Category — gocco

Happy Monday! I can’t believe Thanksgiving is this week… time flies This weekend was a very productive one on the wedding front, we gocco’d our save the dates! It took a lot more ink than I imagined…

But our new Ikea dinner table substituted nicely for a work table

And all in all, we are pretty happy with them! The white didn’t print as white as I would have liked (but it is whiter in real life than in these pictures), and it isn’t 100% centered, but other than that I love them! Not to mention they only cost about $25 when all is said and done :) 

I also addressed all but 5 of the envelopes (who knew i needed significant others last names?!) We were going to print the addresses on labels but since we didn’t have any on hand and I couldn’t decide which labels we would even want to use, I decided that my handwriting isn’t all that bad and did them myself. We did decide that we are going to gocco our return address on the back, so that will need to be done, and I need to cut and assemble all of the envelope liners, but with only 45 save the dates going out, we should be done by this week! Woohooooooo!

Did you complete any wedding tasks this weekend? oh!  A BIG CONGRATULATIONS to Jenny, who got married on Saturday! Woo Woo

of our save the dates. 

Well, we finally committed to a design, and there is no turning back. Especially because I already burned the gocco screen  Here is a little peak into the beginning of our paper suite.

The printed master

The burnt screen. Sorry it is hard to see, trying to get a good effect

A massive headache left me in bed all weekend, so we weren’t able to go to Paper Source to get the supplies to print them all Hopefully that will happen this week!  

… than my mom’s homemade cookies  We will be giving them away as favors, and seeing how I won’t have anything to show you on them for at least another, well 8 months or so, I thought I would show you the basic idea :) 

Brown window bags we bought from PaperMart ($20 for 100!)

Plus grey and marigold ribbon I got from etsy:

Plus my mom’s cookies (sorry, no picture) and some creative gocco action, should equal something like this:

(from Martha)

I think they will turn out awesome, not to mention delicious!

Everyone needs to own a gocco. Ok, not everyone, cause you are using up all the bulbs! But just look at what it (along with some perfect calligraphy and some creativity from a bride-to-be) can do!

(seriously that gorgeous. from her.)

These thank you post cards from Martha Stewart are perfect. I love that they use pictures from the wedding. This means you would have to wait to send your thank you’s until after the wedding, but for a couple like us who plan on waiting a few days, or weeks, before the honeymoon, it would be super easy to upload some personal pictures of the day and print them out on the photo printer at home.  They sell postcard size cards at Paper Source for under $5 for a package of 50, and you could get a fun border punch at Michael’s to do the scalloped edges. I think I have also seen a template from Martha for the “postcard” image on the back. A little double sided tape or spray mount and you are good to go!

(image from here)

Jason over at Designfruit just emailed me about his latest photoshop brushes, stitchy circles.  At only $14 (for personal use) these brushes plus a little know how and photoshop would make for some great DIY invitations and other wedding related print goods.

And these patterns would look great as envelope liners, table runners, whatever!

Update: The stitchy circles now also come as vectors, for all of you illustrator/indesign lovers Thanks Jason!

Ok, so today is a new day, the migraine is (mostly) gone, and I am embracing the B word. It’s just a word. And if it wasn’t for the average american wedding costing $30,000 (!) the word wouldn’t exist. Even if I wasn’t planning a ‘budget’ wedding, I would be doing the same things I am now. Which include this:

Such a cute idea and so easy to make yourself. A stack of cheap (in price, not quality ) paper napkins, some ink and my handy gocco and I am all set! A nice little detail that won’t cost a lot of money. 

Photography by J. Cogliandro Photography, image found on style me pretty.

Here it is, the seemingly elusive, hard to understand, but oh-so-amazing Gocco.  I am a print designer and would love to one day be able to design invitations for a living. Ink-Jet printed invites are ok, but you don’t get the range of colors that you can with something more professional grade; and without taking some classes, and lots of money, letterpress is not an option. So when I found out about the Gocco I was super excited. I knew there were ones for sale on ebay, but I have this worry about most things ebay, that what you are sent is not what was in the picture, or that not all of the pieces are included (sorry ebay lovers…).  I found out that they sell them online at Paper Source (seriously my mecca. if you have never been, you need to go, it is amazing) so i bought this one:

This is the smaller of the two that they sell. Looking back, if I had the money, I would have bought the  bigger one because you can print onto bigger sheets. This one prints on postcard size sheets, which works for me for now When I print my invites I will have to get crafty with how I print on the bigger sheets. 

When I bought the Gocco, the website said “Included: Instruction Video” what it didn’t say is that it is in Japanese!  Funny to watch, but for someone who took 4 years of spanish, it gave me only a very small glimpse into the how-to of the machine. Also, whenever the little yellow (!) would pop up with a lot of text, I got worried that it was saying “Don’t do _______ or you will die!”! I found an amazing PDF tutorial here and it saved me.  I will say that it helped me to make my first 2 attempts 100% successful!  Here are my two sets of cards drying on the included drying rack. 

Nothing crazy. Just one color, thick type… Next I will try a smaller type size to see how that works out. Below are my two “clean” screens.  Anyone who has used a Gocco, is this how they are supposed to look?! I used a ton of “tiny amounts” of the cleaner, and no more ink was coming off… I have yet to try and use them again, so I guess only time will tell if the previous ink comes off on the next batch.  As you can see, the image is burned into the screen, so that once you are finished, you can store them and use them again and again (hopefully).

So here are my tips for using the Gocco (since I am so amazing at it):

1. Use a laser printer. The screens burn because of carbon, and unless you have a certain Ink-Jet printer, it won’t work. I printed mine out at work and they worked well.

2. When you buy it, buy lots of extra bulbs and screens. You will either mess up and need extra, or you will do it perfectly (again, like me, i know) and will want to keep going.

3. Again, go here for instructions.

4. I haven’t used this guy yet, but I will. He has every color ink imaginable.

5. Don’t look at the lamp housing while pushing. I know you will want to make sure it is all working, but making yourself blind in the process is not worth it. 

6. Use a good amount of ink. Re-inking can be a pain. But if you use a LOT of ink, make sure you have a mini squeegee and a little airtight container to put the excess ink in.

7. Have fun! 

I will keep you guys up to date on my gocco adventures, and please, if you have pictures of your gocco creations, leave me a comment with a link to them! I would love to see what other people are doing. If you are familiar with flickr (which you should be because it is awesome) check out this group.

P.S. I plan on gocco’ing everything at my wedding. The invitation suite, the favors, and whatever else I can get my hands on!  I can hardly wait for the year to be over so I can see how it all turns out!