Dip Dye + Letterpress

Hello! Looking for some advice?

I have never done dip dye before but a client would like to dip dye their invitations after I letterpress print. Anyone out there have any experience with this? I was thinking I would probably need to press after the paper had been dip dyed but unsure. Also, can you dip dye Crane?s Lettra? 

Any advice or hints would be much appreciated!

Hi Anna!

I wouldn’t say I have much experience with dip dye but I have played around with it a bit for a styled photo shoot. I dipped the paper (it was Crane’s Lettra) first and then once the sheets were air dried I stacked books on top to make sure they were flattened as much as possible. I was doing a three color dip dye and found that I was much happier with the results when I painted the layers of color, which also seemed to take about the same amount of time as dipping (painting would also lessen any curling on the sheets because you wouldn’t be saturating the paper, but on the down side you only get your dye/color on one side of the paper rather then front and back).

I then printed from a photopolymer plate on a tabletop platen press (I didn’t dampen the paper again, just printed on dry sheets and achieved a good impression). I attached a photo of the painted version that I ended up using.

Hope that is helpful!

Hi There! I’ve dip dyed quite a few of my projects. The results do look the best if you dip the paper first and print after, but you can do it the other way around if necessary. The dye is just much more smooth if you do it first.

You can dye using Crane’s Lettra, it takes the color very nicely. Let me know if you have any other questions. I’m happy to help!

Thank you so much for your response! My client is actually wanting to dip dye themselves so I will let them know how you did it. 

Thanks 🙂

Hello!

Thank you so much for your response! I appreciate it 🙂

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