After many failed attempts and much experimentation, I was finally able to make my first  really good 8×10 relief plate using SolarPlate. Leading up to the holidays, I had been working on smaller, 5×7 plates and was getting decent, but not great results for holiday cards. I finally bailed on the hand-made holiday card idea and went with VistaPrint, thus freeing me up to focus again on the larger, 8×10 prints.

I quickly found that the larger, 8×10 prints are a whole different ballgame and the process is much less forgiving. All of the small flaws that I could get away with in the 5×7 plates compounded into utter failures in the larger plates. It took me about three weeks of experimentation, using all of my free time to figure out how to make the plate shown below. It isn’t flawless but is pretty good – stay tuned for another post explaining how I made the plate and the dead ends along the way.

In the meantime, feast your eyes on the beautiful embossing and the rich black ink and the crisp crisp edges. After weeks lost at sea, all is well again in my humble printmaking studio.