They're here! They're here!!!
I can't quite believe that after 5 weeks of letterpress classes, I am finally holding the box of Paper Elixir business card that I (with much help from my talented and patient teacher, Kim) lovingly designed and hand printed!
And if I may say so, they look pretty darn awesome. (Pardon the poor quality of the pix, lighting on a gloomy day sucks)
And with this experience, I can tell you that every piece of letterpressed work is really a labor of love...
For example, the flowers are real, pressed hydrangea each delicately handled, scanned in and photoshopped. The mortar and pestle (you need that to mix an elixir, right?) is a sketch my teacher persuaded me to do (I was going to use a photo). It took me hours- I'm not much of a sketcher- but I'm glad I did, coz you can see how wonderful the details show up below. Then the layout is done on InDesign, with took forever, since I had to learn how to use all these darn design softwares and how a Mac operates from scratch (yes, I'm a lame PC user); plus I'm on the anal-retentive side when it comes to visual stuff. These processes took days, and you'll notice we haven't even started printing yet.
But I hope you agree that all the labor was well worth it. Oh, and one thing you probably couldn't tell very well from these pictures is how thick and luxurious the card stock feels. It's a 200-lb 100% cotton paper, it just gives it that extra oomph. The golden metallic plate you see next to the box is the photo-plate the cards are printed off of, which in turn is produced with the film below it (which you can hardly see).
I'll post more later about the actual printing process. There's so much knowledge and technical skills that go into it it's fascinating, but even more so is that intangible artist's touch that make each piece of work unique. I think I'm hooked.
