them to guillotine the curvy sheets I'd cut off the roll.

So I still have a fair bit of the roll left, but without being able to guillotine it easily, I'm looking for flat sheets of Rives now. The two best places to buy Rives:

Neil's Art Store - Melbourne.
Melbourne Etching Supplies - Melbourne.

Best to watch out for sales (none at the moment, bugger) and buy up big when they're on. Big thanks to Ampersand Duck for pointing me towards Neil's.

I may be wrong and there may be a better (and cheaper) stock out there, but for now I'll be sticking with Rives.

New goodies

The focus has been more on supplies than prints lately, but I promise there'll be a lot more printing happening soon.

Today's goodies include new paper, calipers and ink.

Paper.
1.06m x 18m roll of 300gsm BFK Rives white.
I've never spent so much money on paper in my life, but considering my job finishes up in a week, I thought I'd buy in bulk now so I don't have to worry about it for a while again. Also, buying it like this, instead of by sheet from the local art supply store, saved me about $140 - about 35% off I think.

Calipers.
Been borrowing my brother's set for a while now, so I was happy when these finally arrived from ebay. They were about 75% off retail, so another bargain. Very useful for troubleshooting uneven plates and bases. Also good for measuring paper thickness.

Ink.
Pantone Process Blue and transparent white. Blue, because the 072 Blue I bought previously was darker than what I wanted for my giraffe print. Trans white because... well, everyone else is using it and I'm not sure why. Hey, it was cheap.


After a bit of a play with ink, I now see the beauty of trans white. I wasn't expecting a goo that resembled caramel when I opened up the pot, but mixing it with a little blue I realise the usefulness of this ink. It'll come in handy when I want a washed-out version of a colour. Will try printing with it tomorrow.

For those playing at home, there's a great forum on Briar Press about inks. It's incredibly informative, and explains oil-based, rubber-based, alternative inks, Pantone Matching System, and mixing colours really well.

Another great resource is this PDF from fameorshame.com. It's primarily about printing on a Vandercook, but has some excellent information about inks, colour and additives on page 10. Also has a good resource list and suggested reading list. Even if you don't print on a Vandercook, have a read.

Paper, bases, guillotine, test prints.

Today's little achievements:

I've ordered a roll of BFK Rives 300gsm white from Melbourne Etching Supplies. THEY HAVE A SALE ON! Nothing like spending one of your last paychecks on paper. It'll be a couple of weeks before that arrives.

I've found someone that can make a metal base for me! WOO HOO! Tomorrow I'll be taking the base that I borrowed from &Duck (yes, I still have it. I'm bad) to Greg to illustrate what I need, then getting a quote for how much it'll cost me. Oh, and &Duck: I'll let you know how much they are in case you need some. I'll try to set it up so it has a magnetic top, and find a way to put a metal base on my polymers to prevent curling - perhaps a metal sheet the size of the base, which I mount the plate onto? I've never seen a metal-backed polymer before, so I'm guessing here.

Oh, and a friend of mine who works at an offset printers can organise guillotining of my next set of cards - phew! Still got sore fingers from cutting on Saturday.

Now, to today's printing. Here's a couple of pics of more test prints. They're much better than yesterday's, but I'm still not happy enough to run the final version. Stinking hot weather doesn't help either. It's going to be so nice to print all day and have time to work things out.