Letterpress without a Betterpress? No problem!
I'm sure like me you've all watched the recent release videos for the Betterpress and thought WOW - I want one, but can I really justify the price of a new machine if I'm not going to do letterpress all the time? Well, I was sat on that same fence, so when the new Betterpress Compatible Plates from Altenew arrived yesterday, I just had to give one a go and see if I could get results from them with my Big Shot without the fancy new gadget. Well, I'm here to tell you - yes you can indeed use the plates in a standard big shot and get great letterpress results - so save the money on the betterpress and get more plates to play with instead........
I used the Dainty Flower Garden plate as my test plate and I've tested it will LOTS of different options to show you what works (and what doesn't). You can see the full test over on our YouTube channel here so hop on over for a full explanation of how I made the cards below and also how you can use your hot foil plates for letterpressing too.
If you want the short answer - go buy a Premium Crease Pad (around £12 on amazon) and this will give you the perfect sandwich to get the right amount of impression with our without ink but do check out the video so you can see all the different options I tried and what results you get form each. Here you can see the depth of the impression I got, the reverse side on the scrap on the left shows how crisp it is. I didn't use their special ink or cotton paper either......
Hope you found my testing helpful.
Tara
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