Hello We R Fans! Kimberly here with one of my favorite techniques! Letterpress has long been a look that makes my heart skip a beat. Letterpress is an inked impression. Its elegant, and oh, so fancy. Leave it to We R Memory Keepers to make creating letterpress easy and beautiful!
When you have these pretty letterpress plates, well, you have to make a set of cards! Not only are they lovely together, but they make a wonderful gift!
Begin by applying adhesive to the back of one of the letterpress plates. The sheets of double-sided adhesive come in the kit. For the smaller images, simply trim the adhesive to size.
Ink is then applied to the patterned side of the plate. When doing this letterpress technique, you MUST use a wet and juicy ink. Pigment ink works well, though the resin ink pad that comes in the Letterpress Kit is ideal as it reacts best with the cotton fibers in the letterpress paper. (You can also purchase resin ink pads separately in a variety of colors.) Dye-based inks will not provide the complete coverage needed for the letterpress impression.
You can apply the ink directly to the raised images, but I find that rolling a brayer into the pigment ink and then across the plate creates a more equal coverage. It also keeps ink from getting in undesired places.
Using the Evolution Advanced, I rolled the plate through the machine. I found that rolling through a couple of times made a better impression. Cool part about these letterpress plates is, they will fit through most standard manual die cutting machines!
After each impression, the inked plate was cleaned off. I loved the adhesive sheets for this reason, the plate stayed in place as I cleaned it. Awesome!
After the backgrounds were finished, I repeated the process with the word hello. With the smaller pieces of letterpress paper, also included in the kit, I trimmed it down to fit. The lines on the base of the plates makes it easy to line the paper up each time.
The debossed and inked words are fantastic!
While I was having fun, I thought, I could letterpress envelope flaps!
I lined the edge of the envelope up with the edge of the letterpress plate. Once again, the lines of the base, allowed me to perfectly line up each envelope.
I cannot wait to send these cards to someone special. I hope they will enjoy sending them as much as I enjoyed making them!
Do you like the look of letterpress? Have you tried it? Who’s ready to give it a try?
Supplies:
We R Memory Keepers
- Letterpress Kit
- Evolution Advanced
- Mini Ink Pads, Set of 6