DIY: Handmade Letterpress Wedding Invitations

I love the look and feel of letterpress invitations and knew this was exactly what I wanted for my wedding in 2011. But, after a week spent searching the Internet for printers offering this service, I came to the realization that real letterpress invitations were just not in my budget. Since I don’t respond to “no” very well, I decided to look for an alternative. That’s when I discovered there was a craft letterpress machine out there (L Letterpress)! While it may not give you the same deep, crisp results as a real letterpress would (and it took way longer to print everything), I think it comes pretty darn close.

The first thing I did was order custom plates from a company called Boxcar Press (bonus: they even have a page with tips on using the L Letterpress).

I put all of my designs together on 2 8.5 x 11 .pdf files – you are going to be cutting the plates apart when they arrive so you can really cram as much onto 1 file as you want – just make sure you leave a small margin around each. I found that leaving a ¼ - ½ inch margin worked well – any more than that and you run the risk of getting unwanted imprints on your final products.

Because I’m a bit of a control freak, I also ordered big sheets (20 x 26) of paper with the intent to cut everything myself so the enclosures could stack exactly how I wanted them to. This step is optional; as I’m sure paper can be ordered in most common invitation sizes. The paper I used was from Crane & Co. – Lettra Letterpress 110lb. I put the colored diagrams together in excel with each square representing 1 inch so I could find the best way to cut each piece of paper with minimal waste.

Okay, now the paper and printing plates have been cut and placed onto the printing bed. I used double stick tape and some scraps to create borders for the paper so every invite is aligned correctly. Then I placed the plate face down on top of the invite, removed the adhesive backing and firmly closed the printing bed so it sticks to the top.

 

I started printing the actual invitations first, but have more pictures of the enclosure printing process so I'm going to start here for this tutorial's purpose.

The next thing I did was squeeze a bit of ink (no more than a dime sized blob!) onto a big piece of Plexiglass and spread it very thin with my roller. There is ink made just for the L Letterpress - it's a similar consistency to acrylic paint. You want to make sure you get a nice even coat on the roller; too much ink and the letters won’t be crisp, too little ink and you’ll have imprinted words with no ink in spots.

Now, LIGHTLY roll the ink onto the plates. I found that working side to side, rather than top to bottom worked best for me. The key is to keep the roller balanced and even – even a slight shift in pressure to one side could be noticed on the final product. You could also make “roller bearers” as mentioned in the Boxcar Press link above. This didn’t work for me – they wouldn’t stay in place and I ended up making a mess every time I removed them so I just inked with a steady hand and a slight sweeping motion. Make sure to wipe up any ink that got onto the printing bed or plate borders so it doesn't show on your final product! Baby wipes work well for this.

Carefully, close the printing bed – make sure you have a firm grip on it because the top has a tendency to wiggle and you don’t want the ink to smudge. Bring it over to your Cuttlebug/Epic Six/etc and roll it through. It may seem like it doesn’t want to go all the way through and you might hear some clanking sounds – don’t worry, the plates aren’t cracking – they are built to withstand much more pressure than this. Just keep rolling until it comes all the way through. Carefully, lift the lid and wah-lah! Beautiful deep letterpress invitations!

 

 

To do the actual invitations, I printed the orange part first, then switched the plates and ink and ran them through again with the pink.

I then used a corner punch to round the corners and stuck the invites to these gorgeous pink shimmery pocketfolds with some scrapbooking tape. The enclosures were stacked in size order and placed into the pocket. The pocketfolds were tied together with raffia and then I added a tag with our initials and wedding date and put the whole thing into another envelope for mailing.

One last thing - I am not sure if this is related to the fact that I was doing this in the middle of July, or if it's just a characteristic of the ink - but you may need to clean your ink surface and roller every 20 or so prints. I mean totally clean it - scrubbed with baby wipes looking like new again clean. I noticed that when the ink started getting too tacky and it became impossible to get a nice clean print and the only fix was wiping everything down and re-inking.