Blog - Valentine’s Day card

Every 25 years I like to feel disturbed so I watch Matt Damon bludgeon Jude Law to death with an oar and then cuddle his dead body in the bottom of a little boat before sinking it with a pile of rocks.

(Happy Halloween!)

#Oldestintern must know how attracted to that era I am because she entrusted me with 166 pages of inspiration. And by “entrusted me” I meant she forgot an old magazine at my house. (Sorry, Madge!)

But the 1950’s fashion DID inspire me!

ALSO,  after a whirlwind of (Jen) printing and Dinah (detachedly) choosing paper and envelopes, I can finally stop being such a social butterfly and photograph the new cards. PHEW!

I want everyone to feel included, so here’s a card I posted to Instagram this week:

It was 1979, so he only needed short shorts, roller skates, headphones, and passion. He skated, nay, DANCED, around Lake Calhoun — it was a performance for no one, or was it for everyone??

I’ll never know what came through the cans on his ears, but it must have been something funky because he danced like the good folks of Soul Train.

Now here I sit, maybe someday I’ll don my roller-skates and boogie with my new headphones…

UNTIL THEN, I shall create. 

It never bothered me that the lenses in my glasses were rubber cemented into place and the rubber cement collected sand. I ditched those glasses under a fold in my beach towel so I could run down to the ocean and freely forage for low-tide sea creatures.

It was a free-range life! I wasn’t tethered by social convention! Or hygiene! Fast forward 35 years and I’m still leading a free-range life. Not tethered by social convention! Or hygiene! Today, our press lurched and lunged as if possessed but it was nothing a plastic shim couldn’t fix. See, free-range living!

That’s a filthy, oil-soaked floor and Jen throws cards to the ground when she’s angry. She leads a free-range lifestyle too! THAT’S HOW WE MAKE IT WORK.

(FYI: This is how our beloved C&P looks when Jen isn’t angry:)

Speaking of free-range, I made a new card for all of you (non-vegetarian) LOVERS out there.

Who needs wax paper and crayon shavings when there are Zeichen Press cards??

Not me.

And certainly not you. Order you loooover a card today.

Between writing poetry and sprinkling rose petals all over my own bed, I made this:

XOXOXO!!!

Nothing could come between a girl and her Etch A Sketch in 1981.NOTHING.

Just look at that tight-lipped concentration… LOOK AT IT.Maybe I was creating a message for my mom? Or a beautiful design? Or a note to my brother begging him to stop slowly poisoning my parakeet and calling me Oot Head.

WHO KNOWS?

My Etch A Sketch has been replaced with 10,000 pounds of letterpress equipment, a laptop, and Jen. (Sorry, Jen.)

Here’s a new Valentine’s Day card… Lead type and an antique cut can barely compare to the magic of my childhood.