cards

I made these collage cards from old scraps of paper - three in total - and I really love them.  I looked into having them printed but it seems that unless I go for the "chemical toxic cheap paper printed in China" option I can't get it done. So I tried to print one of the designs on the Gocco - and I have mixed feelings about the result. Not sure the collage translates properly when printed in black on white. And some of the print is clearly too small for the screen and gets messy when printed.  But maybe I like them a little bit? I printed these on "green" bamboo cardstock, which is actually quite lovely to print on. I am so in love with printing and I would do it all day long if I could.

I am also in love with this apartment.

Wedding CD Sleeves Gocco

Here is what we gocco'ed on Saturday night : CD sleeves which we will use as place cards for the wedding. They will also contain a butt-kicking mix of our favourite tunes - and double up as "favours" (no home made jam at my wedding thanks).  The CD sleeves are recycled paper ones, by Ecocern.
We used the same design and image we gocco'ed on our wedding invitations. Now we just need to pack them into our big suitcase, take them on the plane to Munich, and get ready to par-tay! I hope our guests will like them too!

Question Time - Gocco

 Image from here

There's really only two questions I've been asked repeatedly:

What model do you use? Where do you get a Gocco?
We got ours at Eckersley's and I am told they stock them in all their stores. They also stock most supplies at fair prices. You can also get the Gocco online at Nehoc, the company who is distributing Gocco equipment: http://www.nehoc.com.au/. We got a PG5 basic set - the other available model is the PG11 which is more expensive but otherwise pretty similar. It's a tiny bit larger I believe and has some added features.

The best Gocco advice comes from Ms Pip at Mike's: here and here - you can read these posts and then you will know almost everything there is to know about the Gocco!

Tshirt Gocco

Something I prepared a little earlier - the gastro has knocked me out good. I have been feeling knackered for over a week and am truly getting sick of the sick! I played around with the Gocco and some fabric paint a while ago and made a little shirt for my niece using a Dala horse print I created on the 'pooter - pretty painstaking work. Fabric gocco is much harder than paper gocco so more practice is required!

Wedding Invitations Gocco!

We had heaps of fun. We had heaps of accidents. Luckily we had heaps of spare cardstock!

I think Goccoing your invites is ace. Once you've got your screen, your colours and your cards, it really doesn't matter how many you print - printing is really the easiest part. The hardest part is getting the designs right, and waiting in between print sessions for the ink to dry.

 Some little bits of advice:

Colour

We wanted to print in black, pink and turquoise so we decided to take a chance and mix the Gocco inks to 

our taste. This worked totally fine - just make sure you use a plate and spatula to properly mix the ink, it is quite sticky.You can apply the mixed ink directly to the screen using the spatula.

Also, make sure you have lots of tissue paper or kitchen towel around. You need to make absolutely sure that you never, ever have any ink on your hands. It is hard to wash off and you will get ink all over your cards.

 Paper

We printed on recycled cardboard. But you can use any kind of cardboard or paper you like! I advise against using shiny-surface paper - the ink won't dry properly and it will look blotchy. Natural card is best as it absorbs the ink nicely.

 Text

The Gocco copes really well with printing all kinds of fonts, but be sure you don't go below 11PT on your design, or it may get a bit blurry.

Cleaning
I think it is impossible to clean Gocco screens. I store them in a zip lock bag in the freezer. If you want to reuse them, you just need to thaw them out a little and they work fine!

Gocco Weekend

We took the Gocc down to the beach shack for some serious printing. It was so much fun - I'm working on a big post with hints and tips for other first time Goccoers who want to do invites. It's entirely feasible and fun to print wedding invites yourselves! All you need is a big roll of kitchen towel and a bit of patience.

I hope you are enjoying the drizzle and the mellow Monday! Very welcome after another hot and busy weekend.