Locco for Gocco (groan)

Last March, Lovely Cat was selling her Gocco machine, and, having wanted one for AGES, I just jumped at the chance to buy it from her. Ten months later, it was still in the box. Not for want of enthusiasm, mark you, just lack of spare time.

The Gocco works as a kind of a cross between screenprinting and stamping. I was reading an interview with Forever Foxed last week, and was astonished to discover that, unlike screenprinting, you can print more than one colour at once. "Eh?", I thought to myself. "How does that work, then?" The answer is, instead of pulling the ink towards you through the screen with a squeegee, you press the ink down through the screen. As there's no "drag", you can use more than one colour at a time, provided they're not too close together. The interview with Forever Foxed I linked to above has more details on the process. Do go take a read; it's informative without being too technical and confusing.

So, after getting all inspired and worked up about all the lovely Gocco-ness around at the moment, I thought I'd crack out the poor, neglected Gocco to print up a couple of ideas I had for Valentine's cards. Here are the results:













For a first attempt, I'm pretty pleased. I was a little nervous about the process, but I've learned so much just from making these two images and I'm just raring to do more. The Riso inks made specifically for the Gocco machines are oil based, which I'm not too keen on, to be honest. (Brings back too many memories of screen printing at uni and having to constantly wipe and wipe and wipe my screens down with white spirit and newspaper to get them clean, temporarily obliterating my fingerprints in the process. They use water based inks these days, health and safety and all that.)  I might have a go using the water based acrylic inks I use at the print studio to see if I get on better with those.

My kit didn't come with any ink blocker gubbins, so I've bought a sheet of crafting foam which I'm going to experiment pairing with double sided tape and see if that works as a means of keeping my colours definitely separate.

I've had a couple of ideas for new prints, but they've already got extravagantly out of hand, so I think those particular ones will need a trip to the print room. I need to get back there, anyway, as it appears I'm all out of Wolves, Woodsmen and Grandmas. Rocking.

If you fancy a Gocco Valentine's (anniversary, just because) card, I've put some up in my Folksy shop here.