How to fix curled polymer plates

I recently discovered that all my polymer plates had curled and hardened from not storing them properly. And some were just getting old—but some were not and I had not even printed with them yet. So I was pretty upset with myself. I read some suggestions online for how to rehydrate and heat them to get them to a softer state and then put weight on top to flatten them. So I tried the method of soaking for a minute or so and then putting them in a box and using a hair dryer to circulate heat around it, then stacked some books on it. Didn't work—they still curled back up even after several attempts.

My husband, who is an artist with experience in many materials, watched me get upset and frustrated and made a suggestion, that at first I disregarded and had no faith that it would work at all. Well, I tried it since I was out of options and guess what! It worked perfectly! So once again, I realized I should listen to him when it comes to manipulating materials. He knows what he's talking about.

The Solution: A Heating Pad

Plate curled and hardened

As you can see the plate has curled and gotten stiff. If I were to try bending it or flattening it, the plate would simple crack in half. I know because I did it to one of them not thinking.

I heated the pad for 3 mins in the microwave and placed the plate on top.

Then I folded the pad over the plate. I kept the plate in there for 2-3 mins.  

The plate came out completely flexible again (different plate shown here). You of course could use two smaller heating pads if you don't have one large enough to fold over. I aslo discovered that if the adhesive had gotten worn out and not sticking well enough to the base, that a couple well placed pieces of double sided tape worked well. It didn't seem to affect the printing.

Valentines Day Letterpress Cards

I'm pretty happy with the amount of cards I got done and up on my Etsy shop. Also happy with the designs. Some were just hand drawn doodles I did over Christmas break at my folks house. Converted them in illustrator to clean a couple things, but tried to keep the imperfections since I wanted them to have a hand drawn feel. I think I'll be doing more designs like that. It's a much more creative process for me. Often, when I recreate my ideas on the computer, they loose some of the creativity that was initially there during the design process.

Final Giquita Business Card / Hang Tag

Finally getting around to posting photos of the finished product. My client is using these as business cards and hang tags for her products. This was my first time printing on a 100% cotton paper. I loved the feel and the depth you get, but it's definitely a challenge to get fine line work to come through clean and crisp.