Weddingbee Blog

Part I

You could say we were pretty ambitious to make our first gocco project the actual invitations…but what can I say, I’m a crazy kinda gal. Luckily, I had amazing help, my super creative bridesmaid, Michelle and my friend, Mona. After months of Michelle emailing me invitation designs she made on Adobe Illustrator, we finally decided on one and met at her apartment one night in November to get down to business.

At first, we were totally intimidated. The instructions were simple, yet confusing. I don’t know how to explain it. I think we were all just scared.

Mish reading the instructions

After some time, she said ”whatever, let’s just do this!”

Flashing the screen

We all stopped what we were doing and prayed that it worked. “Don’t look directly at the light people!”

We each had our assigned tasks… Michelle was in charge of the gocco. Mona was in charge of the paper cutting. And I was in charge of the corner cutting.

Mona on the paper cutter

Mish making the first print. You see that blocked off area, that was the product of a not thought out idea.

My fingers hurt a lot after cutting all the corners. And I had to do each one at a time, otherwise you wouldn’t get clean edges. ~100 invitations + 100 accommodations + 100 rsvps= 300 x 4 corners= 1,200+ punches. My thumb and index fingers were not happy with me.

We also took turns tying the ribbon into bows. You see the first two columns, they were made by Mish and Mona. Earlier on, I heard Mona saying to Mish, “Wow, I never knew the correct way of tying a bow, it looks so much better.” I remember thinking to myself, “Girl doesn’t know how to tie a ribbon? How hard can it be?” After I had tied about 50 of them, I compared mines with theirs and was like, “How come yours look so much better?” They were like, “Uh, I guess you weren’t paying attention to our earlier conversation.” At that point I was like, “forget it, I’m not tying these suckers over.”

For the main invitation, we used the darkest orange-colored paper we ordered and gocco’d the design on with white ink.

Gocco’ing with white ink on dark paper is a little tricky. During my research and convos with Miss Penguin, I knew it could have been a hit or miss. The screen constantly had to be re-inked and these required the most do-overs. Instead of a simple press down on the gocco, it required more man power. You needed to press down hard and then rock the gocco a couple of times on all four edges. But in the end, we were very happy with the result.

For the accommodation and rsvp inserts, Mish had to mix her own shade of orange with red, yellow and white ink.

We tackled the accommodations next and found that printing with colored ink on light paper was so much easier. These were a breeze compared to the main invitations. One press on the gocco did the job.

Then we did the image for the rsvps using the same orange ink we made, but it appeared darker on our lightest orange-colored paper.

Finally, last but not least, we did the envelopes

I loved how the design extended to the flap.

We pretty much took over the whole apartment with this project.

At this point it was already 3 a.m. and we were all beat, plus the ink wasn’t all dry yet so we couldn’t print the text even if we wanted to. Honestly, I don’t know how people can tackle the gocco alone. Major props to you! Without Mish’s and Mona’s help, I would probably be huddle in a corner with gocco ink on my face and crying. Thanks so much ladies!

Here’s some more pictures of our labor of love.

Part III: The Finished Product

Those of you who have tackled the gocco, was your first gocco experience everything you imagined you it would be?