Monday, March 16, 2009
peacock+elephant=tsquared
my dear bff tsquared has a birthday very near my own. last year my gift to him was a day of gocco - he is a designer and i knew that he would love it and create something excellent. fast forward to now. until a few weeks ago, there was no design, no gocco day, no gift. our birthdays are in may! we were coming up on a year and have little time left together (he is leaving me) and figured it was literally now or never (wah!).
i had the gocco supplies and he had the paper goods of his selection. he drew a fabulously elegant peacock riding atop a bold elephant, perfectly fitting his personality. we made a saturday date and finally got the gocco gift show on the road.
inking up
when he arrived i got all the goods out and we set about creating the master. as you are probably well aware (since i have mentioned it 11 billion times), gocco supplies are limited, so we planned to use one screen for both the card design and the envelope. in went the bulbs, screen, and design sheet. i let tsquared press the machine to flash the master. pop and reveal...OH NO! the design only showed up faintly on the peacock of the card...we screamed and cried some, desperate for answers.
after closer inspection we found that the second bulb hadn't flashed because our paper was in the way of the eletrical connection. to save screens, tsquared lined up the design and i reflashed the original. one very bright flash later, the screen was set. we blocked the bottom from the top and used navy ink (i have 20+ inks but my last 3 gocco projects used this color...). i let tsquared do the work from here on out. it might not seem like a good birthday present (making your own), but i promise it was right for him. he likes crafts!
inked
he printed the elephant design on small blue and large green cards - 60 total, i believe (though, it might have been only 40). we also inked a variety of other stock and cards i had laying around.
envelopes are important, too
since the elephant was already inked, we decided to cover it with paper so it wouldn't get on the enevelopes while printing. tsquared randomly inked flaps and fronts for a totally individual look. to further customize, we lined each of the large and small envelopes with coordinating scrap paper of different designs.
cute-to-the-la!
as you can see in the finished design, there is some noise around the peacock due to the overlapping flashed image. tsquared was ok with that, as gocco itself often results in a very imperfect, one-of-a-kind product. with the cards and envelopes all over my living room furniture, i'd say the extremely belated birthday fun was a success. we let them dry for a day and i brought them to work the following monday. now tsquared has a stack of custom cards to send me when he moves away. i promise i won't get sick of seeing this design in my mailbox on a weekly basis ;)
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5 comments:
YAY for cute la and fun birthday gifts! This was tons of fun, although I felt like throwing up when it didn't work the first time. I know how limited them supplies are.
I haven't sent them, other than your thank you cards. I just like seeing them all over my house :)
Hey Alauna!
Love the Gocco cards. I have a question, where do you buy your gocco supplies and is it easy to teach yourself how to do it? I want to try this! Love the design as well, so cute!
Hi Kelly! Gocco is really easy to do, but unfortunately has been discontinued. I'm sure you can still find the printer set on ebay or even etsy, but the prices are probably crazy. I buy my supplies online from a variety of retailers, but the screens and bulbs are slowly dwindling.
www.papersource.com
www.wetpaintart.com
http://www.northwoodstudios.us/
PS
Thomas, who commented above, is tsquared, and it's his design. :)
Thanks for sharing!
I found someone on etsy who sells a whole kit for like 285.00
I think i will save up a little and maybe splurge on my birthday or something!
Alauna, you are my craft goddess. I just caught up on my reading since February and as usual you did not disappoint! Also, I'm SO making that fennel pasta goodness. Seriously! Please make time in your busy schedule soon for us to hang out :)
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