Printing Custom Invites

[Winslet]

After seeing some of the other invite-related questions over the past few days, I have one of my own. A friend of mine is designing our invites, reception cards, and response cards with a design that we can''t find anywhere else. We love the paper at paper-source, but aren''t 100% sure if we want to spend the time and effort involved with printing them ourselves. More importantly, we would also prefer not to sacrifice on the print quality. So, this is my question: where would we be able to have our 100% custom-designed invitations printed through an engraving, letterpress, or thermography process?

 

[jcrow]

what about contacting people on etsy? a lot of them print pre-designed work and it''s usually cheaper. i agree, printing them at home is a big job. and paper at paper-source is pretty pricey.

 

[Lanie]

Hi Winslet!

My fiance and I designed our own and had them printed at a place called Copy.com. They might be in your area. We did thermography, and it cost $80 per plate (we are having main invitation plus inserts, so we had 2 plates), and we gave them the paper and they printed it. The thermography looks really, really nice. We had it on stardreams paper, which has a shimmer to it, which ink jets have a hard time printing on. I would google printing shops in your area and find someone that will do a small job like this. I wouldn''t go to Kinkos/Staples if you want something other than normal, laser jet printing.

ETA: Copy.com is just in Houston. But you could find a similar place in your area!

 

[tropiqalkiwi]

I second Lanie''s suggestion that you search for and call local print shops to see if they offer thermography.

Letterpress and Engraving are a bit harder to do if you already have a design you are a set on. Traditionally letterpress is done by using lead type and placing individual letters next to each other until you spell out everything. (Yes, this process takes a long time!) Because you need to have the letters made out of metal, and you need lots and lots of each letter, typefaces are very expensive and usually letterpress shops only have a few fonts - and they are older ones. Now, since Crane and Papersource both offer this option they probably aren''t using this method. You can have plates made of designs, so maybe a service like this would be helpful for you: Letterpress Blocks They make the plate that can then be run through a letterpress. So if you have a letterpress studio near you I would ask what they could do for you.

**Totally random type geek fact: back when all printing was letterpress based, the print shops would keep "upper-case" and "lower-case" letters in separate drawers (called cases

) with the "upper-case" letters above the "lower-case" letters - thus the continuing term we use today!**

I had a very difficult time finding a custom engraving place, but apparently if you have vector based art (like an Illustrator file) they can engrave it for you. I am only using that to do my custom logo above the invite text, but it might be doable for the whole plate.

Reaves Engraving is who said they could do this, I would check them out since they also do thermography and letterpress.

 

[Winslet]

I apologize for not getting back sooner, but I just want to say *thank you* to all three of you. Jcrow and Lanie, I''ve been checking out Etsy and a local shop, and I may have a lead or two after I get some quotes next week! tropiqalkiwi, thanks for the Reaves Engraving suggestion (I''m going to check with them too) and the history lesson - I''m a total nerd when it comes to cool tidbits like that