Kloe & Julian

Recently we worked with Kloe and Julian on their fun 3-colour invitations and envelopes. Most designs that we work on are one or two colour, but I must say that extra third colour really gives a design a bit of 'oomph'.

We played with a few different concepts for Kloe and Julian, but this one really fit their vineyard garden wedding perfectly. The three colours matched three of the five bridesmaids' dresses and are so vibrant and happy. Yellow makes for such a fantastic accent colour and it really should be used more! The violet really stands out too, although the violet ink and I are NOT friends. I don't know what it is, but I always make such a mess with purple and violet. Good thing it's always such a beautifully vibrant colour in the end.

A treasure-trove of ink

I had a few boxes of miscellaneous items arrive with Plan B, and I still haven't got through them all. I've just opened one of them now to find 44 cans of inks, deglasers and varnishes. Some are probably dried right out and useless, but there's definitely a few in there that I'll be using a lot.

I just love the variety of old labels though. Also note the "Collies Ink" label - from the research I've done, it looks like they're the company that manufactured my Collie's Paragon press.

How temperature affects printing

When the Collies Paragon first arrived, it was the middle of summer and stinking hot. Although I tried to print mainly in the evenings, sometimes it was 35C while I was in the studio. I was worried that the high temperatures would make printing difficult, but the press seemed to love it. The ink was almost fluid at times, and I didn't have to use much at all to get a good even coverage.

It's now winter, and I'm printing in temperatures of down to 3C or so. The ink takes a long time to warm up on the press, but still covers the ink disc evenly. However, I think some of my plate inking issues may be due to the cold temperatures (as well as other problems I'm addressing). It's quite thick and not very tacky at all, which makes it a little harder to spread and take to the plate.

Of course, humidity plays a big part too. In summer, if there's a storm hanging around, I won't even try to print. The plates curl up off the base, which present a danger of them being wrapped into the rollers. Now I'm avoiding printing during winter rain. Humidty causes grief for both plates and paper - letterforms can peel off the photopolymer, serifs can break off, and paper can swell, causing registration nightmares. If you have a job with tight registration, try to print it all in the one day, or on days with similar conditions.

So my preference is definitely summer printing. It may be stinking hot and you'll be sweating away, but the ink will distribute nicely. Another things I've noticed, in winter my hands get so cold that it's hard to grab paper as I feed it in and out of the press. At least in summer my hands are grippy.
:)
In an ideal world, I'd be setting up a more permanent home for Poppy, with ample space, lots of natural lighting, shelves upon shelves for storage, and a dehumidifier and heater. I can dream, can't I?

Solving inking problems

Apologies for those using slow internet, but it's been a while since I've put some photos up.

I had a serious printing session today. I've been having problems inking plates and was determined to get to the bottom of it. Here's what my prints were turning out like (click to enlarge):


Either the ink cut-off midway, or there were bare strips. Such a basic printing issue, but no matter what I did I couldn't resolve it. So I bought new gloves that don't have any powder (to avoid trucks slipping on rails, or powder getting on rollers), and I clean everything up with turps and new rags: trucks, rollers, plates, base, rails and ink disc. This way I knew nothing had oil or powder on it. The trucks wouldn't slip on the rails or plate.

These are my trucks, taken off the rollers to have a thorough clean. Below shows how they slide back and forth on the rollers (which they don't do on the press).

New gloves:

Taylor, the pressdog. She sleeps in her kennel next to the press, and on hot days she sits in her tub of water while I print.

My rails have vinyl tape wrapped tight at each end. I cleaned these off, and put the red PVC tape back on, as I've had set up for a while.

I recently found a large bolt that was loose as well, so I got right under the press and tightened it up. I ended up looking for it when the press started clunking on each impression. If this happens, firstly check to make sure that you haven't over-packed the platen. These presses are pretty hardy, but you don't want to strain them too much. Hard packing is optimal. Lots of soft packing just allow the type/plate to create an emboss on the back.

Cleaning everything thoroughly to remove oil, ink and dust, as well as readjusting the tape on my rails fixed my printing issues.

So if you are having trouble getting the rollers to ink up your plate, you need to check:

1. rollers are level their entire length, preferably with calipers,
2. plate and base are flat,
3. base is locked into chase flat (not one side higher or lower than other),
4. tape on rails is at proper height and are free of debris and oil, and
5. trucks are free of debris and oil.

Of course there are probably a dozen other things, but I'm still learning that myself, too.

I have a lot of people asking me about uneven inking problems on tabletop presses. This is even tricker to troubleshoot because of how easily the impression knobs can be adjusted. This old posting might be of help.

More photos. This is my oilcan. Not terribly exciting, but I highly recommend you aquire a good one if you have a standing press. I can usually find between 35-42 oil holes on the press, and some of them are quite hard to get at.

I bought a new pot o' gold today (wow, if only it were that easy). The exact gold that I was looking for was out of stock at Prestons, so I grabbed this Pantone 871 instead. Not really happy with how it turned out on my stock, it's very dull, more so than the silver is.

I learnt today that if you tap a hole in the middle of the lid, it's easier to remove it. When the lid is on, just put a bit of tape over it.

The gold looked great on the press:

Lastly, a big shoutout to Sarah in Sydney who rang today, Gina in Canada who's bought out my etsy shop (and I've already had people asking Where did they all go??), Donna in Brooklyn who I'm printing business cards for, and Helen from Pepperina Press who helped me last night on etsy.

Blossoming Poppy

I've been busy working on jobs for clients in the past week or so. First up is a job for Raquel, an artist who needed printed envelopes to house embroidered badges that she had designed. The envelopes needed to be 100% recycled kraft paper. I found Tudor makes these. The designed was printed from woodtype, which was composed and supplied by Ampersand Duck, which I was very thankful for!

The words were printed in a brown to match a photo. It had a little silver mixed in, but not quite enough to give it that metallic sheen.

It was a fun job to work on. Next week I'll be working on matching 2 colour postcards for Raquel, so stay tuned for details.

Two days ago I travelled up to Sydney to show a design studio my printing. There was much excitement about printing possibilities, and I can't wait to start working on jobs with them. Printing clients seem to be so much nicer than design clients! I won't tell you much about the job I'm quoting on for them now, but it involves gold, blind debossing, and lots of ornate swirls. Right up my alley. Will post more once I've started work on that one.

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.

Uneven base

Ok, so it's the base that's uneven. It sinks slightly in the middle. I borrowed my brother's calipers (which are so fantastic, I've just bought a set on ebay), and found a height inconsistency of 1.04 mm.

Would love to buy a proper base, but I just found out that I finish my job in 4 weeks, so financially, it's just not going to happen at this stage. So for now, I have to work with what I've got. I spent a night sanding the high points of the base down, measuring every 0.01 of a millimetre. Works much better, but still far from perfect.

First run from yesterday, print now mounted with spray adhesive, printed with unmixed Pantone Red:

I'm happy enough that it's a clearly defined low area. Much better than being a few areas. Just to make sure it's definetly the base and nothing else, I temporarily pasted paper strips behind the patch, then did a second run:

So it's definetly the base.
Spent a bit more time yesterday making it a less dodgy paper fix, so I could get a little closer to printing the actual cards (yes that's right, 3 colours in one day!). I still have a problem spot, but it's not base-related this time. Low point on the photopolymer?

Also, still working on getting just the right green to match the sample from the bridesmaid's dress (that's the sample up the top of the pic):

And here's where I'm up to. Still patchy, and some uneven inking to boot, but it's getting better each attempt:

Problem with this print is that even though the ink is quite heavy, it's still very patchy when it was more even in earlier prints. Augh, can't win. Can't get any bite in the paper either.

I've got a whole day to work on it again now (and if I can't find a job in the next 4 weeks, I'll have 7 full days a week to work on it... sigh).