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Every Couple Wants Their Own Postmark
I won’t try to fight it – and why should I?
My youngest sister
(why is she so angry all the time??) is getting married this weekend and I designed/Jen printed some invitations for the blessed event.
The event will be very celebrity-heavy. By “celebrity” I mean “family.” It will be full of family. You can crash the wedding if you want – but no pictures. Just kidding. Take pictures – I can’t stop you.
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Kitchen Photo Shoot And a Guest Appearance
Pat Carneystumbled into our dimension on Friday for theGutephoto shoot.
Edmundmade latte after latte whileLorettababbled in the background. We think she was talking about Pam the kitten/her prisoner. Anyway, I had to punch Pat in the face to get one latte away from him for a prop. He took it like a man. Except for the tears.
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METRO home found us!
It was only a matter of time because we were standing outside their office.
METRO homeis a newspecialsection inMETRO. The cover of this months issue is intriguing and frightening. It might be a photograph of a bedroom/torture chamber.What’s behind those curtains?
Yikes! This room comes with shackles and nightmares.Urban Living Manifestosounds really serious. Do people really take themselves that seriously?? Two words for them:settle. down.
Oh, but here’s something cheerful -it’s about Zeichen Press:
Those Room & Board prints were sure worth all of the sweat I dripped on them last Summer!
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Goodbye Craftstravaganza 2011
I was right in the middle of a dream where both of my eyeballs were, curiously, weeping blood. This was, of course, followed by an intense search for a public toilet and, AS USUAL, the only available toilet was in a high-traffic area of the Southdale Mall.
Thank God Jen called and woke me up. But not before I reluctantly(why do I always do it??)sat my bare bottom on the toilet.
If I’ve learned anything in my life it is how to be wrenched from a sound sleep and into a car in under 5 minutes.
It’s not pretty but neither is childbirth.
Jen and I stopped for our traditional latte at theMay Day Cafeand then it was onward to the State Fairgrounds. The Fine Arts Building was our cold and unwelcoming host, its huge doors left open to remind us that April can be just as cold as November.
I’m sure the whole building was full of crafty-goodness but unless tables were set up on the way to the bathroom, I wasn’t going to see them. For eight hours, I did observe the folks running theBurlesque of North Americatable. They are screen printers – a craft that I have always had a crush on. Anyway, despite the sweetness of their prints, they were just as freezing as us.
Poor thing!
Our big experiment for this year’s fair involved a QR code
that led to our latestWatch and Sharecard.
It was successful. If you measure success in terms of wishes and smiles. Which I do.
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WATCHandSHAREcards
Dynamite magazinewas full of hard-hitting news for kids growing up in the 1970’s.
But the best part of the magazine were the centerfolds. I wanted theHang in There!poster so bad. It would have looked sweet on my closet door – right next to my Jackson 5 poster.
Struck by nostalgia and surrounded by (more) kittens, I took it upon myself to recreate the magic moment of the earnest kitten:
When I was all done forcing the kittens to perform adorable stunts, it was time to makevideos of people reading Zeichen Press cards.Let me explain:Beneath various cards in ouronline shop, there will be a link to a video of someone (it could be you!) reading the card aloud.Why?Because eventhe lazy and the ne’er do wells have a right to Zeichen Press cards.
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A Grateful Robot and a Ladies Night Out
My grandma kept a drawer-full of greeting cards in her buffet. An entire drawer, devoted to spontaneous correspondence!
What a woman.
She alsokept plastic on her sofa and carpet on her kitchen floor. She really wanted to protect her furniture and linoleum.
The Thank-You Note is a classic greeting card and should be the foundation of any collection. Receiving a thank-you note in the mail is a little bit like finding money in last Winter’s coat or a good hat in a snowbank.
Let’s write one together!
First,choose a card:
Now on to the writing… We’ll break it down into 5 easy steps:1) Begin with a greeting:Dear Aunt Shirley,
She loves to hear her name because cats can’t talk.
2) This is the meat of the note and notice there is no appetizer. This is a “note” not a letter. Cut right to it:Thank you so much for the medical marijuana!If the gift from Aunt Shirley was cash,do not mention it.Speak instead of her “generosity.”Thank you for your generosity!
3) Say a little bit about how you use or will use the gift:I smoke it everyday!
4) Mention the last time you saw Aunt Shirley and hint at a future meeting:It was lovely to see you at Uncle Bob’s funeral, I hope to see you again before your funeral!
5) And scene:Love, Fran
Oh, and here’s another card that will be added to the line:
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Franstravaganza Part II
“It is finished.” She gasped as she crumpled to the cold, concrete. It was, by all accounts, glorious. The work would outlast the artist and elevate the art form to new and dizzying heights.
But she, exhausted and covered in ink, was oblivious. To her, this was nothing more than an exercise. A functional and fleeting piece, it would be handled roughly and discarded by Springtime.
Um, so, that poster forCraftsravaganzais, like, done:
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Franstravaganza!
There are a couple of things going on around here:
1) Our fax machine is spitting out orders faster than we (jen) can fill them.
2) We (I) are (am) making the poster for this year’sCraftstravanganza.
Just to make my load fair, I listen to a recording of screaming children while I work.
I think it really shows:
Today, I will put ink on that – it will be so spectacular there won’t be a dry eye in the room. (I’ll be the only one in the room.)
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Hello, my name is
Remember whenI talked about my naming skills?No?That’s okay, I barely remember it myself.Anyway,I did a project withThe Carney Group- I named a product that debuted at the2011 MacWorld Expoto much adulation. Wait, that’s a pretty strong word. To muchcuriosity.They made the Top 3 Happening Booths but I think that had more to do with the beardedCodeWeaversCOO dressing as Cher (I think that’s Cher?? Yucky!)
than the name I chose for the product – which was, by the way:Impersonator. See, it’s software that let’s your Mac run Windows apps without running Windows.
So brilliant.
David Pogue of theNew York Timescalled it “hilarious” and one of the most creative pitches he’d seen all year.
I wonder if he meantlast yearbecause otherwise it would just be one of the most creative pitches he’d seen in January. I also wonder if he meant it was one of the mostdisturbingpitches he’d seen.
I wrote a lot of funny lines and made some cool logos
BUT all of my creative was for naught.
For naught.
They wrote their own lines and made their own logo. That’s cool. I don’t even care. I don’t. I totally let it go. Totally. I’m fine. Oh, here’s a little videoI made (rejected by them – which I’m totally fine with. I am. I’m fine. It’s cool. Whatever. It doesn’t even bother me.) to go with the name.Close the blinds and turn on the projector, here’s IMPERSONATOR:
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Working in the Bathtub
I love the ladies of theJelly Shot Test Kitchen. And when I say Ilovethem it means Ilovethat they trust us. Trust us to create business cardsof the future.We’re not sure how lasers work but we all saw Superman II.
These days, lasers are used for more than just pulverizing concrete. And I can prove it:
The latest project for JSTK has nothing to do with lasers. Or letterpress -don’t they know we do LETTERPRESS??They asked us to create some instructional films.
Naturally, I cleaned my bathtub and got to work:
Here’s what I made: