I have old cans of VanSon Holiday gold paste and a can of gold paste from Cal/Ink. How do you print with these? Do you mix them with varnish or transparent base? Thanks.
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Yeah, I’ve mixed paste gold (and even gold pigment, dry, with a muller) into Litho Varnish; it comes in a variety of numbers, from like 000 to 5- the order of viscosity being 000 (lightest) to 00, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 being the tackiest. Then you have body gum as well which is really high viscosity and intended to add body to ink.
Anyhow you can mix the paste into #3 varnish and this may give you the consistency you’re looking for- depending on the thickness of your paste or opposite, you may need to add 1 or 5 to the 3 to make it tacky enough to print or loose enough to print. I really wouldn’t mess with Magnesium Carbonate here (it’s a powder used to stiffen ink), as it can play into the metallic in an undesirable way (you want shiny, not matt finish-mag can dull an ink’s finish a bit sometimes in my experience).