Artichoke in Gestation

And here's a look at the process of making our invitations, which went out last month. I know, so fun.  I won't go through the nitty gritty of using a Gocco because you find that in plenty of other places, but here are some highlights.

("Highlights" may be overstating the case, but nevertheless, we shall muddle through.)

We started with our artichoke image. 

Source

(copyrighted by Bobbi Angell--do not use without permission!)

I wanted to use the artichoke on all three parts of our invitation suite--main invitation, schedule of events, RSVP card--but not the same exact image.  So my friend used Adobe Illustrator to create two alternate images to this main one--one with a close up of the bottom portion of the stems, and one with just the smaller artichoke on the right of the image. 

As you probably don't recall, I purchased Strathmore Natural White 130 lb. cover paper from Limited Papers, and had the company pre-cut my paper into 5 x 5 cards for the invitations and schedules, and 3.5 x 5 cards for the RSVP cards.

Before I could start Gocco'ing my heart out, those suckers needed to get rounded corners. So I took my handy rounded corner punch, and rounded away.

 

Observe the hubris from the mighty corner punch at the bottom of the picture.  Below is a blank, rounded RSVP card:

Now that the paper was prepped, I needed to burn me a mean artichoke on the Gocco screen by flashing really scary bulbs through the screen and image.*  The abridged version (and check out those veins just poppin' outta my arm!):

Then, I inked the screen. This was fun, mostly because it was the least stress-inducing step of using the Gocco.

Then, we went from this:

To this (blank one on top, printed one on bottom--to point out the obvious):

But whoa-ho? Where be the text, yo? (I'm a little tired right now.)  I created the text in Word, using Vera Humana 95 and Day Roman fonts.  We then burnt an image of the text onto a new screen, inked it, worked some more Gocco magic, and voila!

Kinda cool, huh? Admit it, you're really impressed with me. Say it!!

Next up is the full invitation suite. 

*I try to spread this around as much as possible, but if you don't want to use the bulbs and/or cannot find Gocco screens and bulbs, you can still totally use your Gocco--see this great post on Unless Someone Like You about a DIY Gocco screen.