Me and DIY= Path of Destruction

I've shown you our invites and some of the behind the scenes creation, but let me show you the underbelly.  In what is going to sound an awful like Miss Hamster's posts, here is some of frustration and fatigue my sister and I experienced producing those bad, bad boys.

Months and months ago, we had warmed up our Gocco skills with the save the dates.  That process had gone very well, so I figured sure, there might be some mess-ups, but otherwise we were PROS, baby, Gocco pros.  We'd sail through these artichoke invitations like butta.

Hoo boy did I have another thing coming, and coming up big.  Now, I still love the Gocco and I'm very proud of what we accomplished, but ah mah GAH I was about to rip out my hair with the various problems we encountered.  

Here's a sampling of the issues (for those who are interested in Gocco):

Problem #1: Splotchy edges

 

Solution: once you've inked your screen (this will make sense to you only if you have interest in using Gocco), use a few scrap pieces of paper first to get rid of excess ink and kinda let the screen "settle down" before you use it on your final product.  We still had some splotches, but not as much.

If that doesn't work, I can't help you. 

Problem #2: Disappearing text

 

Solution: since the screen didn't burn properly, but it was only a little bit of the image that did not come through.  I didn't want to burn another screen just for the small parts missing on the letters, so I took a toothpick and *gently* hacked me a new "S" and "W" on the screen so that the ink would come through. 

 

Problem #2: Disappearing image

  

Someone's been trimming my artichoke!

This was probably our biggest problem.  We couldn't figure out what was wrong and tried several different things (burning through several screens) until we figured it out.

Solution: don't measure the size of the mesh screen to determine what size image you can use at one time--measure the sticky pad on which the blank paper rests, because due to some inexplicable design flaw, it's SMALLER than the mesh screen.  What gives.  If your image is larger than that pad, the part of the image larger than the sticky pad won't come through. So we moved the image down and lost some of the bottom part of the image. 

C'est la vie, artichoke, and hasta la vista to your stem.

  

i forgot to take a good picture to demonstrate what I'm talking about--but see the light blue screen at top? Yeah, whatever.  What you want to measure is the gray sticky pad beneath, the one peeking out from under that white paper.  You can use the unused portion of the screen for another image (or split a too-large image into two parts).

At certain particularly frustrating moments, the phrases "f&%k it" and "who gives a sh%t" soared through the household.  I needed to take breaks in order to stop myself from going Office Space on the poor Gocco.  

This is what our workspace looked like:

 

These, sadly, were a mere sampling of the mess-ups. I know it's hard to tell from this distance but trust me, there was something wrong with them.

 

Luckily, we had these to help:

 

Gazooks! Only half full! We needs a refill, dammit!

Nevertheless, we soldiered through.  And it worked out just peachy. Or artichoke-y.

Anybody else's DIY projects start to go off the rails at some point?