Category: Printing

All That Glitters: Invitations that Sparkle

categories: Events, Printing, Projects

All That Glitters

Sometimes it’s not gold. Sometimes it’s a really, really, gorgeous paper stock… And a few tricks of the trade.

With that being said, we’d like to introduce you to one of our favorite paper manufacturers, Legion Paper.

About Legion Paper

Legion delivers a tactile quality to their paper, inspired by artists, that’s intended to help them imagine the unimaginable… and then to create it.

“We want to enhance the art works of creative people, whether it’s a photographer, painter, designer or printmaker. We are proud to have designed papers that have enabled artists to create what they were limited in creating before.” – Ginsburg

Legion traveled the globe to study paper. Studying cultures, papers and techniques that have proven their value through time. They traveled to all of these mills, not to bring back what already existed but to make what was needed. What was needed to deliver the quality techniques of the past to the artists of today.

The Coach Gala Invitation

All of this, and more, is the reason Legion had the perfect stock for producing this gorgeous invitation and envelope for The Coach Gala.

A Look at The Invitation

When you see a full stack of these invitations together, the glitter is seamless. Moving from the edges of the paper to the face of the invitation as if the invitation was made out of a block of glitter itself.

But that’s not necessarily the case. The seamless beauty is by design and by the magic of production.

So let’s dive into how we made this happen.

Stock: For the paper, we used Legions Mirri Sparkle. Mirri Sparkle uses an extremely smooth and amazingly sparkly metallic film that is laminated to a white box board base. The thickness of the stock holds a tactile definition of quality in itself. When you hold it, you’ll know.

This paper was perfect for the over-the-top sparkle that was needed for the Coach Gala invitation.

 

Gilding: Believe it or not, this invitation is not made out of a solid block of glitter. The face of Mirri Sparkle paper stock is gorgeous, but it’s laminated onto a white board stock, so when it’s cut there’s a white edge by default.

This is where our gilding techniques really sparkled. We first spray painted the edges with a silver base to mask the white the edges, and then we dipped the edges in glitter. To create an absolutely seamless wrap of edge to edge sparkle.

Print process: At our shop, it’s rare that the printing process is the simplest part of the design, because of all of the capabilities we have available. But this piece needed nothing more than a one color black offset run to perfect this job. The paper stock and gilding did most of the heavy lifting to make this job a real stunner.

Coach Gala Envelope

Simplicity at its finest.

The overtop sparkle of the invitation was complemented by the beautiful blind embossing of the logo on the Miri H Gunmetal Metallic custom built envelope. 

Stock:  For this stunning envelope we looked to Legion yet again. The envelope was produced in the gunmetal color from their Miri H line. The line is defined by its bright metalized mirror-like finish and laminated to a white stock base. 

You can see gunmetal featured between the gold and copper metallic colors in this swatch book.

Process: The only process on this envelope is the blind embossing on the face. This kind of paper is absolutely perfect for blind embossing. The metallic nature of the paper causes the light and reflections to define every curve, every indent and every highlight to make this logo look as amazing as possible. Giving the logo the effect of being jewelry in itself.  

Process: Blind Embossing

Construction: Envelopes like these aren’t typically for sale in bulk, neither is the ability to emboss a logo on the face of a pre-made envelope. We made these envelopes ourselves from scratch. 

The paper gets passed through once flat for the blind embossing and then a second time for die cut and scoring. Once the envelope was embossed, cut and scored we put our gloves on and put these together by hand. To then prepare these for hand delivery. 

Accompanying Items

Insert: This invitation was sent with a vellum insert to accompany the invitation with a list of the chairs, benefactors, patrons and supporters of the event.  The velum insert provided a soft overlay to the sparkle texture already defined by Mirri.

Vellum overlaid over invitation and envelope.

Reply Card and Envelope: Along with the invitation and insert, was a simple black offset reply card and envelope in the Mohawk Superfine Ultrawhite line.  The white stock with black ink paired well and was perfect for the practical application of the reply card intent. 

Alternates

If a hand delivered and hand constructed envelope are not in your projects plan, there are so many alternative options to make some of these techniques practical for your next project. 

For instance, while blind embossing on the face of an envelope is only available for hand constructed envelopes, we can blind emboss on almost any back envelope flap of premade envelope. 

Need custom addressing too? A lot of times we see clients build invitations like this and send them in an outer envelope. This outer envelope is perfect for custom data merge addressing. The outer envelope would also protect your product from some of the inherent wear and tear that happens within the mail process. 

Inspired?

Let us know! If you love this piece and want to incorporate some of these techniques into your next project, give us a call or contact us and we can talk about how we can make your next project really sparkle. 

2022 Calendar Contest!

Our team of craftsmen and women have worked hard all year, designing, planning and producing our 2022 calendar to showcase the many ways that we make print exciting. Letterpress, Intaglio, Foil Stamping, Digital and Offset Ink, Thermography and beautiful design are what we love doing here at Sunset.

To add to the fun of this calendar, we have created a hidden message within it.
By finding the hidden single letter in each month and figuring out the message
you can enter our contest to win an iPad!

As with every year, we combine the minds at Sunset and bring new perspective to the processes we use every day. This year with our  Letterpress processes, we over printed leaves already printed using a split fountain technique for November. For August we took UV ink and created a glow in the dark effect that is out of this world.

Our Intaglio months highlight just how lucky we are to be able let our imaginations take over and get creative while mixing inks on press to help enhance our design.

The Foil Stamping designs included in this year were something we took our time to evaluate, both before press and once our stamping dies were up to temperature. The simplicity of blind embossing vs registered embossing is a process we love to showcase.

Thermography is always something that we enjoy sharing with the design community on how to properly utilize as an embellishment. With the ability to use glitter to highlight October, it was spooky in the best way!

We have both Offset and Digital printed pages included in our calendar. With the addition of our new HP Indigo 5650 press with White Ink capability, a whole new world of printing was opened to us. We are now able to lay down multiple hits of white on dark stocks and print white under CMYK allowing us to create vibrant images on any color stock that we like.

If you would like your desk to become more colorful please Call or Email and we will send you your very own calendar to enjoy!

Enter to win our 2021 Calendar!

Our team of craftsmen and women have worked hard all year, designing, planning and producing our 2021 calendar to showcase the many ways that we make print exciting. Letterpress, Intaglio, Foil Stamping, Digital and Offset Ink, Thermography and  beautiful design are what we love doing here at Sunset. You can enter to win a calendar for you and a friend so you both have 365 days of color!

Sunset Letterpress Print Giveaway

categories: Printing, Projects

Love is in the air!

This is the first of many fun projects we have been discussing at Sunset. To show our love for our followers we are giving away 20 sets of  letterpress prints, arriving just in time for Valentine’s Day! These 8.5 x 11 prints fit perfectly in a frame and bring love and color to your walls. 

To enter the giveaway, fill out the form below, follow us on Instagram, like our V-Day giveaway post, tag your friends and share the love! Winners will be announced Feb 3rd. What better time to show your love for print and to share it with another than Valentines Day!

Our 2021 Calendar is Now Available!

After a year filled with all of the insanity that was 2020, we are more excited than ever to turn the corner!

We worked hard to create simple images that transform into beautiful works by the many print processes that we use here at Sunset. The end result is something special that we can enjoy every day of 2021.

This year’s Sunset calendar is the first time in 10 years that we have utilized colored paper stocks for our calendar. This was a challenge that we welcomed to showcase both the beauty of various paper stocks as well as the many ways we can print on colored stocks to enhance their inherent elegance. Between our friends at Mohawk with Keaykolour papers and our friends at Neenah with Astrobrights® papers, we had a hard time narrowing down which colors to run wild with.

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What we loved about the colored paper stocks was the way it bought new perspective to the processes we use every day. Considering Letterpress, on stocks other than white, added a new element to color theory, we had to reinvent the wheel and really challenge our creativity!

Some of the original ink chosen for Intaglio just didn’t pack the punch we were looking for, so again we let our imaginations take over and got creative while mixing inks on press to help enhance our design.

The Foil Stamping designs included in this year were something we took our time to evaluate, both before press and once our stamping dies were up to temperature. Foils can give you opaque and translucent effects and the use of holographic foil on a detailed offset ink print did something beyond our expectations.

Thermography is always something that we strive to show the design community how to properly utilize as an embellishment.  We used Matte Thermography and Gloss Thermography on the same month both in black over black ink, highlighting different effects within the same tonal range. A lot of these designs are things we’ve never done before and we see as our opportunity to experiment and share with you the results. Some of it doesn’t work and some of it exceed expectations.

We have both Offset and Digital pages included in our calendar and we needed to think outside the box when it came to expectations and reality. Some of the darker stocks we used had us questioning what could be done. With the addition of our new HP Indigo 5650 press with White Ink capability, a whole new world of printing was opened to us. We are now able to lay down multiple hits of white on dark stocks and print white under CMYK allowing us to create vibrant images on any color stock that we like.

For our cover, we wanted to feature every specialty process we do here but within the realm of metallic silver. We have Intaglio, Letterpress, Thermography, Foil Stamping, Embossed Foil Stamping, and Offset printing. Every different process had one thing in common, we wanted to show different techniques to highlight the varieties in the process that Sunset Printing is capable of!

Our Themes:

There are two themes we chose to highlight with our artistic direction this year, the first is celebrating women. All of our images are of females and pay homage to the many female printers, designers, press people and industry leaders that we work with every day. Sunset’s own team is made up of a majority of women and minorities and we are very proud of that fact every day.

The second theme is simplicity. In a year filled with chaos and uncertainty, we have found beauty in the simplicity of life, the simplicity of the images we shared. We tried hard to focus this year on simplifying our artwork, our approach to printing the artwork and really showcasing each specialty process without the clutter of complex illustration. We hope that you have found the beauty that we have in the simplicity contained in our pages.

2020 brought many challenges to the printers around the world along with many of the businesses that printers support. We ask that you support your local printers, support the need for print and continue to create exquisite artwork that stands out in an ever-changing world. We look forward to all the beautiful things we can make together in 2021.

If you would like your desk to become more colorful please Call or Email and we will send you your very own calendar to enjoy!

Sunset Holiday Cards Giveaway

categories: Printing, Projects
Featured Holiday Cards
Featured Holiday Cards

We have been busy beginning to send out this years holiday cards! From foil stamping to sculpted embossed animals, our holiday cards are sure to bring joy and cheer to all who receive them. The holidays are the perfect time for giving thanks and showing your appreciation to family, friends and business colleagues. Sending a card in the mail reminds them how grateful you are for their support.

To extend our thanks for being a part of the Sunset family, we are giving away a limited number of holiday card packs. To enter the giveaway, follow us on Instagram and like and comment on our holiday post. What better time to showcase the exciting world of print than the holidays!