Valentine's Day update

My Etsy store has been updated with two new creations: a Poladoodle print (limited edition of 5) and a Gocco card. This is my first time making prints with a Poladoodle made with 600 film, so the dimension of the prints has been updated to 8"x10" paper to accomodate the square format.


As you can see, the card design was inspired by the Polaroid image. The hearts are obviously inspired by Valentine's Day but I think they are appropriate any time. They were both very fun to make, especially the Gocco since I haven't touched it in awhile. Hope you come on over and take a look here!

Handmade Christmas Card

Now that all my Christmas cards have been mailed out, I can share what they look like.

The snowflake design was drawn by me and then printed on Crane correspondence cards with Gocco white ink. I wasted many screens and bulbs because my original drawing had inconsistent amount of carbon, I think. I finally took the risk of trying my inkjet printer. I read in few places that, although you're supposed to use toner-based printed images, some HP inkjet printouts can work, too. Good thing my printer is okay for Gocco! FYI, I used HP PSC 2210 all-in-one inkjet printer. It's quite old and has trouble printing clean zerox copies, so I scanned my drawing, cleaned it up with Photoshop, and then printed the digital file. It worked very well, almost too well. I will have to do something about the excess carbon next time..

Although it was tedious, I had fun attaching the tiny glitter stars on the treetops. It was a small batch.. Since I had a late start in Christmas preparations, I made these only for personal use. Next year, I'm definitely going to have a proper holiday collection in my shop. :)

August Shop Update

Hello, friends!
I just updated my Etsy shop with two new sets of Gocco-printed cards. One "Thank You" set and one gold set, to match my previous gold set.

The Thank You cards were inspired by many wonderful examples of handwritten type we see these days. Mine's just a small experiment...


I ruined many Gocco screens trying to print these.. One time, one of the bulbs exploded, almost giving me a heart attack. That wasn't so pleasant but it's not going to stop me. :) Let me know what you all think! Should I have these available individually too, I wonder?

My second successful Gocco project

Hello, folks! Sorry for the lack of updates lately. I've been having a sort of an artist block lately.. I did work on more projects with Gocco but I ended up wasting lots of screens. So far I've only flashed master screens with original drawings, and I learned that mixing two kinds of pens is not a good idea. I think I will start using copies of drawings, or scan them and then use digital print outs. Still lots to learn about Gocco..

But I managed to successfully print some Thank You cards:

I spent many agonizing hours sketching ideas on what to print on these blue note cards but in the end, I decided to print a simple text, something that Gocco can handle better than a handmade rubber stamp can. Once I decided that, the design came easily, and the master screen was made without any problems.

I'll show better pictures of the cards when I am ready to do a shop update. :)

Shop Update

Hello, friends! I updated my Etsy shop last night with my first set of Gocco printed cards.

They are available as a set of four, and I'm also including some matching stickers. I love using matching stickers when I write letters.. do you?

I can't wait till I do another project with Gocco but for now I have to be patient because my order of Gocco supplies hasn't arrived yet. And I messed up on the last screen I had. Oops.. More on that later. ^^

Gocco

Psst, I got a Gocco machine. OMG!



I first learned about Gocco a couple years ago when I was browsing various sites of Jill Bliss. I was immediately drawn to it but resisted getting one because I read that they were going to stop making them. But recently, I started to seriously reconsider because of my recent interest in rubber stamping. If I like making duplicates, then why, I should get into screen printing, I thought. And then one day, this Gocco came in the mail as a surprise present! >_< Thank you.. you know who you are. I am one happy gal.

Those cards in the picture above are the results of my first Gocco printing. As you can see, I made some mistakes and tested on different colors of paper. I think I used up almost half of the gold tube! What was I thinking? Heh.

I printed the design on lots of white note cards I had lying around. Here they are drying:


Not done yet! Here I'm adding some color with rubber stamps:

I guess I could have made a second screen for the hearts or used the blocking strips but I didn't want my first Gocco project to be too challenging. I rather like this combination of Gocco + rubber stamping.

I'll write about the finished cards next time. :)
You can learn more about Print Gocco here:
Save Gocco
Flickr Gocco Group
DIY Definitions: Print Gocco