Tooling Around with Teri: Printing with the L Letterpress

Teri Anderson

You asked for it.

So I’m back with another installment of Tooling Around with Teri.

Last time I was here, you wanted to know more about the L Letterpress from Lifestyle Crafts and the i-top and i-rock tools from Imaginisce. These tools have taken the paper crafting world by storm, and I’m going to spend the next two days here exploring these three tools.

I’m going to show you the basics of how to use them, as well as a few projects I made with them.

Let’s kick things off and talk about the Letterpress tool!

This is a cool tool. If you have ever been to a stationary store, you’ve probably seen cards created with letterpress on them. Letterpress is when an image is debossed and then ink is applied to the debossed area.

This tool, as its name implies, allows you to do just that.

The tool consists of a whole lot of parts: a die cut machine; a printing platform; an ink plate; a tube of ink and brayer. The Letterpress also comes with a small assortment of printing plates. Lifestyle Crafts makes many more that you can buy to use with the tool.

Here’s how the Letterpress works:

1. Start with one of the printing plates. Here, I am using a Christmas tree. Apply two-way tape behind it so it will stick to the platform.

2. Open the printing platform and place the printing plate on the inner lid.

3. Set the paper you want to print onto the base of the platform. Line up your paper with the plate. The paper I am using is a thick cotton paper made to use with the Letterpress tool. You could also use really thick watercolor paper and achieve a similar result.

4. Place some of the tool’s foam placement guides around your piece of paper. This will allow you to remove your paper when finished and replace it with a fresh piece to letterpress on again. 

5. Spread printing ink on the Letterpress’ ink plate. Roll through the ink with a brayer until the ink appears totally flat and your brayer is completely covered.

6. Open up your printing platform. Roll ink onto the printing plate. Be careful not to put too much ink on the plate or you’ll get a poor and messy impression.

7. Close the platform up with the paper inside it. Then roll the platform through the Epic 6 die cut machine.

8. Open it up and remove your paper. Let the ink dry and use the image as you see fit.

Here are some projects I made with this tool:

This is a simple card. I combined two different printing plates (the sentiment and a background). I inked them and printed with them both at the same time.

Here I used the background printing plate that I used on the previous card. This time, I used gray and black inks on the printing plate to make the patterned strip.

Here I made this set of tags using four different printing plates – three of flowers and one of the word. I inked up only thanks. I debossed the flowers ink free.

I’d love to hear what your favorite paper crafting tool is right now. I’ll choose one of you at random to win the Thanks tags and the Thinking of You and Thanks cards shown in this post. Kelly will also throw in a copy of Holiday Cards & More, Vol. 5. All comments must be received by midnight (MDT) on Friday, Oct. 22.

Yours in Letterpress fun,

Teri Anderson,
Paper Crafts Go-to-Gal

P.S. Check out my blog today for a some more projects I created with the L Letterpress and learn a few more tricks for using it. And make sure you join me back here tomorrow for another edition of Tooling Around with Teri!