Gocco printing: progress

Following the slightly disappointing results with my first attempt at Gocco screen printing, I've read up a lot more on using it, and have made a breakthrough.

To recap on the last Gocco-related post, the original artwork used to make the screens has to be carbon based, usually photocopies or laser printouts.  Inkjet printouts won't work as they use black dye rather than the carbon used in toner.

Or that's what all the instructions tell you, anyway.  In a forum thread (which I've lost, I'm afraid, so apologies for the lack of link), a contributor said that some inkjet printers do use carbon in their ink, and so printouts from them will work.  According to him, HP printers are the best, though only if you use proper HP ink rather than cheap non-branded stuff.

As luck would have it, my inkjet printer is HP, and I use HP ink as I don't entirely trust refilled cartridges not to leak.  So, worth a try.

Using a version of a different design of mine, Fire Lizard, I printed it out using my own printer, and flashed the screen without the blue filter (as the chap in the forum thread advised), as there isn't enough carbon in the ink for it to be necessary.

And it worked!  It came out much better than the first, photocopied, attempt.  There are still a couple of minor issues with it, mostly down to the fact that I'm still learning what I'm doing, but on the whole I'm very pleased with it.

Here are a tableful of prints, drying:

And a close-up of one of them:

I'd like to do a few more designs based on my embroidery, and see how they compare.  At the very least they're a lot quicker to do!