Weddingbee boards

So after much anticipation, I tried to make my very first gocco project this weekend - thank you cards. It was a disaster. the ink would create rivulets when I pulled the lid up and my design was coming out splotchy. I read through the flickr forum and concluded that either my laser printed design didn't have enough carbon in it or my design had too many big solid patches for the gocco.

Instead of wasting another screen and pair of bulbs, I thought I'd ask experienced gocco-ers for some tips. I read that gocco does better with fine lines instead of big solid patches. But I also read that the gocco can't do superfine lines. Do you think this design will translate well?

The new design is the one with the "Thank You" text. My old design is the one with the 6 squares. Both pics are 4 inches tall in actual size. The font used in the new design is Scriptina.

Please help!

new design:

old design:

Thanks ladies! I was seriously considering cutting my losses and resellign the gocco. But  I'll give it one more shot.

hotcocoa - I'm using a 105 lb. cardstock that kind of has a metallic sheen. I guess it's somewhat slippery. I tried brown and green as alternatingcolors on the square design but since i used up retty much all of it trying to ink thegocco generously, I'll have to use a different color on the new design. From your experience, are pearlescent inks tricky too?

 mschampagne - thank you for all the great posts!

Your old design - Gocco doesnt do well with big solid areas - sometimes you will get a huge solid area with little spots of white in between so I try to avoid doing such designs. As for splotchy printed areas, did you try inking it and checking out the results? I am asking because I just did a gocco of the words "Celebrate with us" over the weekend in Oldscript, bolded and I was utterly devastated because the design looked splotchy on the screen.But I decided to give it a shot and ink it anyway and it turned out beautiful. Don't ask me how that happened! I am just thanking my lucky stars it worked :) 

Your new design - It should work fine except that you should be prepared that the super thin lines MAY not turn out. As an example - I used Chopin Script on our names and my fiance's name starts with a "W". For some reason, the swirls on the W didnt turn out at all - Not sure whether it's got to do with the fact that I didn't dry the paper properly (see below).

If you are a stickler for perfection, then you may encounter problems with the Gocco because not every piece will turn out 100% the same since it is handprinted. If you want every piece to look professional swoonworthy, you are better off with a commercial printer. 

One major tip I learned - ALWAYS ALWAYS dry your design before goccoing. I use a hairdryer and I air the design for a good 3-5 mins before goccoing it (to remove the moisture on the paper). The one time I didn't do it, my words came out splotchy - thankfully it was black ink so I could go over it with black pen. I picked this up from the gocco yahoo groups. 

For my wedding invites, I am using peony colour, gold colour and black colour and thus far, they seem pretty ok. The gold is a bit tricky because from certain angles, the words (Oldscript) are not very visible. 

Hope this helps! :)