In the mid-1950s Van Vliet traveled in Europe, apprenticing herself for a time as a hand typesetter. During these travels she taught herself etching while working as a craft instructor at the United States European Headquarters in Germany. For the remainder of the '50s and early 1960s Van Vliet taught printmaking, typography and drawing at the Philadelphia Museum School (now The University of the Arts) and worked as a type compositor for John Anderson, first at The Lanston Monotype Company in Philadelphia, and then at his own Pickering Press in New Jersey. In 1965 to '66 she was hired by the Art Department of the University of Wisconsin, Madison as a Visiting Lecturer in Printmaking.

In 1966 Van Vliet moved to Vermont and created a permanent home for Janus Press. Through the years her work as published by Janus Press has been the subject of several shows, including a 25-year retrospective in 1977 at the Wiggin Gallery of the Boston Public Library and "Experimenting with the Book: The Janus Press" at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London in 1994.

Museums have collected Van Vliet's work include The National Gallery in Washington, DC; Victoria and Albert Museum, London, England; The Library of Congress, Washington, DC; and Smithsonian Institution, to name but a few. In addition to her many honors, in 1993 the University of the Arts in Philadelphia named Van Vliet an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts.