Quickutz Letterpress :: My Review!

I deliberated long and hard before buying this, read mixed review after mixed review and popped it in my shopping basket more that a couple of times!
Eventually I did it (last Wenesday to be precise!) I brought it from QVC purely because of the 30 day money back option. It arrived on Saturday and i was keen to have a play, which i did yesterday. Yesterday was all it took for me to decide it was not for keeps, it pains me to say that as i am a HUGE QK fan HUGE I tell you!
So here is what I think.....

This was my first attempt, quite good for a first attempt I thought!
I would like to say that this was done using an ink pad and not the ink supplied as i had read so many bad things about the cleaning I thought i would use something easy to remove - i used a black brilliance ink pad.

Preparing the plates was not much fun, some of mine had arrived cracked so I was being extra carefull but it was almost impossible to cut closely round them when trying to apply the adhesive. While mentioning the adhesive sheets that are used to stick the printing plate to the platform, they were not very good, i caould not find a way of getting the plate off the platform with the adhesive attached, it was always left attached to the platform, meaning you would have to apply every time - a total faff!!!



This was my second attempt, again i was pleased with the outcome but not the finish, it was not very even (that may have been the ink i was using but i was applying with a brayer) The texture felt nice, but i think for the price i would be happy just adding texture with embossing folders

The next 2 pics (above and below) are done on thick watercolour paper, while it embossed really well the paper picked up a lot of the little bits of ink that i found impossible to clean off after inking up the plates with the brayer, i think this may have been because the paper was a little thicker that the QK paper supplied. I wanted to try this as i wondered if there was a cheaper alternative to the QK paper. As you can see both attempts were messy.

I don't want to totally slate this product at all, it is a fantastic concept and with some fine tuning could be a real winner, but i do think more product testing from QK would have been a good idea. For example the cracking of the plates - I know I am not the only one who has had this and would have thought this would have been corrected at the production and initial testing stage. Cleaning is also another issue, the starter kit should have come with a little sample of the cleaning wipes that are reccomended to clean the ink with but no where to be found in the UK!

The designs of the plates are lovely and if the cracking issue can be resolved and a bit of fine tuning done i would be tempted to give this another go!!
I wanted this tool mainly for wedding stationary but i think it would take a long time and i think the number of near perfect cards it would produced would be very time and money intensive.

I just wanted to show you this before i went, after playing with the letterpress it got me thinking about my embossing folders and how i must use them more as i love texture! And i had a little play but inking the dots on my swiss dot folder, i just lightly waved my inkpad over the folder, i knew i would not just be able to ink the dots without a smudge of ink here and there but wanted to have a go anyway!

And this is the result, i am really pleased with it, it looks really distressed and grungy and will be featuring on a card very soon!!

Hugs

Lisa xx