Faux Letterpress

I just used some cheap 140lb watercolor paper from Michaels.

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This is SO lovely! I too love how you blended the colors together. What a beautiful thing.

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That is undeniably excellent in every way. Lovely work, totally gonna steal that technique someday.

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Awesome job. This looks fantastic.
I’ve had a few people ask about doing some letterpress designs, but I haven’t got around to testing it.
Thanks for sharing.

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This is gorgeous cynd11! The color blending is especially nice.

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Looks better than store-bought! Your friends and family are in for a wonderful surprise.

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I think my favorite part of all of this is how you lay it out in a way that makes it seem practical. The strength of creativity and skills accumulated in this forum is amazing. Sure, I could go search elsewhere for these sorts of tips and tricks, but how would I have even thought about this before someone mentioning it? It’s all in one handy place, and then we have others bouncing ideas off of one another making new possibilities happen. I find myself rechecking posts to see if people have added anything to the OP.

Great work, @cynd11, seriously.

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Epic FAIL!

You made it TOO WELL! :smile: Nobody’ll ever know you made it yourself! ::smile:
Absolutely gorgeous work!

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Very nice @cynd11
You’ve confirmed a process I had only guessed might work. Thanks for the pictures and process documentation. Look forward to trying.

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Oh wow you have just opened up a whole new level of “stamping” AWESOME!!

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However you accomplished it, I love how you shaded from one color to the next :star_struck:

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I have also read that you can use the laser on specially prepared silicone-on-aluminum plates to do hot stamping for foil. Has anyone else tried that?

It requires foil and a hot stamping machine, but this is a broad group of artists and maybe someone has tried it.

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Wow—this is amazing! Did you etch the letters into the backer board too to help you place them when gluing them back on? I’m imaging have to place all those individual letters…yikes!

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And @cynd11, steps things up a notch.

That card is beautiful! Just lovely work.

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No, actually I applied some masking to the whole piece right after the cutting, which helped keep all the pieces (which fortunately did not drop down to the honeycomb tray) together, then carefully picked everything up and placed it on the backer board. Then I weeded out the pieces I didn’t need (centers of letters etc). Then weeded off the masking (whew!) before removing the outside waste piece from the cutting. When I needed to flip things over to apply glue I used another temporary board on the other side.

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Thanks for that workflow! Difficult but effective :sunglasses:

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Yeah I’m looking up the definition of letter press and I think there’s nothing ‘faux’ here about it. Seems all legit to me. maybe they want to say “wood block letterpress” as opposed to the metal casted type from old days?

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Here’s where I think a traditional letterpress artist would take issue with what I did. Because I applied pressure using a Big Shot Pro, which is a diecutting machine, there was too much pressure applied to the top and bottom of the image and it cut too deeply as a result. I’m not 100% happy with that. So I think on my next inking I will instead use my husband’s vulcanizer (it’s kind of like a heated hydraulic press) which should give me more even control over the pressure.

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Ah! That makes sense. Thanks for the instructions!

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This is exactly the kind of thing I will be using my glowforge for if I ever see it. I’m an illustrator and have spend years working with block prints. Having a machine that cuts my blocks for me is a dream.

Looks fantastic

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