Having gathered the various tools and equipment we need to start printing, we lacked only two important ingredients: paper and printing plates. Perhaps the two most important ingredients, one might argue.

We sat around lamenting our misfortune, but just the other day, UPS brought the missing pieces. 

Jodi did the honors, opening the large, flat package. 

As we suspected, it contained the plates for our very first job,

The plates are a thin sheet of plastic with raised ridges where type and Robbi’s illustrations are supposed to be. Instead of carving these out of wood, as we would have had to do in the old days, Robbi just sent a PDF to a guy at a place called Boxcar Press, and a few days later, our plates appeared.

Our first job is a set of wedding invitations and RSVP cards for our friends Lauren and Mike.

We’ve designed the invites as a four-color job, which means we’ll need four plates for each panel (black, red, green, and a blind emboss (which means the fourth plate won’t “print” at all, but will just make an impression on the paper). Lining up all these colors exactly right is going to be extremely tricky.

Which is probably a terrible idea for one’s first project, but there you go. Excitement overtook us. And we will get it right (in case Mike and Lauren happen to be reading this). 

But there was another box to open. I did the honors this time.

It was our paper.

And envelopes.

Now we have our press, our ink, our paper, our quoins, our quoin key, our furniture, our polymer plates, our tympan paper, our gauge pins, and our oily waste can.

I guess we have no more excuses. It’s time to start printing.