The Wedding Files: Gocco Wedding Invitations

Have you ever paged through Martha Stewart Weddings? By my estimate, half of the "real" weddings featured there are of current or former MSO staffers. Crafts Editor. Former Crafts Editor. Former Abused Underling of the Current Crafts Editor. In about an additional third of the couples, bride or groom or both are fabric designers, art directors, set designers, or unemployed artsy types. The couples throwing the more whimsical of these affairs claim they spent $3000 dollars on the wedding (because it was held in the enormous backyard of the bride's parents' fantastic house, and Mom and Dad paid for the vegan caterer - that doesn't count, does it?). This bride spent eight months sewing the pennants strewn over said back yard - she likes to call them "peace flags!" And her dress was transformed from an old "farmhouse bed sheet" into a agnes b.-ish masterpiece.

There is nothing so different about this - home design magazines nearly always feature the "real" homes of interior decorators and architects. It's just more jarring with weddings, because there is truly nothing about a fabric designer that makes her (or him) better at getting married than the rest of us.

I don't begrudge people their "peace flags" and vegan cupcakes, or anyway not much. I am clearly a fan of handmade touches (pompons, anyone?!), and hope to include one or two in our wedding. But I wanted to point out something obvious - that you don't see too many lawyers, especially among brides, gracing the pages of MSW. (Funny that when I type that acronym I think "Master's of Social Work!"). And here is why: it's not because there are no creative types in the litigator set, though I concede that they number fewer than in the average population. It is because handmade touches + law firm = staying up very, very late. So late, that you begin to lose the battle against the dark circles you really intended to obliterate by your wedding day. So late, that your partner may begin to give up on calling "come to bed" from the bedroom. So late that your cat is in her prime nocturnal hunting hours by the time you pack it in.

Anyway, where am I going with this? I guess the relative absence of lawyer brides from MSW makes me feel better, in a sad sort of way, because at least I know it's hard for lots of us to go the peace flag route. Still, I wanted to pick ONE wedding project, just one thing, that I could go whole-hog DIY on and get it right.

This is a long way of introducing the post where I break down the making of our wedding invitations. Aside from the odd stamping project, printing and paper arts are not my usual thing, though I enjoy design and visual stuff like photography. Gocco is a self-contained printing system that's a bit like a cross between screen printing and stamping, that allows you to mass produce some pretty amazing looking designs on paper or fabric. I first heard about the Print Gocco (rhymes with "loco" - took me a while to figure that out) when it was discontinued by Riso, its manufacturer, and the Save Gocco! campaign gained traction on the internet. So I was a bit behind the curve. You can still find the machines pretty easily on eBay, which is where mine was purchased. I did not count the cost of my Gocco - about $200 including shipping - in the cost of our invitations because I had been meaning to invest in one for a while, and will use it for other projects.

L: preparing the screen; R: burning the screen

To understand the basics of how Gocco works, you can watch this short video from EtsyLabs. But the quick-and-dirty version is that the machine uses specially-treated lightbulbs that react with the carbon in photocopies or laser printed designs to burn tiny holes in the screen in your desired image. Then you ink that screen and use the Gocco machine to push the ink through onto paper as many times as you need to.

L: used bulbs; R: inking the screen

There are a few different models of Gocco. I'm no expert, but the biggest differences are between the B6 variety and the PG-10 and PG-11 models, which provide tools for registration, which means lining up multiple screens on top of each other (for instance, our names over the ampersand in our invitations). Mine is a PG-10, but I wish I had gotten the PG-11 since it seems that by the time the PG-11 came out, Riso really understood what worked for registration. There are also some models with larger printing areas than the 4x6 that is standard on most Goccos.

The process took me about two weeks, squeezing in Gocco time on nights and weekends and not counting the time it took to design them in Photoshop and order supplies. In the end, we are both so happy with our invitations. They are pretty much exactly what I had pictured and more (silver ink was a last-minute stroke of inspiration - you can't design in Photoshop with silver!). Each is a little different but that gives them character. And best of all, each of our guests will get something in the mail that was handmade by us.

I learned so much in the process that I wanted to collect and share all of that here, for others who may be motivated by a wedding to plunge into the world of Gocco:

Reasons to Gocco your wedding invitations:

• You have a sense of adventure
  
• You like the idea of total control over your invitation design, colors, paper size and shape, and layout
  
• You are comfortable designing and manipulating fonts and artwork, either in Photoshop or by hand
  
• You like depth / texture (almost) of oil-on-paper inks
  
• You want to use light colored inks on dark paper, but can't afford the more expensive printing methods that typically enable this (don't forget about offset though!)
  
• You want to use metallic inks
  
• You have a fair amount of time in which to get all of this done
  
• You want to show your partner how dedicated you are to your wedding ;)
  
• You are obsessed with the capabilities of pre-digital technology (I mean it, it's pretty amazing - just like dolby cassette tapes!)
  

Reasons not to Gocco your wedding invitations:

• You tend to panic when things go wrong
  
• You're a perfectionist; you want all your invitations to look exactly the same
  
• You are on a tight deadline
  
• You aren't great with messes
  
• You are not crazy about a process that may or may not involve a few toxic chemicals (the flashbulbs are coated in god knows what - wash your hands!)
  
• You want a lot of texture in your invitations (i.e., you envision letterpress or engraving)
  
• You don't shop online
  
• You need 300 invitation sets
  
• Your may get frustrated by having to lay things out using a print area that may be smaller than your invitations
  
• You have an ill-behaved cat who likes to knock wet invitations onto the floor and eat the paper
  

L: reply envelopes drying; R: envelopes and liners

We purchased all our paper from Paper Presentation in NYC, where we chose the paper we wanted and had it cut to size. Gocco supplies came from Welsh Products and Northwood Studios.

Cost breakdown:
$120 - Paper (100 invitations, reply cards, outer envelopes, inner envelopes)
$60 - Printed envelope liners
$22 - 4 tubes Gocco ink (silver, white, orange, brown, burgundy)
$25 - 5-pack Gocco screens
$25 - 10-pack Gocco bulbs
$20 - Estimated shipping for Gocco supplies
----
$272 - Grand total for 80 invitation sets ($3.40 / invitation set) + extras

It would have been substantially less had we nixed the envelope liners, but they were just so cool and we were saving money elsewhere, so we splurged.

BUT. I ended up messing up a few times, partly due to the Gocco novice's steep learning curve, and partly due to making the absent-minded person's dumb mistakes. Like, I printed the colors wrong on an entire set of the main invitation paper I'd bought. Whoops.

lookin' good . . . Doh!

So we spent a little more on materials, and the whole process took a bit longer than expected (invitations went out about a week late) since we had to await the arrival of more supplies in the mail. The extra expenses associated with this amounted to about an $80 stupidity tax.

Stupidity Tax
$40 - Extra paper
$8 - Extra ink
$15 - Extra screens
$15 - Half pack extra flashbulbs
_____
$78 - Total Stupidity Tax
$350 - Total cost (including stupidity tax) ($4.38/set)

L: info cards drying; R: rsvp card

Resources used:

• Old but REALLY helpful instructional video. Superb acting and music!
  
• Super-basic "this is how this works" video from Etsy. But kind of confusing on where to put the ink blocker!
  
• Marissa's Gocco tutorial slideshow on Flickr. Gives tons of good tips and very clearly demonstrates registration.
  
• Gocco discussion board on Flickr. And the pool is full of awesome inspiration.
  
• YouTube vid of someone goccoing wedding invitations. Don't know why, but I just found it reassuring to see someone else do invitations!
  

Tips / lessons learned:

(Most of these are covered in Marissa's tutorial or one of the other resources above, but they bear repeating!)

• Have an assistant. You need someone for clean hands and moral support, and to hold the plastic part of the screen down when it keeps flopping over. The fabulous Carrie M. played this role to perfection! I did some of this on my own, but it was much easier and more fun to do with a buddy.
  
• Plan for accommodating your paper when you burn your screen. Gocco screens only fit into the machine in one way, so you can't flip it around once it's burned. Our first screen was burned right-side up, but then I realized that since the text was supposed to go relatively low on the paper, we wouldn't be able to fit the paper into the machine to print without getting the paper crunched up in the Gocco's hinge.
  
  So I had to burn a second screen with certain of the elements I was using done upside down. Spend a lot of time figuring out how the paper will be positioned before you use a screen.
  
• Maximize screen space. Since supplies need to be ordered online, and are kind of pricey, you want to maximize the surface area of your screens. Leave enough space between designs to apply ink blocker, but use up as much of the surface as you can. If you can't think of what to print, just pick a design you think you might use later. We planned for thank you cards, and burned an image of the parachute drop at Coney Island, just because we had the space. I'll find a use for it later. I suppose it's possible that the unused parts of a screen could be burned later if you tape paper over the part of the screen you weren't using when you burn them the first time, but I haven't tried that.
  
• Be careful when re-using older batches of mixed paint. I thought it would be wise to mix large batches of the colors we were using so that they would be consistent across the invitations. However, I found that if the paints weren't stored totally air-tight, they would develop small lumps that would interfere with printing when they were reused - lumps would block parts of the screen and part of a letter would end up missing from the text. I found it easier and less wasteful to mix as much as I needed, and match each batch to a paint chip I got from the hardware store of the target color. That way I was always using smooth, fresh paint. However, on more detailed, non-text designs (like the bike) I actually found using old paint was better, since it came through the screen more sparingly and small design elements were more visible.
  
• Ink blocker (the sticky foamy stuff that prevents the ink from spreading on the screen and colors from bleeding into each other) goes on the ink-side of the screen. That's the the side that's covered with the plastic flap, not the printing side. Carrie and I learned that one the hard way (we blame etsy).
  
• Make multiple copies of the images you're using for your screens. You might even try making them in multiple sizes. It's nice to be able to play around with the scale of your design if you want to.
  
• Save your screens until you're sure you're done with the project. You never know what you might have to redo!
  

As a final insane touch, I ordered loads of vintage stamps off eBay, vowing not to pay much more than face value for any of them. I ended up getting a leetle carried away and ordered way too many, so we had a nice selection and have lots left over for thank you notes, and, er, bills for the rest of our lives. (Yeah, gas company, you get the Bob Hope stamps).

L: all done; R: assembly line

I did buy the new King and Queen / Love stamps for the RSVP cards, and frankly those are just as adorable (go USPS! In my mind you're still doing penance for that horrible Rapaelite cherub love stamp, yech). My mom, who has gorgeous penmanship, offered to address them for us and we couldn't have asked for a better hand. I also owe thanks to Marissa (whose tutorial is above) for Gocco tutoring, my dear friend Joy for design advice, and Carrie M., the best Gocco assistant ever!

the whole set

People seem to think the invitations are nice, and most people are surprised to learn that they're homemade. Now that we're receiving reply cards, and are getting a huge kick out of reading what our friends and family have written, we're getting super excited for the wedding!

Posted by jess at July 27, 2009 8:25 PM | TrackBack