Weddingbee Blog

Hello, and welcome to Battle 2 between Hamster and Invitations. When we had last met, the paper was whupping major Hamster butt. Not to let some Lettra paper get the best of me, I set aside this entire past weekend to work on Goccoing these babies up. I had our invitation design printed, photocopied, and ready to go. I dusted off the rarely used and much feared Gocco, only to hit my first roadblock:

I had foolishly assumed that the entire Gocco screen could be printed on, but only a 4.5 x 6 in area was usable (for my Gocco, at least!). I could, in theory, have just played with the spacing on my oh-so-advanced Microsoft Word creation, but I don’t have a printer at home! Cue the Hamster tears.

However, my creativity kicked in, and I fixed the space issue with some DIY cutting and pasting. I like to think of this as a subset of DIY, called UYOM (Undoing Your Own Mistake).

Okay. Now I was ready. I had my cut-and-pasted invitation mockup. I ironed the design at the advice of Miss Pug. I remembered to use that blue film thingy that I had no use for when I Gocco’ed my save the dates. I even remembered to put the batteries into my Gocco - I was a pro!

With an emotion somewhere between trepidation and enthusiasm, I nervously printed my first invite. On scrap paper of course. The result? Not good.

Okay, so our names *did* print, I just Photoshopped them out of the picture. But see that line running through the word “Mr.”? That was fo’ reals. Have a closer look.

See? Not pretty. And the word “HE” up there? That’s supposed to be “THE”.

My beloved monogram, created so painstakingly in… er… Microsoft Word, didn’t fare so well either.

So I tried re-inking, de-inking, printing on the Lettra paper, printing on Notebook paper, having my cat press the Gocco down with me (I really had hopes for that one) - but… a whole lotta nothing. Where nothing = crappy invitation printouts. At this point I was crying big ol’ frustrated Hamster tears.

So, readers, what was the outcome? Much as I had hid the Lettra paper in my closet, the still-inked Gocco screen is hiding in my freezer while I decide its fate (who are we kidding, it’s deciding MY fate). Shall I give it another try? Should I look for a printer who might be able to do this, if I provide the paper? Questions to ponder.

What did I get out of this? Some hopefully helpful tips for you, the fellow DIY-wannabee.

1. Make sure you don’t make you design outside the printable range of your Gocco. In my Gocco’s case, the boundaries were that gray squishy pad thing. Outside of that border - no printie.
2. Get a lot of scrap paper. A lot. You WILL need it.
3. It’s okay to cry. And try to employ your pet as labor. It may not work. But, it’s okay.

Stay tuned while I plan my next move….

Any other DIY fails out there?