I’ve made a few unsuccessful Gocco prints since my first one. Its fustrating when it goes wrong - the wasted screens, bulbs, ink and time. But when it goes well its rewarding. Freshly printed are this year’s christmas cards.. the skating chimp.

Things I have learnt in the past few efforts. Always test inks before applying them to the screen - with some of the older inks the oil has separated and comes out the tube first - this made my paper stick to a screen. Don’t put the foam separators too close to the ink area as the will stop it from printing a solid colour. Start designing with the colours you have - I scanned in the tube packaging and made a illustrator swatch palette with the colours so I could easily experiment. I’ve found mixing colours hasn’t worked very well. Yellow hardly shows up on the off-white card I use. More complicated designs look better on screen, more simple ones look better printed.

Prints are available in my Maraid Etsy shop.

This summer we’ve spent various days exploring the East Coast of North England. A day at Bridlington was packed with lots to see. After a couple of hours at the arcades and seaside there was the Old Penny Memories and then down the road to Bondville Model Village. I have written a little bit about Old Penny Memories for Nothing To See Here and seem to have an ever growing list of unique places that I would like to write about.

Pinball machine at Old Penny Memories

Bondville Model Village

• More Bridlington pictures on my Flickr

I always wanted a Polaroid camera, one of the models that allows focus and depth of field. I have been given a Polaroid 680. Its a lovely balance between shooting digital and film. I have to think carefully about every shot but have the instant gratification of that special one-off picture.

Inspired by a photo by hier houd ik van.

Or, I should say, my first successful gocco print.

It had taken me a while to decide to invest in a Gocco printer. Riso, the makers of the Japanese home screen printing kit stopped production in 2005. I eventually took the plunge and purchased PG-11 kit on Ebay from Japan.

My first attempt was frustratingly unsuccessful. To make your master screen Gocco requires you to use a print made from carbon ink. I tried to make my master screen from a photocopy which attached itself after exposure (even using the blue filter). After more internet research it seemed that people had less problems using a laser printer. Following their advice my second attempt was a success.

Advice and lessons learnt

I read quite a lot about people getting patchy prints and not using enough ink. I may have over inked a little and my first design required a lot of coverage. From this I learnt..

It may sound obvious but it can get messy, at least messier than instructional videos may lead you to believe. For the mess have to hand; turps, rags and newspaper.

Ink got past my screen and onto the printer body. I used a philips screwdriver to remove the see-through plastic plate to clean it, using cotton buds (q-tips) to get into the smaller spaces.

Have spare jars for excess ink. Old clean spice jars would be ideal.

The final product

For this first attempt I tried to keep things simple. One screen for the print, using two colours. I am looking forward to experimenting with a two screen print using the PG-11 registration plate.

After seeing my Micheal Lewis of MIKMIK Studios‘ Gocco prints I asked him where to purchase the card that he used (for his beautiful prints). The 250gsm Bier paper is manufactured using a combination of leftovers from the brewing industry: beer labels and malt/yeast/hops fibres. Available from the Green Stationery Company.

Prints are available in my new Maraid Etsy shop.

Anne, curator of Nothing To See Here, describes the destinations featured on the website..

“Places that still have a certain charm, a bit of je-ne-sais-quoi about them. They’re a little bit special. No Been There, Done That, Bought The T-Shirt kind of places here. They won’t cost much (if anything) to get in and you’ll come away feeling a little bit richer”

I often come away from somewhere thinking “this would be perfect for Nothing to See Here”. This is the first time I have submitted a post. Red Rock Cinema, Reykjavík is certainly a special place and worthy of a mention.

I’m really happy to have one of my website designs featured in the new book The Web Designer’s Idea Book. Put together by Patrick McNeil the creator of the ever handy designmeltdown.com. It features the website I made for photographer Peter Byrne.

I took a two day screenprinting class at Northern Print in Newcastle. Although slightly disappointed with the final prints it was really nice to be designing something for myself and using ideas that had been stored away for some time.

Birds 1. Inspired by a trip to The Stewarty Museum, Kirkcudbright. View in full.

Igloo Chistmas Cards

These pre-fab homes in York may soon be up for demolition to make way for modern housing. Built in 1975/76 the 100 buildings are known as ‘Discus Bungalows’. The wide structures are hard to photograph but I wanted to capture the unusual buildings before they are gone. I think they are lovely and particularly like the individual colours and open communal gardens.

• Discus Bungalow redevelopment takes a step closer from City of York Council
• Richard Heep’s Pre-fab Photos
• PREFABS: Factory homes for post-War England from English Heritage
• Palaces for the People: Prefabs in Post-war Britain the book that appears to be very hard to get hold of - I’m still trying.