Weddingbee Blog

Today we’re going to chat about edge painting—that lovely final touch to add a pop of color to your invites or really any paper project. We edged our invitations in gold, but the juicy color possibilities are endless—check out Miss Panther’s sneak peek to her sexy, aqua-edged invites!

via Dolce Press

I spent a lot of time digging on the internet for techniques and tips, but for the most part came up empty since professional edge painting appears to be a closely guarded secret. I’m actually a little worried that ninjas are going to shimmy down ropes and whisk me away to printing purgatory once I complete this post.

In short, I flew by the seat of my pants on this one, although outwardly I portrayed myself as far more confident in order to get Mr. Tartlet on board.

Mr. Tartlet: You know what you’re doing, right?

Me: Oh yeah. Absolutely. 100% without a doubt! (Read: no clue in hell, but I’m not about to admit that because I’m stubborn and want shiny gold edges, dagnabbit!)

Edge painting wasn’t nearly as painful as I was expecting, quick-drying, and not messy at all. Before I get into the nitty-gritty, though, please keep in mind that we used uber thick 200 lb Cranes Lettra paper that was professionally cut, thereby eliminating the potential problem of ragged or uneven edges. I haven’t tried this technique on other weights of paper, and suspect that it won’t work well on anything less than 1/16″ thick. Anyhoo, let’s get this DIY party started! You’ll need:

• A 1″ Poly-Brush, readily available from any home improvement store

Supplies

• Paint color of choice. I’ve read a few forums that say acrylic-based paints work best. Whatever you decide, test a sample out before applying it large-scale! We ended up going with the Riso gold metallic paper ink that we used on our invites (see above photo) because the tube of gold acrylic paint I purchased ended up looking more orange than metallic once spread thin over paper (see below). I’ve also read that you can edge a smaller piece of paper (think business card size) using a good ol’ stamp pad. People have also suggested pulling the stamp pad out of the container and using that to apply the color to a larger piece of paper.

The deceptively “gold” paint in blob form; orange when applied (and dried)

• Wax paper or some other non-absorbent surface for spreading your paint

First, sandwich your invitation stack in between scrap pieces of paper. This step is incredibly important and protects the outermost invitations from being accidentally painted on the top and bottom. In the photo below we only used one piece of scrap paper on each side of the stack. In retrospect, I would highly recommend using as many junk pieces as you can because the “best” results inevitably ended up being from the middle of the stack. Next, clamp the stack of paper tightly together to remove any gaps; this is to prevent paint from seeping in between each of the individual invitations. To achieve a satisfactory squish, we used a couple of Mr. Tartlet’s textbooks and threw in some of my fantasy novels (Robert Jordan or Terry Brooks, anyone?) for good measure. Be careful about what you choose to weight your stack down, and avoid objects that might leave an impression on your lovely paper!

The squished invitation stack

I hemmed and hawed a bit on this next part, and after a bit of trial and error decided to position the invitation stack such that two edges hung over the corner of our coffee table, which made it easier for me to paint towards the bottom of the stack. Once your invitations are positioned, squeeze some of your paint onto the wax paper and mush the foam brush through it until a fair amount has been absorbed. The closest analogy I can think of is to a kitchen sponge after you’ve wet and squeezed it out.

Apply the paint in light strokes to the two edges that are hanging over the table edges. I really, really liked using the foam brush because even if I pressed a little harder than intended, I didn’t have to worry about bristles poking their way into minuscule gaps in the stack. Plus, no dripping.

Brush, brush, brush

Allow the paint to dry slightly, and then carefully rotate the stack so that the remaining two edges are hanging over the table. Go ahead and paint those:

Paint, paint paint

Once all edges have been painted, remove all the extra weight, but don’t peel the individual invitations apart quite yet!

A drying stack

From what I’ve read online, this is the step that seems to cause most trouble because if the paint hasn’t dried enough, you run the risk of it bleeding onto the front or back of your invites as you separate them. If the paint is too dry, it could crack and potentially stick your invitations together. I think we got really, really lucky with the brush and paint/ink we chose to use, because there was minimal bleeding (even when I did pull one apart right away out of morbid curiosity). An episode of Dexter later, we pulled the invites apart to dry overnight:

Hopefully this de-mystifies the process of edge painting a bit, although I’m by no means claiming to be an expert. Has anyone else tried their hand at adding a pop of color? What sort of problems (and solutions) did you encounter?