I took everything down south with me this past weekend; everything I needed to print. Before we left I took my inkjet prints down to the local art store and had a couple of copies made since the gocco requires originals with carbon to shoot the screens. Prior to that I had to wrestle with the printer at home to get good originals - cleaning printheads, changing ink, running test copy after test copy. I think - no, I know - that was the most stressful part of the whole printing process. The rest of printing with the gocco was fun. I'm hooked!
I took our stack of Lori Michelon prints and the stack of watercolor paper I had torn down at home. During printing I found that the gocco definitely works better on the smoother paper. I used both hot press and cold press paper, 140 lb. for the invitations. My plan was to go out on Black Friday to Michaels or JoAnn and buy envelopes and a couple of packs of watercolor postcards but could I find any postcards? No. None. I ended up buying two spiral-bound 6 x 9 inch watercolor books and tearing down the sheets to 4 x 6 inch postcards while at my mom's.
You would want to allow plenty of time for this if you are doing a largish wedding. We're only sending out about 60 invitations so it was not overwhelming.
Once I got the gocco set up on my mom's enclosed porch things began to move quickly. The instructions are easy to follow and my screens shot perfectly. Honestly, I don't know why I have waited so long to use this. It is so fun and easy, and I love the hand-printed look of the finished invitations. There is some variability in the prints so if you are a perfectionist I'd cut or tear a lot of extra paper, and perhaps do some experimenting with different papers before printing. There's no set amount of pressure on the gocco when you print each sheet, so if you (or your printing assistant) gets distracted you might end up with more ink on some sheets than others.
The man actually got involved for awhile, but his attention span for printing was short and besides that, he was trying to watch "Raiders of the Lost Ark" at the same time so I relieved him of his printing duties after a few rounds. He had a good knack for printing and he discovered that one side of the cold pressed paper was smoother than the other, yielding a better print, so his limited time at the task was of huge value. Thank you, honey!
The ink has to dry for awhile before you can stack them (we let ours dry overnight) and while I've seen some pretty nifty drying racks my gocco didn't come with one, so these ended up all over the room on every flat surface. We really had to watch the dogs as of course they wanted to come into the room to play right under our feet. Funny how they don't even seem to notice the paper under foot. I don't believe we have any paw prints on anything although I might have missed one.
The screens can be cleaned (something I have to do today) and re-used, and if you store them in a zip lock baggie they can be reused even after a day or two (or so the instructions say... I haven't tried to print again). I'm going to try to clean mine despite not having the gocco cleaner... I'm sure there are alternatives. I'm not even sure I need these screens but just in case...
It really didn't take much ink to print 120 or 130 copies... seems like I had to touch up areas about every 20 prints or so and completely re-ink about midway through.
Really fun and very satisfying. Of course it is just another discontinued product I've fallen for.... like the polaroid camera.... so the supplies are expensive and hard to find. But I'll use what I have and if I really get hooked - perhaps I'll try the Yudu.
A previous post where I referenced video tutorials on printing with a gocco is here.
My goal is to have these out by the end of the week, but I still have some work to do. Couldn't find a horseshoe stamp ANYWHERE so I have to carve one myself. And these need to be sewn together. But they are coming along and WILL be out by Monday morning at the latest.
Comments