go, gocco! go, gocco! go! go! go!

Here, at last, is my second gocco print. I made it quite a while ago now (look!) but decided to keep it under wraps as I was sending it off to lots of people for the 'one' gocco swap kindly organised by cloth.paper.string.

I printed the blue ones first (and the ink proved to be a slippery customer!) and then the red. Both are nice, I think, and I even like the ones in the middle that came out a weird mix of red and blue! I cleaned and kept the screen so might print more in the future.

I made quite a few as prints but also made lots into cards. The prints I packaged (like the hulder prints) in a cellophane sleeve with the story behind them included. In February Graham and my cousin Katy and I went to see a special screening of Bill Forsyth's film Comfort and Joy at the Mitchell Library. It was showing as part of the Glasgow Film Festival and, to celebrate the film's twenty-fifth anniversary, Clare Grogan and Bill Paterson (who are both in the film) came along to answer some questions after the screening. The film, for those of you who don't know it, is about a local radio DJ and his random involvement in a feud between two ice cream companies. During the questions from the audience, one man shared the story of Mair's Ices, the ice cream company that operated in the area of Glasgow he grew up in. Apparently all the Mair's ice cream vans had the same slogan on their sides: For straight hair and curly teeth, eat Mair sweets! This still makes me chuckle (months later!) and I decided straight away that I wanted to make a gocco print of the Mair's ice cream van. And here it is... ta da! I have a few other funny Glasgow based type stories (all on a similarly small/local scale) that I'm trying to come up with images for so that I can make a little Glasgow in gocco series. I'm not promising anything, mind you!

I sent out a few extras with my prints for the swap: a makeshift business card (because I was too lazy to handwrite eleven notes!), the obligatory fortune teller fish (which coincidentally complimented the prints colours) and a couple of the horse gift tags I made.

So far I've received five gocco'd packages in return and I am hopeful that another six are on their way and not lost in the ether... The postman hasn't brought me anything for days and days, not even boring mail.

These lovely wavy notecards (and a matching print) came from Leslie all the way from Australia, though she used to live in Glasgow so I'm hoping the print I sent her brings back some happy memories! The colour of these is lovely and gets subtly lighter and brighter as it moves up/back.

These pretty Cornish hedge notecards came from Diane, all packaged up in a little glassine envelope with the same image printed on it. Lovely! I am going to frame one and send the others to some lucky lucky people :)

These notecards came from Sarah, the swap's organiser, and have a really sweet story behind them which you can read here.

I really love this cassette print from Robin. It's gold and shiny and has a lovely texture/pattern. This is definitely getting framed up for my wall of many wonders. I got some gold ink (not quite a full tube) when I bought my gocco and am so excited by it but am saving it for just the right project... not that I wasn't tempted to make gold ice cream vans! I bought a really nice gold gocco print by Bernadette at Sugarloop quite a while ago and love gazing at it and its shininess (strange looking word). I've got to start thinking of something gold to gocco!

And I have just realised I did not take a picture of Rachel's lovely summer cards, the very first package I received. Aaargh! Please go and see them here instead! Sorry, Rachel...

Still here? Wow, you're good! I'll save my tales of all the fun stuff I've been doing with my holidays for some other time. Off you go and rest your poor screen burned eyes :)