I finally tried my Gocco out last night!! It took me long enough. Everything I wanted to make was on fabric and I wanted to try on paper first so there it sat unused. I finally took Christine’s advice and just bought some index cards and did a test run, something that I didn’t have to worry about being perfect and just something simple. And I love it!! It was so easy. Mostly everything worked perfectly from the get go.

I wanted to test to see if a print from my inkjet printer would work so I printed out a little scribble and then drew my design around it with the Riso pen that came with the Gocco. Then I burned my master and applied the ink. Alan chose brown, or kaka brown as he called it saying I would probably use kaka brown the least. (But oh no, I just realized…I have kaka brown hair. I would totally use kaka brown all the time if I were going to make drawings of us!! Well anyhoo…)

Then I started printing. The inkjet printed part worked! But I didn’t want to print that part so I just covered it up with a little post it note which worked fine. I really didn’t think about lining anything up which DUH I should have. The design was very tight and close to the edges. I didn’t pay attention when I made my master so the index card didn’t line up to any of the lines on the Gocco. I tried using a sticky to align it but it was right on the edge so it didn’t work really well. I basically just eyeballed it. So print, print, print. Some of them were centered right and some weren’t. But that’s what happens when you eyeball stuff. I used up all 100 index cards.

Then when I was done I didn’t know what to do with my master. I wanted to save it and I vaguely remembered reading on Flickr Gocco pool about storing it in the freezer. But the problem. Flickr was down last night! I couldn’t look it up. So I didn’t know what to do. I just panicked a little and stuck it in the freezer. If it’s ruined that’s ok. It was so easy I’ll just make a new one!! I love it! I fell asleep with Gocco thoughts in my head.

And on a completely different subject. Here is silly Isabelle trying to sit on a balloon. She was doing this as I was trying to post so I just had to take some pictures and share.