Dueling Wedding Invitations, Part One

 

Welcome to the pretty picture edition of the Gamewell Press blog (okay picture content is pretty - I need photography lessons). As you may know, I've spent the better part of the last month and half printing 2 different wedding invitations for 2 couples. Having a day job and being an amateur can cause things to drag on a bit. These couples are both wonderful and friends of mine, but their invitations are incredibly different. It was kind of interesting to print them back to back since it made the contrast so apparent. And I felt all versatile and shit.

First up are the invites of Jen & Hooper. I already posted about their save the dates, so you may remember all that makeready fun. They'll be getting married in Central Park at the beginning of April, and we should all pray that it's warm and sunny. They are both wonderful artists, and Jen designed the invitations and accompanying material with guidance from me about what's best suited for letterpress printing. She also had some non-letterpress printed inserts that used the same types of images. It was really fun shooting ideas back and forth with her, and I hope we collaborate again in the future.

Jen liked the fluorescent white Crane's Lettra a lot, so that's what we used and the gray envelopes are from Paper Access. It is all printed from Owosso magnesium plates in black ink, except the birds, which I printed with my brand new (Merry Christmas!) silver ink. The envelopes (and save the dates) I printed on my 5x8 Kelsey, and the invitations and RSVPs were printed at The Arm, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, on the nicest Vandercook I have ever seen. If you need to rent press time in NYC, I can't recommend the Arm highly enough. Dan is a great, helpful guy, and he's very flexible - offering late hours, etc. I got there around 5:30 and left around 11 or 11:30, and there was still someone else there printing on a Pilot. As someone who has a day job, works best at night anyway, and doesn't really like to leave the house on the weekends, this was much appreciated.

I banged out the wedding invitations and RSVPs all in one night, and since they were on a Vandercook, it was pretty simple and went smoothly. The only thing I really have to note is that when printing on a Vandercook, remember to leave an extra inch on your paper for the gripper bars, etc. Um yeah. That's all I really feel like saying about that.

The magnesium plates were each mounted on two pieces of wood, and on each, one piece was a bit thinner than the other. I solved that problem by putting one sheet of bond paper under the lower area. Easy peasy. Gotta love the Vandercooks.

Doesn't that picture look kinda like the opening of Star Wars? Art deco Star Wars. As you can see, there's A LOT of impression - a bit more than I would prefer - I'm not liking the crushed paper in some spots, but it's Jen's wedding, so Jen decides. That's what I think and I'm sticking to that. There's actually hardly any show through on the back of the paper - none for the birds and just the faintest outline of the text body, so that's good. We used almost the same amount of packing for the birds and the text - I think I took one sheet out for the text and for my druthers, it would have been best to take one more out, but it's bride approved. The RSVPs have less impression since they're two sided.

The envelopes were rather tricky registration-wise. It didn't occur to me to flatten the envelopes until it was too late, and there was NO WAY I was going to do any of that crazy, multi-layer envelope makeready. The rubber band did a pretty good job of keeping everything flat. Setting gauge pins can be challenging at the best of times - the Kelsey's platen does not open flat like a C&P, so it can be rather difficult to get your hand in there to measure straight lines, check straightness, or cut straight with a knife. I think I end up with ink on my hands at least 50% of the time and once I was peering in so intently that my forehead got a nice stripe from the ink disk. At this point I try to get them as straight as possible and just measure the test prints (sometimes over and over again). You can see above that the lines I drew on the tympan do not exactly correspond to the actual gauge pin placement It wasn't hard exactly, it just took a while to get the angle exactly right.

 

Maybe you can't tell from the photos, but the paper is rather textured and a bit sparkly, so it was kind of difficult to get good coverage in every spot. Or so I thought! The sparkles and texture did interfere a bit, but I really thought it was going quite badly - there were all these lines in the rabbit. I knew, knew! that the packing and ink were good (adding more ink wouldn't have been possible what with the outline font) and I had done spot makeready on the image, and I was getting a little beyond frustrated. Then I looked at the plate and realized again that those lines were in the plate. On purpose. Yup.

Printing while tired can cause impaired brain function and be hazardous to your temper. There were a lot of very late nights in the course of these two wedding invitation sets (especially the 2nd group), and they were each (at about 75 and about 110-120 consecutively) the longest print runs I've done yet. Great, fantastic learning experiences, but oh my god I'm so excited to just screw around with little projects for me for the next month or so.

Comments

[Rich]

I think they came out really good. And I especially like the bird cut on the RSVP where it looks like it's soaring low over the water.

Did you have a probem with the weight of the body of the envelope making the envelope fall off the platen since there's really nothing there to support it? Or did you add a chipboard, etc. extension to the platen to support it? Well, one way or the other your new 6x10 will have a bigger platen and will make that kind of thing easier.

I'm really surprised at Owosso regarding the base of that plate. Not that I have any experience with them but making small, flat blocks of wood is not exactly rocket science. They either need to use better quality wood or have better quality control, or both. Is part of the wood white-ish in color as oppossed to red-ish? Cherry is the usual wood for this and the red is the heartwood and the white the sapwood. The heartwood is more stable. If they mixed the two that might account for movement (swelling and shrinking) variations.

Moving the Lettra sheets over a source of steam (e.g. tea kettle spout) for a minute before printing will soften them enough so that the paper won't crack/crush. I keep a small hotplate in my shop and a teakettle just in case I have trouble with heavy stock. Of course, this rarely is an issue with the amount of impression I strive for, and the fact that all of my paper so far is "found" stock and I have no Lettra.

Can't wait for Part 2!

Rich

[Maggie]

Rich, you are exactly right about the wood blocks - one half was read and the other white, and the white half was lower in both cases. I've used Owosso for a few different things, and this is the first time I've had a problem. It wasn't a big deal to level it, but that's what made me really start looking into making some use of my honeycomb base. Well that, and the fact that I don't really have room to store many wood mounted plates.

That's a good idea about the teakettle, I'll have to try that sometime.

The envelopes did stay on the platen fine with the rubber band holding them down. I think I just had two where they slid out and I misprinted. I am really looking forward to having a bigger area to work with. Hopefully I'll ink up the new press tomorrow - there have been ongoing roller hook spring issues that have prevented it so far.

[elisabeth]

They look fabulous Maggie, well done. When do we get to see Part 2?

[Maui Weddings]

Very nice.I really like it.Thanks.

[marriage]

I like this invitations so cute,good you shared this. :)

winnie

[marriage philippines]

Simply beautiful, i mean! This would make an awesome invitations. :)

mitsy