Weddingbee boards

GreenTea,

I am from NJ. Where in Jersey are you from? I am from central Jersey.

Honeydew,

I would advise you to arrange all your designs on the screen before you burn. You can always burn more on empty space, but you can't erase somethig that youve already burned. Also, I would make sure the design is something that you can use like a Thank You card and have the paper handy. I made the mistake the first time of burning a screen with the most awesome design and not having the right paper. Once you ink up the screen  and are done you can either put it in the freezer and save it for later or throw it out. I don't know about others but its darn near impossible to get all the ink off the screen without aggravation. I ended up throwing out the entire screen.

I agree we should have a Philly Gocco party. My only question is where we would hold it.

The ink isn't that hard to clean out - get the ink cleaner from Paper Source for Gocco.  The key is doing it right away. The color will stain the screen, but once your paper towel wipes clean, you screen is clean and you can re-use it again and again. I have. 

 Some tips I have:

Use the ink blocker around everything, not just to separate colors. It will help keep the ink in the area you want it and make it go farther.

Mix your ink in a baggie and cut the corner to pipe it into place like icing.

Be sure your ink is fairly uniform in thickness to avoid uneven printing.

Don't ink until you are ready to print, paper set up and registration in place. It dries fairly quickly, so you don't want to loose time with it.

Set up the registration of your paper and the screen before you ink it. This way you can see the paper thru the screen and line things up well. I make a right angle out of two pieces of cardstock taped into place to slide the paper into reliably everytime.  I also find it helpful to use some scrap paper to cover the uncovered portion of the base, too much stickiness with the screen can throw off your registration.

Papers that are a bit porous will work best - the stardream papers resist the ink a bit and it takes a long time to set.

good luck!

About how much should a gocco machine cost? on ebay or in store or on craigs list? Do the expensive screens and bulbs usually come with new or used one, if not how much are they separately? I went to Pearl Paint in NYC the other day thinking they were a dealer and the poor 6'5" man in biker shorts just laughed at me. Well, I guess 'poor me' really. He gave me a catalog and told me that was the next best thing and pointed out a $1000 machine. Then, I starting laughing! What a sight!

 PS. Can a beginner DIYer with grand aspirations and vision be able to Gocco? I saw a few of these videos and ya'll look like professional printers.

OK, so thanks to the wikipedia, I see goccos are no longer made and they run for about 170 on ebay. Thanks Wikipedia!

Honeydew, there's a lot of good advice posted here. I just completed my first gocco project - our wedding invitations! Some tips that were most helpful for me:

- Create at layout of your design/text and close the lid on the gocco machine over the registration paper to see how the paper lines up within the window.

- Spread an even, thin layer of ink to avoid waste or paint overflowing the screen edges and ink blocker.

- Always print a "test" after re-inking the master to ensure everything looks ok.

Here's a photo essay of my project on Flickr:

 http://www.flickr.com/gp/9892638@N03/85e9Nz

 Good luck, and have fun!

Sid: yes, I gocco'd the text. The invitation card was difficult to print perfectly because if the ink runs thin on any letter, I'd have to stop and re-ink again. It was especially difficult to ink because of the proximity of the gold and green inks. As you can see from the flickr pic, the two colors really started to bleed into each other, even with the ink separator in place. I had to stop a few times and "clean up" the ink with a q-tip. If I were to do this again, I'd inkjet the green and gocco just the gold.

Sweetart: the floral image was taken from a rubber stamp found on http://naturesblessings.com/store/.

Thanks, Haselwand and everyone! I'm so relieved that our invites came out nicely. I was really worried! I considered doing two screens for gold/green text, but that would have just taken longer since I would need to carefully line up each card before pressing down on the gocco to make sure I had the right spacing between lines. (The 5x7 cards that I printed on are slightly larger than the PG-5 machine that I have so the cards didn't line up exactly on the print pad.

Sid: sorry, I missed your other question earlier. The small tube of cleaner is used to clean the ink off of the screens. It looks like vaseline except it doesn't leave a greasy residue. Just wipe off the excess paint from your screen and then clean the screen w/ the gocco cleaner. The screen may remain stained from dark colored inks but should press clean after a few times.