Letterpress Stationery | Behind the Scenes

I have long coveted the beautiful look of letterpress. The paper has a beautiful, textured impression that can be felt by the fingertips. It looks so special and precious amidst our shiny, mass-distribution digital world. Letterpress is an old mechanical process involving giant finnicky old printing presses and plenty of manual labor (yes, you actually run each page through the press by hand). As you might imagine, it also tends to be a very expensive printing style.

Luckily for me, my multitalented friend Cynthia Lin has her own letterpress company, LUCKY 8 LETTEPRESS. Not only did she give me a really great rate on my business cards and notecards, but she also let me tag along to see what the process was like behind the scenes!

The ink is hand-mixed with the help of our Pantone color guide. On the right, two of my blind deboss plates which were run through the press for texture without ink.

A lot of the time spent in letterpressing goes to changing miniscule details like the alignment of the plates.

Also, these presses are just as old as they look, which means they each have their own irregularities. This particular press had some very fussy rollers.

The final result is so lovely and so completely worth the long (often tedious) process.  Below is a peek at the finished business cards, but you can see my full packaging suite here. Many thanks again to Cynthia at LUCKY 8 LETTERPRESS for printing these cards! Brides, photographers, anyone considering letterpress– contact Cynthia. She’s amazing to work with, and affordable too! Also, a shoutout to designer Phyllis Sa for helping me out with the design process. Our next project is already in the works, so look forward to more pretty paper soon.