Edge Painting

Originally reserved for the finest hand-bound books, edge painting has a rich history in the letterpress world. For centuries, master bookbinders gilded the edges of books with gold to show their preciousness. We’ve honored this practice by hand painting the edges of pieces with any of our letterpress ink colors (as well as metallic bronze, metallic gold, and metallic silver). Custom colors are also available for an additional cost. We can’t edge paint folded pieces, die cut pieces or any piece with a bleed more than 1⁄8”.

Foil Edging

Our foil edging conjures up those gorgeous gilded edges of old medieval books—but now there are so many colors to choose from for your wedding invitations! You can foil edge in any of our foil stamping colors. Foil edging gives a wonderfully smooth, shiny, luscious, reflective surface to the edges of important pieces in your wedding suite. We can’t foil edge folded pieces, die cut pieces or any piece with a bleed more than 1⁄8”.

Design tips for edging

• We do offer edge painting in metallic gold, silver, and bronze. This edge painting has a little gleam to it, but it’s still somewhat subdued and rather matte. If you are looking for something more dramatic, consider foil edging.
• Edge painting is most visible in medium to dark colors and is more noticeable on 2-ply and 3-ply paper than on our 1-ply paper.
• There is so much you can do with edge painting. Think subdued invitation with neon edging, or bright wedding invite with elegant edging, or black letterpress with classic gold edging. Check out our blog for lots of great examples of this embellishment.