Painting Edges

Hello,

Please pardon my only semi-letterpress related question…

I was curious to see if anyone has had experience painting edges of a thick card stock or board. I’m working on an invitation project that I’ll most likely print on Rising Museum Board and would like to color the edges of the board. I’ve seen cards with this before but have no idea how it’s actually done. Is it ink? paint? and is it brushed on? or applied with a roller?

In a first attempt I tried rolling a thin coat of rubber base ink onto the edge using a small rubber roller but it didn’t look great.

Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks!

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I haven’t tried it, but I imagine the way to go might be to tightly clamp together a stack of boards and apply your pigment with either a stiff brush or a brayer.

I’d think something like acrylic ink would be ideal (the watery kind that comes in a glass bottle) because it will soak into the edge rather than sitting on top of it and looking chunky. However, it might want to wick in and show on the front surface.

If the liquid ink doesn’t work out, perhaps you will have better success with your brayer and rubber-based ink method if you are coating that whole stack of boards at once.

I hope this is at least mildly helpful. Best of luck!

Thanks for the advice. I’ll see if I can track down some acrylic ink and I’ll let you know how it goes. In the mean time, if anyone else out there has ever successfully painted edges, I’d love to hear about it.

Thanks again.