Emily August

Okay, so I know that I’ve mentioned already that I am going to be helping my sister by designing and printing her wedding invites. We met this weekend to go over some preliminary ideas, but the first step was for me to jump in and try printing on my new Gocco machine, which I purchased on ETSY a few months ago.

My first screen did not burn properly and I thought I was going to cry. A bad screen means that I’ve wasted bulbs, the screen, and test ink, which all means money down the drain. I got very cranky and started poking holes in the screen with a safety pin. Finally, I just gave up and burned a new screen.

The second screen turned out alright. About a quarter of the image was meant to have more solid areas and they burned very poorly, picking up the texture of the sticky pad on the machine below. What I ended up doing was covering that part of the screen and just printing the rest of my image: a set of tree branches. The inspiration was this drawing I did on my sisters’ closet doors about two years ago. Her wedding is going to be incorporating birds and bicycles, so I thought it was a good place to start.

Honestly, I kind of loved it. There is something magical about printing something that comes out of your own head. I decided the image didn’t look half bad on the face of an envelope, and so I raided my stash of stationery to pick out different sizes and colors and experiment.

I mixed gold and black ink just to play around (why not?) and it was kind of fun. I’m happy with most of them, even if they aren’t as I intended. Even the smudgy ones are kind of neat.

Here are some envelopes drying in the rack:

I will get much better at this with practice, but overall I’m happy with my first attempt. Next to figure out exactly what she wants each piece to say (save the dates, invites, thank you cards, etc), and play with more colored inks.

Tags: art, art drawings, branches, gocco, home life, paintings, seasons, trees

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 6th, 2008 at 7:13 PM and is filed under craft, etsy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.