gocco printing
Above is the original image concept for Aunnie's bridal shower invitation. It's a simple message — pure and sweet — just like their love. Lexi and Rey have the real thing!
Mr. C had a great idea, which was to print the bridal shower invites using our DIY gooco machine. It's the modern version of the japanese woodcut print. But oh my gawd, as fun as it is, it's really time consuming and a totally imperfect art.
Many thanks to my fabulous neighbor Yoriko who got this machine for me (xxoo!!) . Riso has stopped making them so I feel really lucky to have one. I found an abundance of supplies at ARCH in Potrero Hill, online you can order stuff at Paper Source.
After reading many tutorial's and examining these wonderfully helpful sites, we were on our way.
Felt Cafe Turorial
Get Crafty Tutorial
The Small Object Tutorial
The Lab Partners Process
e-How Process
gocco techniques
Here's the original xerox positioned in the screen, it was made haphazardly at our local kinkos and didn't turn out quite right. I bet using a laser printer would yield better results. There's also the gocco carbon pen to consider —though the ones that came with our kit are super fine tipped so big solids would be a pain to fill. In the future I now know not to try a distressed look without using a halftone screen because the distressing really didn't translate well. In the end it looked like we didn't ink the press properly rather than the vintage weathered look we were going for. Oh well!
One really important detail we learned was to NOT leave the original carbon xerox attached to the screen after exposure. The first screens we exposed by holding down the gocco for about 5 seconds. Afterward we left the originals attached for many minutes while we mixed ink. When we were ready to ink the screen we tried to remove the xerox paper original and found that the paper was so so so stuck it wouldn't come off and that the dark solid areas had cause a complete carbon screen fusion — see the hearts screen image above. We then did the exposures again and this time pulled the original paper off the screens as fast as possible, eh voila, see-through perfection! See below:
Next we mixed inks and then did the first pass of printing which was the pink hearts. The ink took a long time to dry so we weren't able to do the second ink run until early this am. In fact as I write this entry the cards are still drying.
The final cards are drying...keep an eye on your mailbox.