I wasn't sure about putting this here or show and tell but decided there was enough project info to put it here!
I am excited to share my holiday cards for this year. Originally, I had intended to do a reverse print and have a letterpress printer print them. However, I ran out of time (as I often do)! And so didn't allow enough time for the printer. I did have enough time though to have a plate made thanks to the super fast turn around by Elum Designs (
http://www.elumdesigns.com/). Elum also had no problem making the plates from my photoshop file. (Darn Illustrator! I will conquer you yet!)
A special thank you, though to Boxcar Press
http://www.boxcarpress.com/. Their blog is amazing and their customer service is great. I know I would not have had nearly the results without their fabulous blog posts on using the L Letterpress - here:
http://www.boxcarpress.com/letterpress-machine/ and here:
http://www.boxcarpress.com/blog/tag/l-letterpress/.
When the L Letterpress came out a lot of printers were up in arms that it would degrade the quality of letterpress. But I am impressed and pleased with how some have embraced it and have gone above and beyond in helping others learn how to use it to its best potential!
So, now for the fun part. I did the calligraphy (including the snowflake flourish) and then scanned it into Photoshop. I sent the file off for a plate. Here is the plate:
I did like the tutorial said and used the edges as a guide. This was SOOO important in helping ink better! Last time I didn't do this and it made a HUGE difference!
I also made a guide for the paper. This made it so easy!
I took the tutorial very literally and used a very small amount of ink:
Turns out, it wasn't enough.
So I tried again with more ink:
And voila:
Closeup:
Not as consistent as a professional printer would do, but I was extremely pleased! This was also a test for me to see how fine I could go and still maintain lines. You can see the lines of the snowflake are slightly smudged together. I don't mind but for a client, I would caution against going that fine.
How they were mailed out after adding a few touches: