![]() With my brayer loaded with ink, I very lightly rolled it over my letterpress plate. I then rolled it out with my brayer until I had a very, very light coating of ink on the brayer. I took a small amount of ink from my can, mixed it until it was smooth on my first acrylic piece with my ink knife and then transferred a very small amount onto the second acrylic piece. I got a 6in soft rubber brayer and was very glad that I did. The brayer that comes with the kit is also so small that is it absurd. Honestly, the piece of acrylic that came with my kit was ridiculously small and I would have saved myself some headaches if I had used something larger since I barely had any room to hold it. I had the one that came with my kit and then I used the back of one of my quilting templates for the other one. When printing you need to use a very, very small amount of ink so you should have two acrylic pieces, one to work some ink until it is soft with an ink knife and the other to roll out with your brayer. ![]() I also liked the fact that rubber ink was slow drying to make clean up and printing easier. Honestly, it was expensive but now I have a lifetime of navy ink since it comes in a two pound can. I choose to order deep navy blue rubber ink from Boxcar Press. I aligned my plate on the top board using the grid lines. The letterpress kit is basically two hinged acrylic boards that you crank through a die cut machine. I saved the blue film to reapply after I was done. Next, I pulled the blue film off the plate to expose the sticky backing on my invitation plate. ![]() ![]() The reply card is on the left and my invite is on the right. I used a regular scissors to cut apart the elements from each other. Below is a portion of the plate that I received with my invitation on the top right and the reply card on the bottom right. They also take PDF and EPS files as well. ![]() I simply created a log-in and uploaded my Adobe Illustrator file. Honestly, I realized after getting my plate I could have packed things together a little more tightly than I did. Since you pay for the total area of the design and there is a minimum size I decided to fill up the blank spaces with other words like "Happy Birthday" and "Thank you" as well as some cute icons for later use in card making. For fonts I used Bickham Script Pro for our names, Times New Roman in italic for "and" and "reception to follow" and Copperplate for the rest of the wording. My first step was to create a design for my invitation and reply card on Adobe Illustrator. With renewed enthusiasm, I decided to go for it and ordered a custom letterpress plate from Boxcar Press. At first I was a little discouraged since the reviews weren't so great, but I found that some people had success using modifications with a tutorial from Boxcar Press. I did a little searching around on the internet and came across an at home option with the Lifestyle Crafts Letterpress Combo Kit. I looked at my local paper/bookbinding shop to try to do a traditional class where you set your own type, but nothing was available in the time frame I needed. I love how letterpress looks so I really wanted to try making my own letterpress wedding invitations. ![]()
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