Wedding Blog

Goccoed Napkins. Beautiful, creative, affordable, cohesive, fun, quirky, a bit sexy? Yes. I’ve been drooling over the idea of making these cute little suckers for quite some time… so… I did it!

I would definitely recommend doing a little Google image research for inspiration - there are a TON of really sweet designs and fun ideas out there! Here’s a few that I came across…

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I love the chandelier graphic - and yes, you CAN get that super sharp resolution with the Gocco - as long as you remember to use the blue filter!

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A super cute design! On a really nerdy optometrist note, it kinda reminds me of color vision testing plates.

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CALLIGRAPHY! I love this - they used some commissioned calligraphy to burn a screen. Isn’t it gorgeous?!?!? *wipes drool off of keyboard*

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I love the 2 designs, and the really cute heart. I love the heart. I’m not sure, but they might have used a rubber stamp for the leaf image; I’m a self-proclaimed PaperSource stalker, so I recognize the stamp.

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Same design, two colors, and you should just check out this wedding (AND the blog) because it’s phenomenal.

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A cute idea—love quotes. Or, like Mrs. Cupcake, you could always do random facts about yourselves! Mr. Ramen and I liked the fact idea… we pondered it. Pondered some more. And then we realized that we would probably not be able to come up with enough interesting/appropriate facts to be significant. And Sissy Ramen wisely advised us to KISS.

I checked into the price of cocktail napkins at various party stores, Walmart, Target, Costco—they were all quite affordable, I’d say. But then again… people are wiping their dirty mouths/hands/whathaveyou on these, so did I realllllly want to spend more of my hard-earned $9/hour work-study-job dinero on some mini napkins? Meh. Not really.

So… I asked my caterer if they had blank cocktail napkins so I could print on them. Lucky for me… they, did! One side is printed with “Hyatt” in light grey, but since that’s a wedding color, I let it slide. Plus, it was free (although, I suppose technically, I’m paying for them anyways… bummer, now that I realize that. Oh well.). I didn’t know if you were supposed to calculate like 1 napkin/guest, but I figured I would probably need 3 on my own, at least, so that would be like - what, 1 million napkins? But at any rate, we only got about 450-500. So the caterer will just supplement the Goccoed napkins with some plain ones. I’m okay with that. I really don’t think someone’s going to cry because they didn’t get 3 printed napkins.

So, all you need is a trusty Gocco and a stack of your napkins all ready to roll… it helps if you have your napkins right next to the Gocco in the orientation that you want to print them. Then you can get some smooooth snatch-press-peel action going on. If you don’t have a Gocco - don’t despair! You can always a) use some fun rubber and/or acrylic stamps or b) make your own stamp with this sweet set from PaperSource. (BTW - I swearrrrr I’m not getting paid to advertise them. I’m just madly in love with their awesomeness.)

How exactly does the Gocco work? Like I’ve said before, a little bit of awesome Japanese fancy-magic! I don’t know how it really happens, but you “flash” these crazy bright bulbs on a screen with your design in place… and the chemicals on the screen somehow burn the design onto itself… You can kind of see what I’m talking about in the above picture - and you can also see how we totally packed the screen full of future things to print.

We custom mixed our own ink, and like Pengy has suggested, we mixed A LOT of ink, since it’s hard to match colors again if you run out. Be generous with your inking and press firmly!!! We ran a few tests on some scratch paper first, and once the ink was coming out evenly, we started pressing away. Mr. Ramen and I split up the printing about 1/2 and 1/2, while the other took a lunch break eating some tasty tortas from Los Reyes de Las Tortas on 7th Street (one of my fave Phoenix eats!). Like all things uniquely Ramen, I really wanted them to be at a quirky angle, instead of perfectly lined up.

And here’s the final product - we decided to do 2 runs, in 2 separate colors. Our blue-grey came out a leeeetle more green then I had anticipated, but we decided that no one is going to go and try to match the napkins to the programs or menus, so we just let it roll off of our backs. The other color is a peachy-pink. Again, not a perfect match, but we loved the results either way. Win!

Our little napkin army, drying. (Make sure you have a lot of clean, dry space to lay the napkins out on!)

Cheap AND easy! Okay, so the Gocco wasn’t cheap, but it was a previous birthday present from the oh-so-loving-and-awesome Mr. Ramen a couple of years ago (I caught the fever from the bees!), and I have a huge Gocco stockpile so it didn’t cost anything extra. And of course, we got the napkins (almost) gratis and finished this entire project in about an hour! Yeah-yuh! Another project, another point for Team Ramen.

What has been your cheap-and-easy wedding craft thrill?