My first Christmas cards on the letterpress! Now that everyone has theirs, I won't be spoiling any surprises by showing them here.
I printed these on my trusty Chandler & Price Old Style letterpress using polymer plates I designed myself.
The midnight blue and the silver are printed on separate print runs (and separate days, as it turned out) with a complete press clean-up and oiling in between.
Nothing like some silver ink on the press to get things feeling festive...
Special care has to be taken with two-colour jobs, to make sure the registration is right. A little misalignment will have the elements of the design printing in the wrong places, and that's never a happy thing.
But these worked really well! After a bit of fiddling round with the gauge pins to get the registration spot on, we were away.
Last step: print the press name and web site on the back (being careful, again, to keep the weight of the impression from showing through on the other side).
And ta-da! A whole stack of shiny letterpress happiness!
2 comments:
Congratulations, Helen, on all you've accomplished with your C&P. You are lucky to have the Dads and the support of your hubby, too. I'm entering the world of letterpress on my own. I was widowed thirty years ago as a young mother, taught for 30 years, and retired early. Was looking for my next life, as it were, and am now the happy owner of a C&P Pilot. I'm lucky it already works - I just needed new rollers, which I got from Fritz at NA Graphics. It needs grippers, but I can get away without them.
I've never used gauges for lining up and holding my paper; my teacher didn't use them, but I think I need to learn. Thanks for your blog. It's a beginning for me. I also looked at the Boxcar Press demo.
Best wishes!
Jody Kenney
Your story has inspired me to print something on my CP 10 x 15. I've had it for over 5 years now and still it sits idle.
I MUST try something! I am a traditional graphic designer by trade with little or no mechanical expertise.
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