Bold Print

I received the wedding announcement a while ago but forgot to put it online. I have designed it, created the artwork and send it off to the Lowlands to have it printed there. I'm happy with the result in general, there's just one thing that's bugging me which I noticed straight away when the card came in. I wanted a bright shiny varnish on the front. It's a porthole and I wanted the 'glass' to be shiny. Also on the inside, I wanted the heart shape of the tattoo shiny.

Unfortunately the printer chose the wrong type of paper [that's what you get for not being able to be there to sort things out] and ended up applying about 5 coats of varnish without getting the result that I wanted. I must admit I was disappointed but I reckon due to circumstances I wasn't able to correct this, there was simply not enough time. Although I had left plenty of time to have it printed, the printer probably didn't see this coming until the last moment. Which clearly states 'no professional' to me.

I don't know this printer, he wasn't my choice, the one that I used to work with for years never replied to my questions when I sent him an email about the assignment. So I gave up on him too. A shame because I know he would've done it perfectly fine. It frustrates me at times that people tend to ignore emails, they just don't respond to them, what's the point then in having a website and email address available for enquiries? I don't know any good printer in London yet, I should look into this. But I couldn't have done it here anyway since it needed to be send from the Lowlands.

I chose for the theme of a porthole and old school tattoo design because T. works and lives on a river barge. Even though I wasn't happy with the varnish, the fact that they received so many responses -each and every one of them very positive- made it all worth it. After all if they are happy with the announcement and if others are too then that's the biggest compliment I could get...