Gocco'd Invites: Take Two

After my first attempt at gocco printing our invitation sleeves went awry, I was determined to master the screen-burning/printing technique during my second attempt this weekend.  I'm happy to report that round two was (mostly) a success!

I did have a few mishaps:  Two of the bulbs I used while trying to burn our names onto the screen were duds, causing an uneven master; only one side of the image burned correctly, and because I wasn't sure if you can expose an original multiple times, I decided to wait until this evening to try again with a fresh copy.

I was, however, able to create a crisp burn of our quote to print on the bottom of our sleeves.  Remember last time a few letters didn't turn out?  Well, I followed the advice I received (Thanks guys, the Hive is great!) and mounted my original on card stock and ironed it (to get rid of excess carbon?)  Worked like a charm!

I really, really love the white gocco ink on this paper.  It makes me smile  : )  Working with the white ink is a pain, though-- it's so freakin' thick.  I had to use a TON of it to get even prints.

I had to use so much ink that it bled over my ink blocking material.  I constantly scraped it up and tried to put it back in the center because I didn't want to waste ink.

Between cutting the sleeves out with the Cricut and SCAL, gocco'ing them and folding/assebling them, gocco'ing them was by far the fastest step... even though I'm only halfway done.  I got through all of them pretty quickly.  The hardest part is folding and assembling them.  That takes foreverrr.

I was gocco'ing like crazy for a good 45 minutes.  Furbaby Doxie was jealous that my attention wasn't on her!

It wasn't long before I had a few racks (plus a large amount of floorspace) filled with goccoed sleeves.

I can't waaaait until they're all done.  They're going to look something like this:

That's the fabric that will back our invitations.  Imagine our names on top of the heart.  I'm really happy with them so far  : )

On a side note, Mr. Dachshund is always wary when I begin a craft, because the whole house inevitably looks like this:

White paint on the floor from a ceiling painting accident D:

I'm glad that I finally settled on my invitation design, that the gocco is working as I'd imagined, and that I know I'll be able to finish them in time.  Believe me, I was worried.  I have a tendency to dream up DIY projects that are way too complicated!  I'm excited to show you the next few steps of our invitation suite process and hope that you enjoy them as much as I do.

Did you DIY your invitations?  What was the most complicated and tedious element?

Also!  I have a ton of  little heart cut-outs.  Do any of you have suggestions as to how I should use them?   They're way too cute to throw out.