These cards were letterpress printed on 220# arturo with Pantone match and matte metallic gold inks as a 1/1 business card for Phoebe. Phoebe is an excellent graphic designer and designed these cards for her branding collateral as an extension of her already awesome website.

I am a big fan of chevrons lately and am totally digging these wide set ones on the back of Phoebe’s card, how about you?

Edge painted with a custom mix strawberry ink, thanks Phoebe for being so excellent to work with! I loved how these turned out.

I’m just slightly infatuated with pantone, if you haven’t noticed. And this year the 2012 color of the year is Tangerine Tango! I love how the yellows are being infiltrated by the oranges now.

This was a wedding suite for a November wedding for Preeya. First off, she was SO fabulous to work with and had the most amazing mood board. (See at the bottom).

She was right on the money regarding color trends and the design was so fun to develop with her.

The suite was printed on 110# cotton paper, 2 inks, paired with gravel envelopes and dark gravel ink. Pieces included Invitation, Directions, Details and RSVP cards for the letterpress pieces, and then place cards and menu for digital pieces for the day of events. To price out an invitation suite like Preeya’s head over to the shop and customize your letterpress suite to your heart’s content!

Sized at 2×3.5″ and printed as an initial set of 250 (our minimum opening order for a set of custom or client submitted files) you can get an estimate for yourself here – we are already booking the press for February and March!

Her knocked out type was built up with extra stroke wight so that we could flood the press with a LOT of ink and by the time the letters started to fill in they were back to their “normal” weights. Serifed typography is a lot harder to work with and isn’t recommend (especially when small). If you want to knock out of a flood color area (knock-out meaning that the type is white or image area is white with ink surrounding it) then stick to imagery or typography that can be bulked with a stroke or two – that extra padding will make a huge difference in how your print turns out.

Another advantage to flooding with Vanessa’s cards was the selection of a lighter ink value for her cards. Lighter colors usually flood more evenly. The reason behind this is that all inks are transparent. With transparent inks, large coverage areas, and a textured paper can often have the flecks and texturing show through, lending a “salty” look to the pieces being printed. The darker the ink color, the more evident the salty look. While the press can be run with a double strike (run through the press twice) you can run into registration problems and more waste. You can also set up your press to ink the forme twice before printing, however this can be time consuming and add to your labor costs as well.

Ultimately if you are considering a flood or large inked up area, know that there will be variables. Letterpress is much different than offset in that way. Stay tuned for the other half of flood printing where we’ll go over paper selection if printing a flood!

Letterpress printed on 220# lettra paper, 2/1 pantone inks, trimmed to 2×3.5″ – For a set of your own, get an estimate, we’d love to work with you! If you have questions about a file, you can also email it over and we would be happy to advise.

These were letterpress printed on lettra paper, 220# as a 2-color job. One thing I’m finding is that lettra – while a great paper – seems to exaggerate the “salty” look when printing large ink areas. It seems that paired with the texture and composition of the paper there is less ink absorbancy when printing a flood in comparison to other papers (Mohawk and Arturo come to mind specifically as having better absorbancy).

In the end, I think it depends on what sort of look you are going for. The salty ink coverage can add a very unique texture to a piece, especially if you are going for a more rustic or vintage look to your wedding suite. However if you are looking for a more consistent overlay and less ink transparency then ultimately you’ll want to go with a less textured paper.

Edge painted in hot pink, and paired with hot pink envelopes, I love how the salty print on these add character to the already flowing design. Do you like the salty look? Or do you prefer a more saturated look?

One of our best challenges yet, we laminated (duplexed) two sheets of 250GSM Rives BFK grey – which is oh so delicious to print on, with a 90# cover of neon blue Wausau cover sandwiched in the middle.

Makayla was getting high on spray glue, so was Adam.

The hardest part about printing this job was that with the dark paper sandwiched in the middle, we couldn’t rely on our trusty windows/light table for see-though registration on the back. The work-around was to print with the crop marks hanging off the edge of the paper so we could see the front to back registration with how the crop marks lined up looking at the sheet from a side-view.

These definitely had their moments on press, but we are always up for a challenge – especially something with
a cool outcome. Let us know if you’ve got a crazy idea, we’d love to humor you as well as win the project. Contact us with the details regarding your custom letterpress vision, we look forward to hearing from you!

All designs ©2010 Dingbat Press

This was an A6 (4.5×6″) set of 50, paired with matching printed envelopes. Letterpress printed on 110# paper and cut with 1/4″ rounded corners.

These are the updated color swatches for the year 2010-2011. With these colors you can have matching ink, envelope, envelope liner, ribbon* and eyelet* options when ordering custom work from Dingbat Press.

*ribbon and eyelets are only available in select colors, please ask upon ordering.

We also can match ink color to any PANTONE value however recommend white envelopes with those jobs since the colored envelopes might not be a perfect match to your specified pantone match.

We took the shape of the windows and softened them up creating a frame around Kim’s invitation typography. She was looking for a whimsical script typeface, and blind impression of a pattern that flooded the rest of the invite. The final printed piece: 2/0 letterpress printed on 220#/600GSM paper. Paired with pool envelopes and matching dark pool ink.

Photographed by Geri – she’s been working for me since December and has quite the eye for photography. Stop by her blog and say Hi, will ya! She’s fabulous. For an engagement Snowing Hearts photo shoot or you can see her San Francisco trip City by the Bay photos that are amazing too!

This was a custom When You Know heart print for Kara who is getting hitched this year! I hope she had a great Valentine’s Day. Brian surprised me and took me out (even though I had a big night in planned for us) with his dad baby-sitting the kids. A few diabetic emergencies later and the prognosis is that we seemed to have survived the weekend. Great job hubby for making me feel like one in a million despite my paranoid tendencies and crazy blood glucose readings with our little guy. In the end we got lots of snuggling Saturday night with all the kids and got to sleep in Sunday!

These Vintage Plane letterpress cards were a gift to a couple honoring their golden anniversary. Suiting since this husband also was a pilot in World War II like my grandfather. To see other variations on this card click on the link above to be directed to the Shop. Letterpress printed on Arturo mould made paper with a deckle edge. 4Bar (3.5×5″) and paired with matching envelopes.

I feel really blessed to have had the opportunity to work with Laura. I thought having three kids was a lot of work, but this woman is so inspiring, with 5 adorable children of her own, it’s amazing talking to her, looking at her incredible photography work and learning from her and her great strength! Check out Laura Reaux Photography to see more of what I’m talking about!

The nest was an initial exploration to tie in the natural and organic feel to her brand but to help expand it. In the end we just really liked where the tree was going. Check back soon for the final printed piece!

Another set of Signature Dingbat letterpress A6 notes. These were super fun because the client was ordering them for a gift and decided to mix up ink and envelope. Generally people choose matching ink/envelope combos with the envelope printed in a hue darker. This lovely lady made it fun for me because she wanted a contrasting envelope and then ink color the same on both the card and envelope. Printed on 110# Lettra in an A6 size, these are perfect as a bridesmaid gift, mother-of-the-bride gift, or for anyone in your bridal party!

Letterpress printed on a 5.25″ Square card on 110# Thick paper. Copper ink and typeset in Wade Sans Light. The ornamentation was found in an old vintage illustration book I scored at an antique fair a few months back.

Get yourself a set of 50 letterpressed calling cards by Dingbat Press.

Calligraphy on this card by: Kathryn of Della Carta
Other Calligraphers I also love that would do a fabulous name for your calling card:
Lisa Ridgely (Pen & Ink) | Emilie Friday | K is for Calligraphy