As is custom in our culture, piñatas will be stuffed with liver sausage!
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Blog Post Meridiem
Nighttime is just like daytime but with fewer socks and more Professor Blastoff.
Who is Professor Blastoff??
Professor Blastoff is a podcast/my gateway to dreamland. Not because it’s boring! Shut your pretty mouth. But because these three comedians lull me me to sleep with their soothing silliness. How can silliness be soothing?? Just listen to it and quit judging me.
Speaking of professors, a(n) (assistant) professor (Alicia Erian) at Northeastern University (Department of English and Tomfoolery) took such a shine to Zeichen Press that she is our new (virtual) intern! Responsibilities include (but aren’t limited to): Telling me how awesome I am.
She didn’t love this next card but I still love her.
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How two women spun straw into gold at the No Coast Craft-o-Rama
In this story, the ‘straw’ is paper-and-ink and the ‘gold’ is a cash box full of cash.
If only mortgage companies and grocery stores accepted hugs and back rubs in exchange for their products and services! Alas, they do not, and so we are forced to peddle our wares.
Normally, shops around the WORLD (that’s right) peddle our goods for us, but once a year, we come out of hiding, and on horseback, to peddle our own goods at the beloved No Coast Craft-o-Rama.Is it because we love laughter and the spirit of the Holiday Season? Or is it because we love money?
Oh, the reformed Scrooge inside of me says it’s not about the money. IT’S NOT.
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See You There!
Where?
AT THE MIDTOWN GLOBAL MARKET FOR THE NO COAST CRAFT-O-RAMA!!
Directions:
1) Put on all of your clothes and coats.
2) Hitch sled-dogs to sled.
3) MUSH!!
4) Do ALL of your Holiday shopping. And eating.
Is there a better way to embrace the Holiday season??
NO.
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Halls (Of The Midtown Global Market) Will Be Decked With Such Goodness
There is always SO MUCH TO DO this time of year! Jen has to print and fold about a million cards and I have to sit still so my daughter can do my nails.
Yes, those are adorable pandas. And yes, that is stigmata.The No Coast Craft-o-Rama has an amazing line up this year (as usual), there is Miss Amy Jo, Adam Turman, glass|wares, Cosmo’s Collars, Moss Love Terrariums, Oh Dier, Soup Hunter Guitars, and… so… much… MORE!!
SO, bring your money and your eyeballs and get ready to check everyone off your Christmas list! AND send a belated Chanukah card (is that a thing??)
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Eight Days of Thanksgiving
Postable asked me to create a card that celebrates a very rare occurrence: Thanksgiving and Hanukkah falling on the same day. I don’t know much about the Jewish Faith but I think that means eight days of leftovers.
This mash-up won’t happen again for another 77,000 years.It’s true.
In other news… Jen and I will celebrate Thanksgiving the way we always do: in period costume. Twist: Jen will be dunked in the dunking chair until she confesses to being a witch.
Happy Thanksgiving!
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I Think I Can, I Think I Can
Jen’s in Austria because she loves gazebos.
The Intern (Madge) is in Italy because she loves dreamy landscapes.
And I am here because I love the smell of flooded basements. 
Is that asbestos tile??Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. See how we just throw caution to the wind over here?? I almost forgot what the floor looked like under 1,000 lbs of soaked carpet! And that was my lesson about not taking things for granted.
Between all that lesson-learnin’, I made a new card.
Don’t hurry home guys! -
Being A Better Person
Tib knows it’s summer because the screens are on.
And *I* know it’s summer for other, more important, reasons.
But I’m trying to be a better person/less into body-sculpting, so I decided to read a book. It was written by The Intern’s daughter, Nora McInerny Purmot.
Chapter 25 was especially fun to read because Madge is so near and dear to my heart and I could relate to the notion of elder-abuse.
Except my mom has made it very clear that she wants to be euthanized via pillow-suffocation, pre-elder-abuse.Oh, mom!
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Semi-Casual Observer
Wait a sec… This ice cream truck drives slowly by the house/Zeichen Press HQ every day,
but I have never really studied it…Zoom… Enhance…
And again……
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I KNEW IT. -
Art Licensing Part X
RSVP wanted MORE greeting card submissions. And having a wet towel for a brain makes it so much easier to wring.
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Behold, I Make All Things New
Remember last year when my lung collapsed and my mom had to sleep on a cot in my dingy bedroom so she could walk me to the bathroom in the middle of the night?
And EMTs had to come to that same dingy bedroom, on that very same night, because we thought my chest-tube had fallen out?No?
I know you’re wondering if the EMTs were cute and why my bedroom was so dingy. Um, my mom volunteered to be their Resusci Annie doll and I’ve been a little too busy building the Zeichen Press Empire to focus on home-making frivolity.
But, between choosing paper/envelopes for the Spring Release and conquering territories, I did refresh my bedroom. And now I see no reason to ever leave it.
Choosing paint color is just like choosing ink color. But with less Jen and more anxiety.Speaking of self-medicating (was I?) here’s a Spring Release teaser (see/buy ALL 12 from the shop!):
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Around The World In A Day
1985 : Minneapolis
One 13 year old girl (me) biked to Calhoun Square in Uptown to buy a record for her friend’s birthday and almost kept it for herself (myself).
I might have forgotten to ask to borrow the bike from my sister. And might have forgotten to ask permission from my mom to bike there. And I might have not brought a bike lock. And the bike might have been stolen from the entrance where it was super-discreetly parked behind the Calhoun Square signage. AND I might have had to walk home.
But how could I not risk everything (being grounded) to get that album when I was pretty sure Prince wrote Paisley Park about me??:
Colorful people whose hair
On 1 side is swept back
Sigh.
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Franmas 2016!
After coughing the web of mucus from my throat, it was time to choose paper and envelope colors for the Spring Release.
Dinah told me later that she was plotting my murder while I took this photo.Oh, Dinah! What will make you snap?!
Wait, tell us more about the web of mucus!
No! No more. Onto more important things.
Like frogs im Deutschland.
Who needs pants when you have legs like that? Amiright?? -
Throwback Thursday (#TBT)
Miss Sherman was our 5th grade music teacher and aside from corporeal punishment and unruly hair, she was perfect. Every week, students were encouraged to bring in their favorite record album. And because lessons are best learned through repeated humiliation (read about First Picture Day at my new school), I brought in my favorite album.
…I wonder what the other kids brought! This is SO much fun!
…Wait…
Michael Jackson, Off The Wall…
The Cars, Panorama??…
Oh, Kermit! Nobody understands us/Miss Sherman forgot to call on me/oh look, this record barely sticks out between my stack of books/these darn Fall allergies make my eyes water!
I wouldn’t tell my mom about this while I stood by the piano as she played folk songs and I sang my little heart out. I WOULDN’T.
What I’m trying to say is that Jen and I picked cards for our Spring Release.
Here’s a teaser:
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BIG plans vs. reality
One of our many cats had chronic diarrhea. We kept her around because she produced litter after litter of adorable white kittens.
And because coming home was always a surprise – where would we find her poop today?? In the mitten-bin… in the laundry basket… under my daughter’s pillow??
Life is so full of surprises!
Like, when the vet called to say she died after he removed her ovaries. SURPRISE! Oh, but now she doesn’t send us on poop-hunts, because she’s buried in a shallow grave in the backyard.
First life zigs, and then it zags!
Broken femur?
SERIOUSLY???