Thursday, February 26, 2009

DIY: Gocco Invitations

How did I not write about our invitations? Perhaps I blocked them out because they were so. much work. After they left my house I was happy to have them out of sight, out of mind.


Our invites were entirely designed and created by little ol' me (using purchased art...I'm not an artist!). P. bought me a gocco for my birthday so the invites were really my first project using the gocco. I highly recommend practicing a bit more before you create your invites. The gocco isn't hard to use once you get the hang of it, but we burned through several frames and lots o' ink before we figured out how to burn the screens to create clean, crisp pictures on the other side.

Gocco, straight out of the box, with computer tutorial.

There were papers everywhere. Everywhere.

Our invitations had four components. The actual invite, the response card, an info sheet, and the envelope.This image is probably the closest to the actual color of the paper (which came from Paper Source). For the envelope I handwrote a screen using the gocco pen and then printed them so we wouldn't have to handwrite a return address on each envelope. As a sidenote, we no longer live at that address so good luck stalking me there :)

While I wanted to use vintage stamps, that ended up being a cost that I couldn't justify. My way of getting around using the flag stamps (the only stamps available when I was sending out invites), was to use a variety of smaller amount stamps. This involved running around to four post offices who looked at me like I was a crazy person for buying hundreds of 5cent stamps.

Our invitations were simple, using an image from Nikki McClure, one of my absolute favorite artists. The text is in a dark brown color, with gold ink for the image.

Our info cards used two screens: one for the image done in gold ink and another for the text, done in a raspberry color. We intended to have driving directions on the back of this sheet, but for some reason could not get the screen to print clearly so after several ruined screens we just scrapped the idea and stuck directions on the website.


You may notice that on our reply card we didn't really make it clear that people should still write their name if they weren't planning on attending. Several people responded with "no" responses and no names. We had to guess based on postage and process of elimination who those people were. Kind of a pain.

So all in all I really liked how they turned out. They aren't professional. They aren't letter pressed. But they were fairly cheap. For save the dates, all the gocco supplies, paper, and stamps we spent a total of $310.

And, since I'm sure someone will ask, here is our save the date. We made my sister take the pictures of us lying under my parent's apple trees holding blank pieces of paper, but wouldn't tell her why. She thought we were crazy. I added in the text after the fact. We printed them using VistaPrint, with a discount code, and I think we paid around $15 total.


Thanks for all the questions! Keep them coming!

21 comments:

lovejustice said...

AMAZING!!
What is the beautiful font you used for your names?!?! Thanks for sharing!

Color Me Green said...

what pretty invitations! what i want to know is...where/how can i buy a gocco machine??

Jess (hellowifeonline.com) said...

Thank you for posting this! Invitations - so far - are the most overwhelming wedding item for me. (Mostly due to two factors: I'm a graphic designer, and am broke!) So, this post was very helpful and inspiring!

backyardwedding said...

Color Me Green - I bought my gocco on ebay, but you can also find them on etsy. Mine came as a kit with some supplies.

lovejustice - The font I used for the names is called King & Queen font.

Thanks!

Carey Griffin said...

Love this!! Where did you buy additional screens and such for the gocco?

I've been looking in to the machine, but they seem to be a dying breed.

Joanna Goddard said...

they are SO adorable!!!!!

backyardwedding said...

We bought supplies here:
http://www.northwoodstudios.us/
and from paper source.

Lindsey and Matt said...

We are looking for save the date cards.... what a unique and fun idea. It kind of prepares your guests for the type of wedding you'll be having. Great idea! Thanks...

-ahomegrownwedding.blogspot

Anonymous said...

What is a "gocco"?

One Love Photo said...

WOW! A ton of work but so worth it!!! These are beautiful and I just love the shots of you under the apple tree. You can see your connection with each other and with your sister. so sweet!

jenna said...

Those are gorgeous.

How did you go about buying the images from Nikki McClure? Did she send you a disc or a pdf or something?

sera said...

Your invitations are truly beautiful. But honestly, your save-the-date's are incredible! You two are so cute!

sera said...

Can you tell me how much it cost to do your save-the-dates?

backyardwedding said...

Sera-It cost $30 for the STD's with shipping and everything included!

Lisa said...

Lovely invites!

FYI, you can order stamps from the post office online. Tends to be better variety than what the local post office orders.

Sarah D. said...

I just purchased a gocco and plan to do invitations for my sister's wedding - ~200 invites. How many tubes of ink would you expect for us to go through (based on how many you used)? Thanks! Sarah

backyardwedding said...

Sarah- I think we used about 1 1/2 tubes of each color for 150 invites. So six tubes total.

nadia said...

love the illustration, nikki is my favorite artist too! but...you did ask her if you could use the image, right? she's just a poor artist in olympia.

Katie T said...

nadia- Yup! We paid her for the image.

Maeve said...

gmail.comI LOVE this idea! Just bought a Gocco. I am curious, I was told I could only print an area of 3.5" by 5....what size papers did you use??

Maker said...

Those are awesome!!!!

I am just finishing my Gocco Invitation project and I have relied heavily on your guidance.

My only issue with the GOCCO has been purchasing gocco supplies. One note of caution for all the fellow (brave!) GOCCO brides out there: I have had excellent experiences buying from printaddictjapan and crafty japan (on etsy). However, my experience with Northwood Studios was awful. They sent me faulty bulbs and they refused to refund my money or send me replacements (she kept saying that it could only be user error). So I had to order and wait on new bulbs from another vendor. Unfortunately, the bulb problem set me back $40 and two weeks. Now, I won't get my invitations mailed until 6 weeks before the wedding. eek!