The Art of Printing
We offer a selection of luxury printing methods along with our traditional digital printing for all of our stationery. Below we’ve included a quick guide to our printing methods to help you better understand our offerings.
Letterpress
YOU MAY BE ASKING, WHAT IS LETTERPRESS?
Letterpress printing is a form of relief printing, where a printing plate with text or graphics is inked by a set of rollers and then pressed onto a piece of paper. Our press Dahlia, is a Chandler & Price 8” x 12” new style letterpress, she gets all of her power from a foot powered treadle which means that we often get a good workout when it’s a printing day. With letterpress, each individual invitation is ran through the press one at a time, we take the time to make sure what every invitation is perfectly aligned resulting it a beautifully composed invitation.
With letterpress printing, each color is first mixed by hand to match your perfect color. If your print has multiple colors, each color will be ran on the press individually. So, if you have an invitation card with three colors, that piece of paper will be hand fed through the press a total of three times because we can only press one color at a time.
One of our favorite modern twists we love to include is a blind impression, this is essentially how it sounds. Instead of adding ink onto to the press, we leave it colorless and the plate presses into the paper resulting in a gorgeous deep blind impression.
Another unique thing about letterpress is that we often use cotton paper, this paper is created from the remnants from the textile industry. The cotton paper is not only a sustainable option but with the properties of it, it creates that pillowy impression that modern letterpress is so famous for.
Did you know we offer two kinds of foil printing?
The first kind of foil printing we offer is the traditional hot foil stamped printing. This technique is similar to letterpress, printing die is made and impressed onto a piece of paper. Where this differs from letterpress is the mechanics of the machine, hot foil uses a metal die that is heated up. The foil gets sandwiched between the paper and the metal die which results in the final metallic look of foil invitations. This process is more hands on and therefore tends to be more expensive of a printing method.
The second type of foil printing we offer is digital foil, the process for this is composed of printing a section in 100% black and using a toner activated foil that fuses to the surface when heated. This gives a similar look to the standard foil printing, but tends to be a little bit more budget friendly. The trade off with digital foil, is the type of paper that we can use. With traditional hot foil printing, we can use any kind of paper that you could think of. But, with digital foil we have to be more careful and select a smooth finished paper so that the foil application will adhere correctly without any fallout.
Foil Printing
Digital Printing
Digital printing is our standard printing method, we work with a tried and true vendor that produces rich and vibrant colored prints. Digital printing can be paired with other printing methods as well. If you’re interested in watercolor florals on your invitation suite but still want that extra touch of luxury, we can include letterpress or foil printing for the text. Digital printing can also be used across a variety of papers, where letterpress may be limiting of the type of paper, digital printing shines.
White Ink Printing
I’m sure you already knew this, but standard printers can’t print white ink. Standard printers use a CMYK mix that allows for a wide range of colors to be created, however white is not one of those colors. We use a special printer equipped with a white ink toner that can produce a white ink ‘ghost’ print. We love using this method and often find one or more ways to include it in our invitations suites. One application where we often use this style of printing is on envelope return addresses. If we decide to go with a darker colored envelope, standard black digital printing will not work. So, the alternative is to use white ink to create a contrast between the dark envelope and the light addressing. White ink printing is also a great option when working with a darker colored stock of paper for any of the invitation suite pieces. The result is always stunning and show stopper that everyone will talk about.
Interested in our printing services for your project?
We offer ala carte pricing for our printing services. Whether you are a brand, designer, or engaged couple, we can take your complete designs and print them using any of the printing methods listed above. For more information on pricing and availability, please fill out the form below. We can’t wait to hear from you!
