Halloween Risograph Printing Day at Spudnik Press
Printed my Halloween postcards today at Spudnik Press! A few surprises, a few mistakes—but all in all, a colorful success!
This morning, I got up bright and early and headed to Spudnik Press to print my Halloween postcards! They’ll be sitting in the corner of my husband’s table at Chicago Publishers Fair 2025 on October 25th.
Even though I worked hard yesterday to finalize the color separations, there were some unexpected hiccups—some colors ended up printing in areas they weren’t supposed to! So I had to quickly revise my files, exporting new PNGs with transparency to make sure each color only printed where it was meant to.
And… ta-da!
The hot dog card turned out like this! I had mistakenly assumed the red available at Spudnik was Tomato Red, so I designed the color separations to be lighter. But it turns out they actually stock a much richer Marine Red! As a result, the dog ended up looking like a very well-done steak! 😂
When I toned down the red to fix that, the pumpkin started looking too faded… So I tried reprinting with red just on the pumpkin, but was a little too cautious and the result came out barely visible—oops! Still, I think it has its own kind of charm, so I'm calling it a win.
The ant postcard, though, came out even better than expected! Especially once I added the Federal Blue shadow layer—the candy suddenly gained volume and depth. I think I’m starting to get the hang of risograph gradients!
And here’s the final version with the black layer added!
I'm planning to add a little surprise to the back side as well, so I’ll be doing a bit more work. I’ll report back in two weeks when I return to Spudnik for the final print session!