**An Open Letter to Alexis Stewart:
Dear Alexis Stewart,
If you want to be friends with me, just ask. You don’t need to buy all of your Christmas and birthday AND Mother’s Day cards from me.
Friends Forever,
Fran
—
Whew! I’m glad I got that out of the way! Thanks to Mail Chimp, our email-blast campaign was full of success.
Wanna know what Mother’s Day card Martha Stewart is getting in 2016???
I’LL NEVER TELL!!!
Does my IQ have to be higher to understand Sci-Fi films?? 
As the credits rolled for Interstellar, I whispered, to myself, “whaaat???” Maybe I should have taken 100 classes to prep me? All of that technlogy and time-talk made me wish I was working on the new Zeichen Press catalog that Jen so agressively marked-up.
I’LL GET TO IT. As soon as I finish rewatching Mad Men.
And while I’m (not) doing that, The Intern
is gallivanting about in Italy like some sort of hippie. Well, let’s just see if you have a studio to come home to. (OMG, I’M KIDDING. Please come home. And bring us souvenirs.)
“WHY DIDN’T I THINK OF THAT??”
~Fran Shea
These cards stopped me right in my (dog) poop-covered tracks:
Let’s be friends, Emily McDowell.
Too needy?
Dinah always makes such a big deal about choosing paper and envelope color for a new release.
First, she has Jen print a card:
And then she does this:
She is such a taskmaster.
Greeting cards would be better if they were huge. And I could wipe my feet on them.
And what better way to spread the Good Word of Zeichen Press than by emblazoning it upon the doormat of every doorstep for every home throughout the land?
High Cotton makes lots of things, for lots of people. And now they will make doormats for us. I mean, for you. They’ll make doormats for you. Designed by us.
…El Niño. I know I’m supposed to be cursing Climate Change… I KNOW.
But how can I curse when meteorologists are predicting a warmer-than-usual winter??
I must embrace the phenomenon the way a mother embraces her wayward son.
IN OTHER NEWS, Jen and I chose 12 cards for the next release using darts, a cardboard cutout of Steve Buscemi, and our first-aid kit.
Here’s a teaser:
And because I always plan ahead, here’s a new Father’s Day card:
An ANTfestation in the shop required aggressive use of insecticide. Two waves of spray-on poison were needed to completely wipe out the colony hiding behind the Great Wall Of Cards.
We murdered thousands of ants
before Jen and I had an important meeting to decide which cards should be included in our next release.
Wait, after the genocide, but before the important meeting, Classic Pam got ahold of another baby rabbit. (See blog post: Fear and Dread) There was some backyard bedlam involving the dog and five kids chasing the cat… I got caught up in the chase but ended up somehow kicking the hopping baby rabbit. Don’t ask me how that happened.
DON’T ASK.
And without further adieu… the moment you’ve all been waiting for… OUR… NEW… CARDS!!!
“We’re Creek People now, mom… We’re Creek People…”
What began as an optimistic, joy-filled journey down Minnehaha Creek turned into a somber, personal purgatory.
The creek didn’t mean to be a metaphor for life, but it was.
IT WAS.
We made it out alive and I’m so glad, I didn’t want to have to eat one, or more, of my children.Did you know it’s Jen’s birthday today?? She celebrated by printing cards for Paper Source in our studio-turned-Easy-Bake Oven. She treated herself with a fan pointed at her back.
Tradition dictates that I make her a card. So, I did.
I’m not afraid of heights or clowns or rats or bats or cemeteries or sharks. But I AM afraid of centipedes.
Once upon a time, I vacuumed up a centipede that was wearing Bill Cosby’s sweater.
But enough of that!
It’s August and time to dread Winter.
My research shows that Hell is being trapped in a snow cave with 1,000 centipedes. And here’s a card for Christmas.
WHAT?!
The much-anticipated matchup between Bionic Fran and Wonder Woman is finally here! 
Tickets are available by our back gate and the fight will be held in the driveway.
Come early and pick an unripened tomato to throw at the loser.
The event takes place as soon as Jen finds her way out of the mountains — I know her pockets were stuffed with breadcrumbs, so I’m sure she’ll be fine.
I’ve been pretty busy while she’s been gone… The intern and I talked a lot, I picked up two dead birds and one dead baby rabbit… I brought orders to the post office… I made this birthday card…
Counting is not as easy as it looks. The intern and I had to count cards (we love to gamble) for a big Kate’s Paperie order.
Holiday cards in June?
My life is an endless sacrifice.
All of that counting tasted terrible, and so to cleanse her palette, the intern put a lot of ampersands together. That looked exactly like this:
And because I need attention, I made this:
See, it’s a profound cultural statement? DO YOU SEE?!
Jen held the garbage-pail lid and I swung the hammer, it is our shop gong and is ceremoniously banged when we receive an order over $1,000.
We bang it one thousand times and then Jen gets to printing.
Paper Source ordered a new (for them) card:
Oh, what do I do after the gong show? I chase and scold the cat.
Classic Pam has single-pawedly wiped out an entire rabbit family.
Tsk, tsk!
This one survived…
until it peed and died in my hands.
ALSO, Urban Outfitters (a real mom and pop joint) wants samples of some of our cards.
Settle down. SETTLE DOWN. They’ve led us on before — I’m not going to fashion a wooden stool into a potty chair so that I can sit by the phone day and night.
I’m not. I’M NOT.
Jen has been toiling away at Zeichen Press Headquarters and I have been thinking about her toiling away at Zeichen Press Headquarters.
It’s hard for me to think about that when I am so busy staring at the ocean.
I also took the time to create this:
(I’m a giver.)
But I did make her a card.
(I hope she doesn’t really want me to help though.)
So I think that makes us even.
The pilgrimage to Cape Cod was like a lil’ slice of Purgatory and I wept with joy as we pulled into the driveway. I also wept when we discovered the house-mascot had been murdered in cold blood.
Who would do such a thing?
Don’t worry, everything else was in order:
The boats are in the harbor.
The hydrangeas are blue enough.
And the dead people are still dead.
PHEW!
My application for Mensa included a $20 bill and a film.
I hope they accept me — I want that laminated membership card.
I also incuded a couple of my own cards:
No, no… it’s not a miracle. Just one woman’s attempt to make the world a better place.