adventures in letterpress

I signed up for a letterpress class for the spring and it has brought me quite a bit of joy. Ever since I was researching wedding invites like a crazy person, I found that I love the look of the "letterpressed" invitations: the deep impressions into handmade paper with a beautiful ink and some sort of whimsical ornament or design to complement the overall appeal. In the end, mine were ink-jet printed, but I got to put them all together, but I'd like to think they were perfect.

So, since that time, I have come across more information on how one actually is able to make letterpressed items. Briarpress is this all-encompassing site that has all the info anyone could ever want on the subject. There is even a classifieds for searching out these old 100+ year old machines that are required for printing.

Back to my class, it is at this fabulous place, Pratt Fine Arts Center, where you pay money, receive no credit and are able to just create. But letterpress is more involved than I thought. First, our wonderful instructor, Lisa, crashed my reality of my precious ideal letterpress wedding invites as she HATES it when the paper is deeply imprinted and filled with too much ink. That, is simply, not truly, letterpress. Ok. Whoops. Guess I was wrong. That's ok, I was just worried about operating this huge old machine that is slightly quirky and in the mean time, trying not to have my fingers crushed.

Alas, I decided to come in during the one of the open studios to finishing setting my type (tiny little letters in various fonts that you have to put in opposite and upside down of how you actually read it).

Our first project was business cards. I printed mine during the open studio time and was quite proud of myself...until Lisa got to see them in class on Tuesday. My spacing looked off, one of the "l's" looked like it was set higher than the rest and inked too much. This is so much harder than it looks.

And that is why I am happy there are no grades.

But, next time, I'm printing on fabric. And I'll check my spacing.