Letterpressing for Christmas

For Christmas I have gone out on a limb.

I have got two magnesium plates made up to print our own personalised Christmas cards. One is the stamp I will be using on the backs of my cards with my logo and 'catch line' (Phoebe and the Letterpress, Custom letterpress papery things). The other was a Christmas message for the front cover of the card. I wasn't sure how well I would print with either of these, I was more worried about the logo stamp than the bigger Christmas stamp. But, it all felt a bit risky.

I thought the small font size, thin lines and detail in the fonts, namely rosewood, I chose for my logo stamp would give me issues. I remember when I was making my wedding invitations, the man who made my photopolymer plates, a Mr Sparrow, quite famous in letterpress circles, now sadly retired, warned me of the dangers of using small fonts. In fact I think I had to go up to a size 12 font before he would happily make my wedding invitation plates for me (maybe he was being cautious as I was a beginner). The stamps he made me printed very nicely, but I bemoaned the fact I didn't get the deep impression I was hoping for. I suspect this was more due to the hard card I was using than anything else. Edward, or Ted as he prefers to be known (brilliant name!), was a traditionalist and keen on the 'kiss' method as opposed to bashing the font forcefully into the paper. I remember him telling me that letterpress shouldn't leave any 'deep impression' on the paper other than the ink. I was confused as it was precisely this impression that had made me fall in love with letterpress. As I read more, I discovered two different views in letterpress. One is to leave the lightest kiss on the paper, and they other is to impress a deep 'debossing'. I personally love the debossed look. So, as I have progressed, I am always striving for the deepest impression I can muster, really thrusting those letters irretrievably into the page.

I started printing with my logo stamp and was pleasantly surprised. The impression, while not as deep as I like, was still fairly good and all my tiny fonts printed clearly, cleanly and legibly. Even the rosewood font came out perfectly. So I deemed this run a success. Good, that was the hard part over. Next I was moving on to my big Christmas block with large font using a variety of typefaces. This I thought would be easier as Ted had been so positive about large font. But NOOOOO! I cant seem to get the ink to transfer to the paper evenly let alone worry about the impression on the paper. I am double inking, and pressing 3 to 4 times and still I am getting problems with patchy ink particularly in the middle of the my stamp. I rollered the stamp myself thinking perhaps my rollers weren't getting at the stamp properly, I packed up the tympan in a variety of ways, I adjusted the impression bolts constantly and I still cant get it perfect. My husband has tried to reassure me that they don't need to be perfect because after all they are handmade, but it is driving me bonkers.

There are a few other options I can try to improve the prints but these all involve mess, something I wasn't prepared to undertake late last night. At the moment, I have the stamp sitting in the top corner of the frame thing (god, I really need to learn what everything is called already!), so I think I should try and move it into the middle to try and get a bit more control over where the impression bolts are affecting.

I have also been a bit dodgy and have been layering up my tympan in a haphazard fashion. I think I might need to take all of that apart and put it together properly. Other than that, im not sure what else I should do! Fingers crossed this works. If it doesn't, I am going to cry. Still they do look pretty cool, I particularly love the shade of red (one I got from Caslon when I purchased my Adana). It is lovely and bright and festive!

I have printed on 2 different papers - 

One was a Somerset

The other was thick watercolour paper cardstock

Here are some photos of that i have printed so far.

If i know you, you are probably going to get one in the mail. Sorry to ruin the surprise!

Nearly forgot, if you are interested in more about my letterpress, check out http://phoebeandtheletterpress.com