Belle Amour: Wedding Ideas Less of the traditional. More of the original.

Once upon a time I saw some beautiful cards where the print had been pressed into the paper. Much more gorgeous than any computer print I had ever seen I set about researching how to make prints just like this. The research led me to buying a letterpress (an Adana 8 x 5 to be exact) off eBay. After more research and repeated attempts at printing and wondering where I was going wrong and calls to Mr. Caslon and photographing the thing for him to find the faults… I finally discovered that whoever sold it to me had made some weird adjustments that rendered the bloomin’ thing useless (note: buying off eBay is not always a bargain).

So after all that, and a workshop with Tanya from Snap & Tumble (that was documented here) which made me want to print even more, I admitted defeat, traded in my rubbish Adana and bought a refurbished one. And today I am documenting my very first print. It’s not really wedding related but one day if I get good with it I hope to be sharing wedding-related prints with you. Today’s print is Christmas related though and we’re all in the mood for Christmas right?!

A pretty press

So here is my lovely letterpress (low lighting made for slightly fuzzy images I’m afraid)…

Printing plates

Back in the day prints were made using metal type, all arranged together and put into the black metal frame called the chase (below left). I still intend to print this way at some point, once I’ve bought some metal type, but today there is an easier and quicker way of printing. And that is to create your artwork digitally, send to a company that make photopolymer plates (seen below right) and either have them mounted onto wood at the correct height or stick them onto a metal base bought from Boxcar Press. I went for the latter option as this way the base can almost always remain in the chase and I just swap the sticky-backed plates over…

Ink it!

A few dots of ink (in a suitably Christmassy red) were placed on the ink disc and then the lever depressed enough times for the ink disc to be coated (it rotates slightly with each depression of the lever). Letterpress action shots!

I actually should have taken the next photo after the ink disc was inked up as this is when you’d put your chase, complete with design, in. So just imagine the disc is covered in ink please :)

And print…

And then comes the action of feeding in the paper, pressing the lever to bring the design up to the inked plate and releasing the lever to allow you to take your paper, freshly imprinted, out! Repeat as necessary.

They’re back!

Ta daaa! Cute Christmas cards!

All packed and ready to be sent out to the lucky recipients ;)

Sadly, I didn’t get the impression into the paper I was after but I believe this is due to the plates being quite soft, compared to a sample I was sent from Boxcar Press, (any lovely letterpress people out there in the UK know where to get harder plates please let me know!) In the olden days, however, an impression was actually considered poor printing and the plate was supposed to just kiss the paper. So for now I’m going to pretend the cards are exactly how I intended them to be. While I look for better plates :)

Debs