i have not at all been schooled or trained in the graphic arts so programs like illustrator, indesign, photoshop, etc. are foreign to me.. but in order to have photopolymer plates made by any one of the bigger platemakers, it helps to have your design created in any of the major design programs. say again? i know right.. you're telling me. my other obsession is scrapbooking so i'm more familiar with terms like eyelets, glitter, rubber stamping, rub-ons.. nice, pretty sounding words. but of course, no, scrapbooking and making cards with rubber stamps wasn't enough i guess.. i had to stick my nose in letterpress printing and with that comes jargon like mineral spirits, hi speed quoins, reglets. and then mix all that old school letterpress talk with new school digital talk like eps files, press-ready pdf, embed images, outline fonts, dpi, lpi, cmyk, halftones, and the list just keeps going. seriously? what the freak!?! so on with my self-teaching quest with youtube and online tutorials as my best friends. {note to self, take a basic class on adobe illustrator} phew. so after i sent my designs off to this fabulous company, boxcar press, i had so much anxiety because i wasn't sure if i did everything properly. but today my friends {eh hem, correction, my imaginary blog reading friends}, the plates arrived.. and they turned out just how i imagined! the photopolymer plates, base, and roller gauge all arrived only 3 days after i ordered them. go boxcar press! and the base isn't even mine.. it's a loaner because apparently the base i need must be custom cut which takes a few weeks so boxcar sent me a loaner base in the meantime {talk about customer service}! here are the plates-one for my friend's mom's 60th surprise birthday party and the other a mickey mouse themed kid party for my friend's daughter along with the handy dandy loaner base and roller gauge. {note to imaginary blog reader that is not a 'letterpresser', you may be thinking, what's a base for? so here's a quick lesson from a total newbie.. in order to print with photopolymer plates, they need to be type high which is .918". photopolymer plates aren't made that high so you need a base to adhere the plates to so that they are the right height.} now if i can only find the time between the screams of my two toddlers to actually use these plates and start printing... now that in itself is a whole other issue.
