Printing On Vellum

Posted by Khris in Crafting Advice

From one of my readers:

Q: I love the way vellum looks but haven’t had much success in making practice invitations with my printer.

A: Vellum is a sturdy, translucent paper with a wax-like coating that is typically used as overlays for invitations. It has a smooth, slick surface which can make it difficult to print or stamp upon. Inkjets have problems with vellum because the wet inks have a hard time adhering to the smooth surface of the paper. The same goes for rubberstamping inks. There aren”t enough rough fibers for the ink to grip and soak in to, so it smears.Don’t fret, though, there are vellums on the market specifically made for inkjet pritners. Epson and Stampin’ Up make good ones that are likely compatible with all injkets.

If you are unable to find inkjet compatible vellums or want to use a colored vellum, you may be able to do so with a little tweaking of your printer’s settings.

* Go into your printer set-up and adjust it to the transparency setting. This will put the least amount of ink onto the vellum.

* Go into page set-up in your word processing program and set the margin 1″ from the top of the page. This will allow the printer time to get a ÏholdÓ on the vellum and reduces smearing.

* Select “economy”, “draft” or “speed” print mode (depending on the specific machine). This will lay down the least amount of ink possible, making it harder for the ink to smear.