Hooley, Reception Invitation

My first print project on my new letterpress! I printed reception invitations for my wife and myself. I didn’t think it would be too difficult, so I picked a time-sensitive design that my wife was eager to have perfect. The marriage has remained intact, despite choosing this as my experimental first run.

I’d never run a table top platen before this. I was a little discouraged right off the bat because the rollers were over-inking the plate in non-raised areas. After an hour of monkeying around and reading some posts on Briar Press, I found some great advice and attached masking tape to the edges of the chase bed to raise the rollers to the perfect height.

Part of my need for the tape comes from using Boxcar plates without a Boxcar base. I’m using a glued-together set of particle board instead. I was pretty upset at first, not being able to get a solid inking, so I did a little drinking of some cheap, horrible beer, aka Budweiser.

Once I had the tape in place, and my anger sated, the prints came fast. I need to figure something else out for drying my prints though:

In the end I was able to get a sharp print and nice imprint.