Emma & Bear business cards hand letterpressed on Arches 300lb cotton paper. Martha Stewart Aquamarine Crystal Ink.
Okay, I said that I’d show you if the letterpress turned out okay. I must also say that I didn’t build the letterpress like I said that I would (but I think I will…) and I’ve just been using a standard tabletop clamp vise as a pressing mechanism. This is okay for small projects (like these business cards), but for larger projects, there isn’t enough pressure distributed from these clamps on my little platen to make an evenly distributed image.
Some things I’ve learned from doing this:
1. Need something to distribute the pressure throughout. Bigger platen, more pressure (ideally something between 2-6 tons — bottle press?)
2. Stamp ink is not going to cut it. Will need Van Son ink.
3. Get an ink brayer. This will keep ink from getting on other parts of my plate, and if it does, clean it up better as to not press unwanted colors onto my cards. Notice the the way the ink bleeds on the paper causing fuzzy edges when it should be sharp? Both an ink brayer and better ink will eliminate this (hopefully).
4. Printed on Arches 300lb paper, but would like a thicker, stiffer paper in the future.
5. Make photopolymer plates in a standard size exactly to specifications. (I ended up cutting it up to fit my project, which is the great thing about polymer plates — you can cut them with normal scissors.) Perhaps even plates with deeper relief would be nice.
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Emily! Your site is super cute :) I’m excited to read more haha is letterpressing hard?
Letterpressing is hard! It’s hard to get a consistent impression when you’re doing it like I did rather than on a real press. I hope to be able to do more of it in the future. I’ll let you know if I figure out a good way to do this! :)