Sometimes you just have to stretch yourself. These knockout letterpress business cards were just such an endeavour.

Not every letterpress press is designed for flood printing and not every one that can do it is set up to. This was an exercise in testing those parameters.

Andrew with Bone Calligraphy sent me some absolutely beautiful art to do a 2/2 flood print. We ran the chartreuse first with a little bit of trap and then flooded the black overtop. I will say – there are some variables I need to adjust to get a smoother flood on my press. It is one of the ones capable of doing decent floods and some tweaking (ink brand, new rollers, would probably yield even better results.

Frankly, I love the salting that occurred with these cards, giving us a slightly weathered look.

These cards were printed on two separate 110# Lettra sheets and duplexed together. Flood printing doesn’t leave a lot of room for impression, especially when you add a glue step to the equation (where the dampness will cause the compressed areas to swell a little. There is still a great tactility to the skull on these cards that’s ultra-cool.

Check them out and then check out some of Andrew’s beautiful work below.