tie your shoes

tie your shoes

The Illustration Friday topic for the week was "strings" (I thought). My wee boy learned how to tie his shoes today, so I had shoe strings on my mind, perfect. I drew this up and went to IF to upload it and that topic must have been for last week. This weeks topic is "late"...still seems like a fitting drawing given my dilemma.I also started the list of drawing topics for Everyday Matters. I knew shoes was the first thing on the list for a long time now. I never felt like drawing shoes, which means in my twisted way that I could not continue on with the list...lame. I'm counting this as my shoes drawing and moving on. Join me! It's a drawing party and you're invited. Yeah!

I love carnies

I've been taking pictures of carnival rides...I can't help it.

They are so colorful and, well...run by carnies-and who doesn't love the carnies?!

Another Gocco Success! (and a gocco tip)

Here are the latest cards I printed with my gocco! I took a little illustration I made of my neice Emily and made them into cards for my sister, Emily's momma, as a birthday present. I hope she likes them.

For this print I used two screens and four colors. The outline of the girl I did on one screen so that I could print the envelopes without the word hello. The second screen had all the colors. One thing I did learn that I can pass along to you new gocco-ers is to make sure you mix your colors well. I mixed the blue for this print and although it looked thoroughly mixed, it was not. Their were little swirls of white that came through while I was printing, and as a result the blue looks faded in some of the prints. I did do fairly well with the registration which I was happy about. They have some Gocco machines that come with a plate to help you with registration and i can see how that would be helpful in more complicated prints, but for this one using the Gocco pad to line up the prints worked out just fine for me.

Slapping up some TKP stickers

I made up a bunch of stickers with the little Travel Kitty lino print I carved a whileback. I gave most of them to a store that is selling my kitties. The next thing I know I was seeing them up around town. Crazy!

It's been a long time!

Sometimes I fall off the computer wagon. I don't think this is a bad thing. It probably means I'm spending more time playing outside or making something neat...and that's probably for the best. My latest break from the blog world started when I pulled out my Gocco machine to print some invitation for my mom's 70th birthday party. That was back in May! I was helping plan the party from many states away (NY) and prep for my annual trip back to the homeland (Chicago). I all went well. It was a terrific summer and has been a busy but productive start to fall.

The invitations were a collaboritive effort between my sister and I. She recommended the colors which went with the decor of the place where we hosted the party and I did the layout and printing. I think they came out pretty good for my first Gocco attempt. I hand cut a bunch of matte board for the invitations instead of using cards, and did a two color print using one Gocco screen. If i were to do it again I would have used two screens and put the text in the center of the screen and just worked with the registration on the prints. The font I chose was really delicate and pretty (like mom...awe) and it didn't always print well because it was on the edge of the screen. I printed a bunch of extras and chose the best of the bunch to send out.

The Gocco machine makes me so happy. Life would be good if you could experience the flash of the Gocco bulbs everyday. I also really enjoy making prints. I kept wanting to screen print things, but the space, mess, and chunk of time you have to commit makes it a bit prohibitive with a wee boy running around. I was able to start making these prints after he went to bed and still finish and clean up before it was too late. So all hail the Gocco, it rocks my world.