Lifestyle Crafts Letterpress Ink?

Hello!

I’m trying to find some letterpress ink and I’m familiar with the recommendations for rubber-based ink in 1 lb cans.

However, because of the cost, I’m wondering if the Lifestyle Crafts brand letterpress ink would be suffiecient for graduation announcements?

I have my own home-built letterpress, and I ordered a plate from Boxcar Press, so I won’t be using any of the Lifestyle Crafts machines. Do you think this would work, or would I be better off with specialty rubber-based ink?

Emily

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Are you applying ink to the plate with a brayer? Go to a craft store and get some block printing ink. There’s probably a printer in your area who will give you some ink if you will be kind enough to tell us where you are.

Emily

As far as I know there is no letterpress formulated ink on the market—not for some long time. And if there were, I sure wouldn’t buy it.

Gerald
http://BielerPress.blogspot.com

I have used the Lifestyle Crafts for printing. It is way more than sufficient for graduation announcements. As far as I know, their formula is oil-based so it should be fine on coated/uncoated paper.

Gerald,

At the risk of being ridiculed, why not? What about Hostmann-Steinberg and one or two others my addled brain can’t remember right now?

Seriously. I love the heavy black of Hostmann and my 1 lb can has about 1/4 left.

I am on my third book using Lifestyle Craft inks. I haven’t tried all the colors yet — the black is great for text using lead and wood type as well as photopolymer. The brown and hot pink are a bit flat. I had a small trapping problem with dark green sticking to the teal blue — at least I think that was the color combo. The inks are a bit pricey for the quantity but very convenient to use. My very first letterpress edition was an ABC type specimen book in 1991 so I decided to revisit the beginnings with a new ABC book using what materials were available in the shop. Eight colors of the Lifestyle Craft inks were used straight out of the tubes on my Vandercook 4. My next project will be a bit more ambitious and require good overprint trapping of ink to ink. I hope to get to it in a week or two.

image: EVE-Press Industrial Age.jpg

EVE-Press Industrial Age.jpg

image: EVE-Press ABC exterior.jpg

EVE-Press ABC exterior.jpg

image: EVE-Press ABC-U.jpg

EVE-Press ABC-U.jpg