Live it: Letterpress printing with Inky and the Beast

We are throwing it back a bit now and looking at a workshop we went to in June - seems like such a long time ago - with Inky and the Beast.  The lovely Jen has a lovely big studio at the end of her garden which means she can take people in to learn all about the art of Letterpress printing!  This is something that we both have wanted to do for ages.  Both being Design students when we met, we both get silly excited about paper thickness, print and type!  So this workshop was perfect for us!

Jen greeted us with a cuppa and then showed us all the typesets and fonts we could use, talked to us about paper and printing ink and how the machines worked.

Then we got down to business, we had 4 hours to fill and so we wanted to have as much printing joy as we could.  It helped that we both get the mirror image text part and what we like as colour and font styles.  We started by choosing a phrase - Happy Birthday anyone!!?!! (spoiler alert - there were ALOT of christmas cards made too!)  and then looked at the type we wanted to use, we both like quite similar fonts and colours and so decided that we would print enough for both of us for whatever each of us was printing at the time.  This helped us to make quite alot in the time - sorry Jen.

We put the phase type in a chase and made sure it was all tight together with spacers so that letters didn't fall out when we went to the Adana printing machine - which BTW both us of totally want now!  We chose ink and inked up the press plate, before putting in the chase upside down so that we could get printing!

Oh and of course, there was allllll the cards to use, we could have printed on bookmarks, coasters or cards, and so we went with cards.  The lovely thing about Letterpress printing is that when you print you get a lovely embossed indent in the cards aswell.  Some of the larger types don't make it as deep, but its a beautiful thing when it happens.

We had so much fun being creative and being led by Jen at Inky and the Beast. She was a pleasure to be around and taught us loads of little tricks and tips.  She has now closed her workshop bookings for the summer, to have a well earned break with her children, but we can thoroughly recommend for you to make a booking when she is back. She can work with just one person or two and so you don't have to grab a friend if you don't want to, it would make for a great but of me time too.

We did have difficulty in choosing phrases to print, what would you choose?
H & Sammy


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