Holiday Cards Are Printed

 So the holiday cards are now printed!  I printed 50 cards with 45 going out to family and 5 to sell, three will be listed on the 22nd for the ebay Nibblefest contest. One will be listed in my etsy shop and the other in my artfire shop.  I will also list the two proofs, one in etsy the other in artfire.

Here you can see the rainbow roll.  I decided not to use silver as it was too dark for what I had envisioned.  So the roll is pink, violet and indigo.  I used Graphic Chemical Water Soluble Relief Inks Carnation Red, Opaque White, Purple and Blue.  I mixed Flamingo and  Pearl White shimmer pigment powder into the pink ink; Violet shimmer powder into the purple ink and blue into the blue ink.

Here you can see the plate.  I glued 3 layers of foam sheets together and adhered 3 wooden snowflake tree ornaments to the foam using double tack then cut around the snowflakes.  I then used double tack to adhere the cut outs to a prepared sheet of plexiglass.  I then decided the design needed some variety in size so I arranged some self adhesive snowflake rubber stamps onto the plexi.  I then rolled the rainbow roll in two directions onto the printing plate, layed the tone on tone cards tone side down onto the inked plate, burnished the back, pulled the paper away and...

Wa-La! Exactly what I had in mind!  

The finished cards will be embellished with a sparkly little jeweled snowflake and mailed out sometime in the next few weeks.  

Sorry but you'll have to go to one of my cyber shops or my ebay listing if you want to see the finished cards...

the first printing of the 2012 Holiday Cards

Started printing my holiday cards yesterday. Here you can see my set up.  There's a clear mat under the plate to protect the countertop.

I had in mind to print pearl white pigment mixed into white ink on top of ivory paper so that I have a pearl white field with ivory border that I can next print a rainbow roll of  silver to blue to violet to pink  snowflakes on top with some flakes breaking the border.

Unfortunately my Graphic Chemical water soluble white ink has yellowed so I got shimmery ivory on ivory...

I even tried mixing in some blue pigment to get a slightly bluish white and though the ink is clearly bluish it still printed ivory...

oh well I like the way the woodgrain printed with a tone on tone thing happenin' so I decided to go with it.  I think the rainbow roll will look cool on top...that's today's step...

to be continued...