Friday, May 23, 2008

Baby's First Gocco

I ordered a gocco two months ago and it's been burning a hole in my creative pocket ever since. Andy's off to the races tonight, so I took advantage of the very rare several waking hours home alone to try my first gocco project. I thought that it best that my trial run be solo (i.e., I didn't want him to be here if I got gold ink all over his pub table or rug.)

Anyway, I can't show you what I made because it's a reproduction of a card that I bought somewhere. I only selected it because it looked like it would be easy to practice with. Even though I'm not selling them, I don't want to suffer any wrath or hurt any feelings. Here's how it turned out:

  • I looked down at the gocco as I was burning the screen and my eyeballs are still hurting two and a half hours later.

  • I used a photocopy of the print, per the videos that I watched online, and some paper stuck to the screen. Unfortunately, it's a silhouette image so the spot makes it look like she has a hickey. When I tried filling it in by hand, it looked like she tried covering up her hickey with the wrong color makeup. I am going to pretend that the bare spot makes it look "vintage."

  • Cleaning the screen was a HUGE NIGHTMARE MISTAKE. I found some directions online and it did not go as smoothly as the author said. She listed her "total expenditures" as three minutes, little bit of Riso cleaner, and 2 napkins." I went through a bunch of Riso cleaner, half a roll of paper towels, two plastic knives, a stack of Garrett's Popcorn napkins, and I still ended up with an unusable screen and gold hands.

I've decided that I'd sooner prostitute myself to earn money to buy invitations than pull a Weddingbee and gocco print my entire invitation suite. I think that I am a (Have Someone) DI4Y-er.

6 comments:

Linda said...

I love it. I always felt bad about not making my invitations. I see other girls gocco theirs and think maybe it's not had. Thank you for telling me the truth. I feel better now. Hope you can get the gold off your hands!

A Windy City Wedding said...

ha ha ha ha please DO NOT prostitute yourself. the gocco i would agree is more for fun projects and not ones you are really invested in. i think we made like 40 bbq invites with the gocco and maybe half i was actually happy with. no way would i do invites on it and besides i dont think you can do more than 50 or so with one screen.

Kelly said...

oh, I just love it too. I look at gocco'd invites and get jealous and wish I had bought one to do mine. This makes me feel SO good!

Veronica said...

You rock Tina! Thanks for the 411. I had a feeling those gocco projects were harder than they seemed.

sarah said...

what in rhe world is gocco? i am a trix in the dark...

Rachel said...

Ha ha ha!! I know what you mean - doesn't it always seem like the projects you think aren't going to be SUCH a big deal, always turn into one! Hopefully you'll be able to get some help!

BTW - I love those Etsy greeting cards. I think I would totally laugh if I got one. I guess you'd just have to pick and choose who you'd send them to. Maybe you could send them to your friends you know would get the joke - everyone else could get a generic card.