Holiday Gocco

Happy New Years! My last post of the year and it also happens to be my 60th post. Wow!! Who knew that I would have so much to share?! What better way to wrap up the year than with my new favorite toy - the gocco!! After my first attempt with my friend Nicole last month, I decided to give it another go with some holiday cards. They didn't come out exactly the way I wanted but they turned out okay. Lessons were learned and I'm already brewing up my next day of gocco fun.

I bought a PG-11. This has a larger print window compared to the PG-5 or PG-6. The PG-11 also has some paper registration that helps with alignment and placement. I also read that the PG-11 makes printing 2 colors (when layering is involved) a bit easier.

Here is the first card I decided to make. I got the vector illustration from istockphoto.com and played around with it.

Again - I am obsessed with printing white on color paper.
I also hand mixed the green color so it would compliment the purple better.

This is how I mixed the ink colors. I would not recommend this. It was a pain.
I was too lazy to go buy the ink.

I had some green ink left over - and of course I didn't want to waste it so
I decided to make another set.

Print Master - stamp from Impress Rubber Stamps

Do you see the white splotches?! That was because my carbon copy had too much carbon and burned to the screen. The paper gets stuck on the screen and then the ink can't get through. I tried to scrape it but that didn't work. Oh well. They still turned out pretty cute.


For kicks I decided to print it on the purple to see
what the ink colors would look like. Ummm...not so good.



I wrote a little ditty about our year and then folded it. The fold is called a Turk Map. I have a file of how to do it. Drop me an email and I can email it to you!

Happy New Year's and cheers to another year of flowers, crafts and fun!

Happy Birthday To Me!

It was my birthday last weekend and we threw a Holiday/Birthday party for friends and family. Our theme was Naughty or Nice and the night consisted of ways to figure out whether one made Santa's "good list" this year.

One the highlights of the evening...CAKE! This cake was delicious!
It was from Miette Bakery located in the Ferry Building in San Francisco.
This was called a Tomboy cake with buttercream frosting. YUMMY.

My husband surprised me with Personalized Cocktail Napkins!
He was very proud of the fonts he picked.

My friend Caroline made cupcakes. I stuck little halos on them for the "nice" ones.

Some of my nice friends (and one naughty)

One of our signature drinks was the Savage Car Bomb.

Boy, did I pay for this. It was a fun night though!

I Faked My Shoes

One the biggest challenges I had for my wedding was finding shoes! My ceremony was on grass so anything with a sharp heel was out. I'm not a big fan of wedges and I really wanted to be comfortable. My plan was to never stop dancing and my shoes needed to help me achieve this. After a lot of research I gave up and bought some cute flip flops at Macy's. My mother did not approve (to say the least). To please her I bought another pair of shoes (not intending to wear them....ever.)

I have to say though, the shoes photograph well.

This is what I actually wore all day!

And of course after I got married - I realized that my shoes didn't need to be white and that funky and fun shoe were actually cool.


Oh well.

Lisa & Paul

Lisa and Paul got married on a beatiful day in October. The sun was out and it couldn't have been a better day. Their colors were red, black and white! Lisa has some wonderful images of the wedding from their very talented photographer Ed Pingol!

Bridesmaid Bouquets with their initial pins

Flower Girl Head Wreath

Loco for Gocco

A couple of weeks ago my friend invited me over for a "Crafty Gocco Fun Day". She had just bought a Gocco Machine (if you don't know what this is check out the info here). We thought it would be fun to make some stationary sets as gifts for friends and family.

I really had no idea what I was getting myself into but I left the house at 9am on a Sunday and told my husband I wouldn't be back until dinner time. I was THAT serious about it. So after MANY trials and errors (and some chatting and lunch) we were able to print these puppies out....

First Try: Thank You cards. We didn't want to do anything too crazy and to be honest - this was REALLY our 2nd try at it. The first try was well...not very successful.
First lesson learned: Printing graphics that bleed (come off the edge) is tricky.

Second Try: Birthday Cards: I really wanted to print something
with white ink and colored paper. They turned out pretty cute!
Lesson 2: Make sure to use DARK paper to print with white ink. For some reason
the ink kept clumping and getting goopy (official gocco words). So it was a pain
to make sure the ink printed with clean lines.


It was hard to see the white ink on pink, sage green and light blue paper.


Third Try: Hello cards. I wanted to make the olives a different color but it was hard to block the coloring on it. The big pain here was the dotted lines on the bottom.

Lesson 3: Avoid lines if possible and avoid lines that Bleed. Yikes.
This was hard to register and if the paper wasn't aligned correctly
you could tell immediately after printing one because the lines on the
bottom would be crooked. I know - they are so darn cute but the cuteness does not
outweigh the number of gray hairs it gave us.

Overall, I was very happy with the results and ordered my own Gocco this week!!
Can't wait to start some more projects and share then with you.

Oh - and thanks (I think) Nicole for getting me hooked :)

Patty & Michael

Patty and Michael got married on a beautiful day in October at The Westin Hotel in Palo Alto, California. It was a small intimate affair and I was happy to be a part of their special day. All photos taken by their photographer Jack Ip.

I supplied the flowers and Patty (and maybe some helpers!)
placed the orchids on the napkins and floated them in the bowls. They did a great job!

Look at their cute cake topper!