We made some gocco print notecards with one of my daughter’s drawings. I find it frustrating that I can rarely get a good screen impression on these. The screens are so expensive that I hate to try again. My tracing probably needed thicker lines. I’m amazed at all the Etsy sellers who have great gocco screenprints. I think I’d like to learn how to make real screenprints sometime soon.
Let me count the ways. This little contraption is pretty amazing. I’m helping with a wedding party this weekend, so I got out the Gocco and printed some paper napkins….
and a hand towel….
and etched these wine glasses.
My first real printing project using the nifty Gocco printer.
I drew these ginkgo leaves, scanned them into Photoshop and then printed them and copied with a photo copier to make a carbon screen for the Gocco. I like using the metallic inks because you can’t get that effect from a printer. I wanted to use silver, but it looked a bit flat. Since the invitation was large, I printed the green lettering on my inkjet printer and then stamped the image and the name of the couple with the Gocco printer. I have definitely learned that when you are making the screen, it is best to hold it down for about 20 seconds and let the image really burn into the screen for full inking. Looking forward to making lots of fun stuff with the Gocco!
My husband gave me the ingenious little Gocco printer for Christmas and I’m ashamed to say that I just took it out of the box today. I am intimidated by objects that require me to read instructions (particularly when they are in Japanese), but these great tutorials here and here got me through it and it turns out to be very simple. I now understand this Gocco craze! If you have not heard of these, they are basically mini silkscreen printers that burn the image and print it in a couple of simple steps.
I worked on this with my five-year-old who brought home a Dr. Seuss-ish drawing from school of her name in cursive made into people. The image needs to be in carbon to transfer to the screen, so I had her re-draw it with the carbon pen provided. Lost some of the detail of her original drawing as you can see below, but still great. I guess I could have traced the original. You can also scan in or create an image on the computer and (from what I gather) print with a laser printer or make a photocopy.
Anyway, all you do is make a screen of the original, ink it and print away. I look forward to trying some designs of my own and want to try multiple colors. Good-ness over at Etsy has a good price on the basic set.
