Letterpress: Dumpster Fire Greeting Cards

I am so excited to share these cards with you today. So dumpster fires have been a theme in 2020 before all this craziness broke out. I work full time as a product designer and my team and I always joke that our meetings derail into dumpster fires all the time. With that joke, I made us holographic dumpster fire sticker.

When I had to order some polymer plates for wedding invitations, I had a few square inches extra to fill up and joked with my team about making these cards. I went for it.

Printing these was a bit of a dumpster fire in itself! The registration (where one color lines up to another) was incredibly tight. I didn’t get as many perfect ones as I would have like through the first run at all. I think the next time, I’d trim off the far side of the dumpster so I don’t have to worry about adjusting for all the little lines in the back.

The first layer of ink I put down was black. It gave me the best reference for the colors to come.

Next, I added yellow. The yellow color lined up perfectly to the edge of dumpster lines. This was where I first noticed a few problems.

Each little piece of polymer was so small, it made lining up a very slow process. The little flames look so funny though in the plastic before they were printed.

Here are all three layers totally separate on individual cards. When the three come together perfectly, you get the entire image! The flames did vary a little bit from card to card, but I figured, fire does that so I went with it. And, as they say, done is better than perfect.

The envelopes are mandarin colored from Cards & Pockets. I normally go neutral with the envelope but had to use something bright and fitting for these epic cards.

Impression and texture wise, I am very pleased with these cards! They got a perfect amount of depression into the paper to provide a nice shadow. And the black was nice and crisp.

Pick up a card (or two) over in my Etsy Shop. I also have some proof prints (that didn’t go according to plan) on sale for cheaper! I don’t expect these to last that long so get them while they are hot.