Because it’s his birthday, and it’s nearing Valentine’s season (it’s related because it has a heart on it!), I present to you a card that I made for my dad last year.
The color is not nearly that color in the original. It’s far more subdued. Think: light rose. Probably a color management issue or something Tumblr does to photos. Also, I didn’t print it with the background color either.
Happy Birthday, Sir.
A little while ago, Krissy and I headed to our favorite spot to score other people’s old stuff—Savers. I’ve long had a fascination with printing, especially screen printing, and I’d heard about Gocco a year or so ago from Krissy’s now-defunct laptop being left open to the Gocco wikipedia page.
So when I saw a Gocco machine on the shelf with the puzzles and board games, my heart skipped a beat. The best part? It was only $5. I proceeded to tell Krissy about it and she didn’t really seem to know what I was talking about. I told her that people go nuts for Gocco.
I doubted myself because she seemed to have absolutely no idea what I was talking about. So I opened the box to see if it looked like everything was intact. I didn’t know what I was looking for exactly, but the machine clearly hadn’t been used.
It seemed to have an extra 4 screens in it and only had 4 bulbs, but everything else was sealed and unused. We figured for five bucks, we didn’t have much to lose, right? (Checking online when we got home, it turns out they sell for ~$150 or so.)
So I decided to print!
The trouble was that we only have four bulbs, which means two prints: One for me and one for Krissy. So whatever I decided to draw and print had to be pretty spectacular. I settled on Krissy’s favorite animal the fennec fox!
I wanted the drawing to be made up of lots of little lines (dashes?). I don’t know what the style is, but I liken it to engravings. I didn’t know the resolution of Gocco screens, and I hoped that my lines were an okay size and spaced decently.
I cut some Fabriano watercolor paper to the appropriate size. I ended up cutting more in the middle of printing because I used way, way too much ink.
The handy dandy pen that comes with the Gocco machine. It has carbon in the ink which gets transferred to the screen when you burn the master. You can also use a laser printer, pencils, and some other pens as long as they contain carbon.
Take note of the previous owners loss. Then, feel sad that they didn’t use their birthday present. =(
Next, I trimmed the fox out and placed it on a piece of scrap paper. This made it easier to position the fox where I wanted him.
Next, the master is inserted into the machine. It only fits this way so you can’t mess it up. This machine was apparently designed for children to play with in Japan, so easy is the name of the game.
Here is the box of specially formulated highly toxic killer bulbs. Unfortunately they’re no longer made, and finding bulbs may prove to be the hardest part to more Gocco printing. They run about $25 for a set of ten (plus shipping).
The bulbs are coated in something yellowish which would probably kill you if you licked it. I wouldn’t recommend licking it. The bublb is also filled with soemthing resembling steel wool. The idea is that between the metal in the bulb and the coating, a lot of heat is generated which burns the carbon from the drawing into the master.
After flashing the bulbs you cannot reuse them. The metal (I’m guessing) causes them to crack. This could also be why they’re coated. Maybe it keeps the glass from shattering everywhere. I still wouldn’t recommend licking the bulbs, though.
Here’s the housing for the bulbs. You have to push them in and turn them 90 degrees. Sometimes bulbs have oxidized. You’ll want to rub the oxidized parts with aluminum foil or steel wool to make the base shiny if that happens. You don’t want to waste a screen because one of your bulbs didn’t go kablooey, right?
Shiny, shiny.
Place the housing onto the Gocco machine. Line the arrows up. Again, it was made to be a child’s toy so it’s pretty fool-proof.
After pushing down on the handle, the bulbs flash (avert your eyes). Hold it down for an extra couple seconds, and carefully remove the bulb housing. At this point, the bulbs are really, really hot, so don’t touch them. Lay the housing on its back and try to ignore the smell of burning metal and toxic chemicals. No licking!
I’m not sure if you can see in the photo, but the bulbs are cracked over most of their face. Also, there are black spots on the bulb from the metal inside the bulbs. I’m not sure what the best way to dispose of the bulbs is. I’m going to try to re-purpose them somehow.
Next, pull up the handle and your original drawing will be stuck to the master. This is a good sign. You’ll have to remove the master from the machine so you can ink it. There’s a plastic flap that keeps the ink contained within the screen. Don’t use too much ink. I used way too much ink. Just loosely cover the area of the drawing (that’s why you want it stuck to the underside, so you know where to ink).
Here are the (unopened) inks. They’re special ink for the “high mesh” count. They smell, so if smells bother you, take heed. Krissy didn’t mind them much. They smell like I imagine rubber-based letterpress ink smells.
I settled on blue ink.
Here you can see the original stuck to the underside of the master. The top is covered with plastic that you lift up to ink the screen. You don’t have to go crazy covering the entire area because the ink will spread under the pressure from the machine. Properly inked, I think you can get fifty to seventy prints fairly easily.
After inking the top, you can remove the original from the underside. It will have ink on it. Press the handle down and your scrap paper you used earlier will now have your design printed onto it. Now’s the time to make sure coverage is okay. If there are any issues with the printing, you don’t want to discover it later on.
Here is how my test print came out. It’s kind of sloppy and very heavy on the ink. I suspect this is from the massive dousing of ink I gave the screen. The amount of pressure put on the handle probably played a role too.
Regardless, I’m quite happy with the print, mostly because it worked.
I found that I didn’t really like how the machine printed the cards, though. Even later on when there was less ink on the screen, the prints weren’t as clean as I’d have liked.
Determined, I decided to get rid of the plastic ink covery thing and treat this more like screen printing. I made a makeshift squeegee out of folded card stock and scraped down the screen and found that I was much, much happier doing it this way. The ink is well distributed and the lines were much cleaner. You could use an old credit card, the debit card from the bank you left recently, or anything that is flat, really. You’ll just want to be careful about tearing the screen. They’re probably pretty fragile.
A view of the cards drying. You can see the ink on the leftmost cards is much heavier. The painting on the left was done by Krissy before I met her. The small painting on the dresser is one I painted awhile back based on Where The Wild Things Are. You can see the front of our Christmas cards poking out from behind the painting.
Say hi to Puffs the squirrel!
A close up of a few cards. You can see these came out much better hand-pulling the ink.
This is probably half of the prints.
Also, Krissy would like it to be known that we did not pick out the wall colors. You might think, “Hey, the walls aren’t that bad!” Well, that’s because I tricked you! You cannot see the lower half of the wall which is, believe it or not, bright lime green. True story.
So that’s my adventure in Goccoing for the first time. I enjoyed it, and the money was well spent. Really, this more than anything, solidified my desire to screen print. Hand printing is very fun and therapeutic. But carving linoleum blocks takes time and when you’re hand pulling the results can be pretty hit or miss.
Until next time!
Dennis
Sometimes, the best things in life are the ones that take the longest. The things that are simple, yet tedious. The things that cramp your fingers, cramp your legs (sitting criss-cross applesauce), and stiffen your back (from hunching over). Such is life when making popcorn and cranberry garland. Or anything else by hand for that matter.
And you know what? It’s some classy stuff and looks great too.
-Krissy
*Photo by Dennis
I don’t know for certain what we’re giving people for Christmas quite yet, but I do know that a lot of it will probably be hand made by us and fellow creator people.
Frankly, the stuff is better made, and the artists, crafters, and designers need the money more than large companies. It’s really win-win.
We’ll be exhibiting at a craft fair on Black Friday with a bunch of other awesome people in Waterbury, CT, so if you’re in the area, totally come by. It’ll be great fun.
Unless your idea of fun is getting stampeded by a bunch of crazy people at Wal*Mart who may just send someone to the emergency room for that new Elmo toy. Together, let’s give new meaning to “beat the crowds.”
(via sosuperawesome)
Source: etsy.com
I said I was going to post the book that started this whole journey of making books, and so I shall.
Back in April, Krissy and I were getting married (on arbor day!). We knew we’d need a guestbook and that people would want us to have one, but we didn’t want one of those generic “leave your info and a message ones.” They’re terrible and cliche and just wrong. As it turned out, we ended up having something for people to leave us messages anyway, but sometimes with weddings, people get involved and you just roll with the punches.
Now, at this point I hadn’t made any books yet. I don’t even think I’d made a practice hardcover book, so I was taking something of a gamble considering this endeavor could have gone terribly wrong. But it didn’t.
Not to mention, I really enjoyed the process of making it. There’s something very rewarding about making things for yourself, and in this case when it”s for your wedding I think it means more.
The book is by no means perfect, but for a first book, I’m pretty pleased with it. I’m not going to lie and say the imperfections didn’t bother me at the time, though.
I really quite liked the end papers. They were made in Italy and are really very pretty. Since we got married at the zoo, it fit without being obnoxiously animal themed. The cover is actually a paper made out of banana leaves. I cut it to size since it did not take to folding very well. If there’s a trick to it, I certainly don’t know it. I like the look of it though. We coated it in mod podge to keep any flaking down. It works pretty well.
I want to say there are approximately 48-60 pages in the book. I’m not entirely sure. The book is roughly square at around 6 1/4” x 6 1/4” The benefit of making the book yourself (or custom ordering one from us, wink wink) is that you don’t have all those extra pages at the end. The number of pages was perfect for the number of guests we had. We had a small wedding, so having a book with tons of pages would not have done us any good. It would be wasteful, and any time we looked at it again we’d be reminded of the pages we didn’t fill.
The other great thing about making our guestbook ourselves is that we could make it exactly what we wanted. We were able to avoid the shiny silveryness of every other wedding book by picking every single component beforehand. We wanted a natural, neutral feeling book that didn’t stand out but didn’t get lost either. Our book looks different because it is, but it’s not so crazy that it won’t fit in anytime we move. How many silver frames and books fit with your decor?
Below you can see the book accompanied by one of our table cards. The tables were each named after an animal at the Beardsley Zoo (in Bridgeport, CT). It’s an awesome zoo, and you should totally go if you’re ever in the area. The people there are totally awesome. Our favorite animal there is the Bison, so that was our table card.
Each person at the table would have a fact about their animal on the back. I figured that if people got quiet, or didn’t know what to talk about, they could tell each other about their facts. But I also wanted to educate people about the animals a bit, too, because some of the animals have very neat attributes, while others are unfortunately facing extinction.
By the way, don’t call bison buffalo (or american buffalo). They’re not buffalo. They’re not related to them. They are bison. Buffalo are on entirely different continents. Phew!
I also knew we wanted to do something a bit different on the insides of our book. I wanted people to draw. And draw they did! I was curious if people would really draw. Everyone doodles, but doodles are usually only seen by the doodler. For this, you’d be giving us art and letting others see it.
And nobody really ever feels like they’re up to snuff when it comes to drawing.
But people were slowly squirreling away outside or in the corners with the markers and colored pencils. They were drawing! I couldn’t be happier. As the day progressed, people were actually getting rather excited over the whole thing and taking the drawing thing seriously. Shit got real.
Even the little ones got in on the action:
Some drawings were inspired, at least in part, by internet videos. (By the way, Jemma, one of my favorites, bonus points for the unicorn).
And others were simply awe-inspiring. Granted, Jessie cheated a bit by taking the book to her hotel room at the end of the wedding, but I don’t care because she never ceases to amaze me with what she does with colored pencils. I can’t even fathom something like this in my head and she’s all like eh, no big deal.
colored freakin’ pencils! I’m so envious.
So that’s the story of how I got into making books. It was out of desire and necessity, and it stuck. I haven’t been doing it long, but I love every bit of it. I spend hours looking at paper and book binding stuff. I dream of a little mini book factory in our future home art studio. One day, I’ll probably make books with our children, and maybe even illustrate and bind them their own personal books.
But that’s a story for another day.
Any questions or comments? Don’t hesitate to ask us with that little button up top.
Jessie’s mom makes excellent pottery, by the way. You can find their shop on Etsy here:
http://www.etsy.com/shop/staycenteredstudio
They’d make beautiful Christmas gifts. Shipping is Free on everything (I think) and the prices are reasonable because her mother makes pottery for fun not profit. Support a local (to North Carolina) artisan this holiday season and avoid the crowds and commercial junk.
If you have an idea for a book you’d like made, submit it to us here or on Etsy. I love making custom books (as you can probably tell). Our Etsy shop can be found here:
http://www.etsy.com/shop/kleinereisbar
I hope to have more items added in the upcoming week, but we’re pretty far behind in preparing for the craft show we have coming up on black friday.
More to come!
Until next time,
Dennis
Source: etsy.com
We made some puffs the other day as decorations for a celebration. Puffs are always fun to make, and are relatively straightforward. Though, making a lot of them can be time-consuming. Also, if you’re hot, you just may get a bit miserable because you can’t use a fan when you have shreds of tissue paper everywhere. Just sayin.
I suppose these are technically called paper flowers. But we call them puffs. Puffs sounds much more free and liberating. When they’re flowers, you might feel like you need to make them appear, you know, kinda flowery. But puffs can take any color, shape, or texture. So puffs it is. Although, you’re more than welcome to call them paper flowers if you so desire.
We started with a package of tissue paper. I cut them in half on the short side, giving me this big ole pile of tissue paper. I had them in stacks of four, but to be honest, I think you’d get a better flower if you used 6 sheets per puff; four sheets made them seem a bit sparse in my opinion.
Next, we folded the tissue paper accordion style up the length of the paper. You can vary the length of the fold as you wish, somewhere around an inch (give or take) will do nicely. Don’t worry about making each fold perfect, they don’t need to be.
When finished folding all of the stacks of tissue paper you’ll end up with a pile of accordions like so. Sort them into rainbow order (roygbiv) like we do, or any way you want. But take a few minutes to enjoy the colors and take a small break; you’ve earned it. Besides, you’ll want to take a small break before this next part. The part where you turn that pile of tissue into lovely little puffs.
Okay, now that your break is over, let’s get back to work!
Somewhere around the middle of the folded up paper you’ll want to notch it with scissors like so. You can actually make them deeper if you’d like as these are kind of shallow. This is where you will wrap the wire to hold the flower together. Wrap the wire around the tissue paper and wrap it around itself like a twisty tie.
Next, you can cut the ends in any number of shapes you like. A V like this makes a nice pointy puff. You can cut it into a rounded shape or a reverse V (an “a”?) to get something more resembling a flower. My favorite though is to cut it so you have something resembling fringe. You’ll also need to cut at the folds, which is easy. Just slide your scissors into the folds and snip. This gives you a lot more freedom in the final puff product, but it’s definitely more time consuming.
After cutting your ends, you’ll want to fan them out, starting on one side. With this side fanned out, separate the layers of tissue paper away from each other . You’ll want to fill in the empty space 90 degrees away from the tissue. This is why I recommended using six sheets instead of four. With more sheets, it’s easier to fill the space and not have to worry about anywhere looking sparse. If using multiple colors of tissue paper, this can add a nice level of depth (a bit more than four colors at least).
After fanning them all out on this side, do the same to the reverse side. Once you’ve got all the tissue layers separated and puffed out, mush them around a bit until you’re happy with the result. It might look a little something like this:
You can string them together to make a garland, use the wire to turn them into hooks to hang them wherever you like, or even turn them into Christmas ornaments.
Or you can just scoop them into your arms and toss them up into the air and let it rain. If you make them out of dollar bills, you can literally make it rain—in the figurative sense of course. I don’t think I’d recommend that though. Cutting US currency is kinds frowned upon and you really don’t want the Secret Service showing up on your doorsteps.
Enjoy your paper flowers puffs!
Here are some extra pictures to enjoy!
roygbiv(+a few more)
Scraps!
tan pink black fringed puff
Party of puffs! 
Until next time!
Dennis
Source: Flickr / ukeandgermphotography
I (Dennis) made this book awhile back. It was one of my early books and I decided to be a bit more deliberate with this book instead of winging it like I normally would. I knew I wanted to do a chevron pattern. Krissy loves them and they’re so trendy I figured, hey, why not? I like them too, even though they’re trendy; I’ll like them afterwards too.
I used a brown cardstock for the cover to give it a Kraft paper look. I then sketched up a chevron pattern with one of the sections being thin and the other a bit thicker. I filled the pattern in with some black colored pencil. It’s got that special little gloss that colored pencil gets when you use too much. It doesn’t bleed off to my knowledge, since I’ve rubbed the excess pencil off already, but it’s pencil, so I wouldn’t set it on anything too important and rub vigorously or anything.
Here’s the spine. I don’t know how I’d describe this pattern. It’s…angled. I thought it complemented the chevron pattern well.
It makes a nice little “V” in the negative space though. I like the loose, rough look to it. The whole book has a very rough, imperfect look to it.
And here is the tail, or as most people call it: the bottom. The pages are hand torn and thus quite uneven. I’d considered trimming it afterwards, but I reconsidered, because I quite liked the look of the book as a whole— very imprecise.
It’s a nice juxtaposition to the clean pattern on the cover.
Until next time.
This is a wreath I made out of an old burlap potato sack (for real!) and pieces of fabric from fat quarters. I don’t quilt (someday!) but I love fat quarters! We have a ton of them! I used the primary colors because this is going on the wall of the atelier in the toddler room that I teach in. Dennis was kind enough to take a picture for me before it goes to school tomorrow.
East meets west, if you will.
I made this book a couple weeks ago. I’d wanted to try a “stab” binding and I’d decided I was just going to do it. Nothing fancy here, no hard covers, since I don’t have a board punch.
In fact, I made the holes with a hammer and nail. For stab bindings, the thread goes through each hole several times, so the holes really have to be quite big; an awl just won’t cut it.
The pattern for the spine is an arrow pointing inward. The book took awhile to finish, as I was learning as I went along. The thread is a bit loose on the end because my knot tying is sub par. That’s what I get for not being a boy scout I guess.
The paper is some sweet ass cowboy paper we had lying around. Krissy must have bought it at some point. The front and back make sense to me. The front has the cowboy going to the right, which is aesthetically pleasing. I don’t have a photo of the back, but it’s the same deal. I didn’t want it to look random, I wanted it to make some sort of sense visually without being too preposterous about it.
This book won’t last forever; most softcover stab books aren’t meant to. I’m pleased with the end result, though. I think it’s make a nice random-use book. Maybe some writing, maybe some sketching.
A book this ridiculous doesn’t ask for anything too serious to grace its pages. It just wants to be appreciated.
- Until next time
P.S. Do note the bull at the bottom right.
Sometime last week, we decided we needed to make a stamp. At some point when we were discussing what it should be, I got aggravated. I had something in mind and it wasn’t working, so Krissy suggested something else. I decided to go in a completely different direction. By the time she’d returned to the room, I had this mockup done.
Obviously the color won’t matter for tracing it and making it into a print, but I wanted it in color. It’s prettier. I also knew that I wasn’t going to be able to carve all of the details, like the fur or the eye patches. (Think more spectacled bear, less pirate. Not that pirates aren’t awesome).
All in all, I was happy with the result, Krissy seemed to love it, and my aggravation had subsided. Sometimes when I’m making things I get focused, and when that focus gets derailed, I get annoyed. It’s really the only time I ever get annoyed. It’s kind of bizarre how that works.
I thought the illustration came out cute, though. When I look at it, it screams “Playing Card Deck” to me. I don’t know if this is good or bad. It’d be interesting to turn this into a seamless pattern. I think it’s feasible. It would certainly make for an interesting pattern, regardless.
Here we have all of the necessary tools. I don’t know what everything is called. I’ve only ever carved one block before, so I’m hardly an expert. First, I transferred the drawing to the block in pencil. I don’t do anything fancy, I just cut out the negative space and traced. Then I cut my template again for the face. This gave me a general idea of how the block needed to be carved. In my mind, anything black stays, anything gray goes.
The metal silver things carve the linoleum. They slide into the red plastic thing. Sometimes, this doesn’t scream “safe” to me, but it gets the job done. I think I’m just nervous around sharp blades since I carved my hand open once in wood shop in high school. I still have the scar. To this day I can remember how much it hurts to have iodine poured into your hand—not to mention the syringe of Novocaine that follows.
Here’s a better view of the linoleum block with the pattern traced on. I ended up fattening up the face lines to make sure they’d print. I don’t know how well fine lines work with block prints, so I erred on the side of caution. I also left out the lines marking the fur too for the same reason.
Beginning carving.
Starting with the widest “blade” you can carve out pretty hefty chunks. For really, really big blocks this would be slow, but I’m sure there are larger, more efficient blades for that. We’re working with what we have from the Speedball Starter Kit.
Carving with the biggest blade is definitely the most fun, and relaxing.
Here both “sides” of the negative space have been carved out. I used the medium blade to get the sides. I could have done it with the big one, but I didn’t want to slip. The middle section was carved with a combination of the medium and small blades. The small blade carves out a pretty small area, so I find it’s best used for touch ups, fine detail, or carving around an object to avoid cutting into it.
Here I’ve carved out the interior of one of the bears. I actually used an awl to carve out the ears. It worked, but I worry about dulling out the point using it on linoleum.
Oh, the paper the block is on was made by Krissy. It’s brown kraft paper that’s been stamped repeatedly into that lovely leaf pattern.
Carving out the inside of the bear seemed to take forever.
The finished stamp. I made a test print using regular stamp ink. It came out nice and clean, but not as full as I’d like. I don’t know if we need a new stamp pad or what. Or maybe linoleum isn’t made for use with stamp pads. Who knows.
Ideally, the lines would be cleaner, but like I said, I really don’t know what I’m doing. I’m sure there are all kinds of ways to make a linocut more perfect and prefesh-looking.
I took some photos of the process, up until cutting onoe of the bears out, and turned it into an animated gif. It goes by fast, but you get a general idea of the process.
- Until next time, Dennis
So here’s the thing. Beginning things is difficult. Not in that you don’t know what to do, moreso in that you don’t know where or how to start. Do you just say “Hello!” Do you introduce yourself? Do you just start like you’ve been blogging for years (except for the whole having no one following you part)? I don’t know. But here’s some background.
My name is Dennis, and I’m married to Krissy. We got married at the Zoo. We think that’s pretty nifty. In our free time which, let’s face it, is a lot we make things. We press cards, we make books. garland, and silhouette cutouts of woodland creatures to name just a few.
We’ve decided it’s time to make an etsy. I know, we’re like eight years behind the ball on this one, but what can I say, we’re procrastinators.
This blog will highlight the things we make—not just what we intend to sell, though. Other people do that, and that’s fine, but that’s not our style. We’ll also post things we find around the web that inspire us (read: things we think are pretty).
We like Ice Cream. Ice Cream gets capitalized; it’s seriously that important. We’re also lovers of milk. Krissy likes coconut milk and (some) soy milk in addition to standard-issue milk. I’m strictly cow milk; though I’ve also been known to have enjoyed chocolate goat milk from time to time.
You can check out our etsy here: kleinereisbar.etsy.com. Currently we’ve yet to add anything to our shop, but we’re working voraciously and will be adding some items over the next few days.
If you’d like to read some of my ramblings and responses to various things you can find me at the Daily Man Cat where I post about politics, art, photography, and just about anything else that manages to make it’s way from my mind to the computer screen.
Thanks for wanting to get to know us.
Oh, and just an fyi: Kleiner Eisbär is German for “Little Polar Bear” which is a pretty apt way to describe the both of us in a strange way.
