Am I the only person who has read Thomas Pynchon's "The Crying of Lot 49?"
Just in case I am, let me illustrate the theme of the book with letterpress, which is all the rage right now. I'm sure if you've been to one of my webinars, and seen my subscriptions, you already know this. I love the look of letterpress.
And, as a compulsive stamper personality, when I love some technique, I immediately have to purchase everything remotely associated with executing the technique. So I, of course, set out to buy myself a letterpress. This is where it gets all Pynchon-y.
Start with Google. Sounds easy enough, right? I'm a Google QUEEEEEEN. My veins are filled with a Googlie substance. I live for all things Google and am a search master. Until the letterpress.
Go ahead. Try to buy one.
You will find bazillions of sites with obscure references to these presses - the tabletop and full size versions. But they are strangely and uniformly vague. Most direct you back to a single, omnipressy site, which is itself vague and laden with insider talk and has circular links that go nowhere.
This is an ancient and clandestine art. Should I choose to follow the little posthorn signs,
like in The Crying of Lot 49, there's a small chance I might end up in a junkyard in Gilroy, CA, making a deal with a man with one eye, who only speaks in James Joyce verse and is accompanied by an anteater wearing a bellman's cap.
But I have no patience for such things. I am a stamper. I need to order things and expedite shipping. I need to go to my nearest store and pick up urgently needed crafty things. I have no time for Pynchon anymore.
So I made my own damn letterpress. What do you think about that? I call it the ghettopress.
If you don't know what I'm talking about, letterpress is a combination of printing and debossing. These two steps are separate. So you print in one step in the elusive machine, and deboss in another.
After spending a quarter of a million dollars and staring at an anteater. Or, just do this.
Punch yourself a template out of a post-it note. I used the full heart punch.
Lay this down on your card and stamp or sponge something in it.
I stamped Park Avenue Patterns (see Jenn? :) ) in Pacific Point Blue. Say THAT three times fast.
Then, I sponged more blue around the edges, because the stamp isn't quite big enough to completely fill the heart.
Gently trace the outline of the heart with your embossing stylus until you can see it on the inside of the card.
Then make yourself a recession letterpress ghetto template. I did this by taking three scraps with the heart already punched out of it that were lying all over my desk, and sticking them together.
On the back of the ghettopress, I used Dotto to temporarily hold it to my card. Put this on the INSIDE of your card, lining it up with the faint outline.
Go back to the front of your card and begin debossing. I made the edges with my stylus to get the lines sharp and did the inside with my Empressor. What is cool is after you deboss for a while the paper gets very shiny, like little anteater eyes.
It's really a cool technique, and has all sass of letterpress with none of the one eyed glaring.
More on this technique tomorrow, or possibly tonight, as I heart it up on the way into Valentine's Day!
Have you signed up for the UBlue Cyber Club? Attended one of my Webinars?? Come on - get your geek on! :) Want to see my other
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#(*$^&(@*#&@!!!!
Then, something very strange happened. All of the cupcakes on earth became very tiny! Look at these teeny tiny gorgeous red velvet cupcakes!
Some of them made their way to my door via my super fabulous downline, Emily, the author of Crafty Cannata.
Seriously.
This is a 5 X 5.5 card, and I used a Behr oversized paint chip for the background. The card base is Chocolate Chip (sorry it looks black). I colored the buggy with my blender pen and Pirouette Pink, cut out and popped up the little cover, (inspired by the lovely and talented Lisa Somerville and her fabby card, here) and added glitter to the carriage and the spokes of the wheels.
What could be better?
She had to put her little fingers in those holes, and spin the dial, like on Wheel of Fortune, then wait, while the little ball bearing laden thingy slowly spun the dial back to the starting position so that you could dial the next number. YES I AM SERIOUS. This is where the phrase "speed dial" comes from. Anything under 45 seconds per number (God help you people with zeros in your number - you probably lost a lot of friends) would have been considered LIGHTNING SPEED.
That's no Iphone, ladies. That is a REAL PHONE. It's in the stamp set Classy & Fabulous. From the new catalog.
I reversed the colors since the red had so much punch.
I just can't do it.
Don't forget that you can "split" a rubon. I took "Bloom where you're planted" and used the white one for part of it and the black one for the other part. Cool.
Color blocking usually involves emboss resist and large panels of color around the resist. 
The rest is easy - just sponge on some color. From top left to bottom right, my seasons go: Summer, Fall, Winter, Spring. I used Summer Sun, Tangerine Tango, Going Grey and Tempting Turquoise.
Are you freaking kidding me? So, SUV's to the back of the parking lot? And WTH is low emitting and fuel efficient? Fuel efficient is a relative term after all. If you've just switched from a Yukon to a motorcycle, the motorcycle actually "emits" more pollution. So the Yukon can park there, but not a motorcycle, which many misled people think is more fuel efficient and easier on the tree frogs. It's not. Plus, I laughed MAO standing in front of the sign imagining enforcement of this idiotic program. Gym employees coming out and checking catalytic converters and then - seriously - laughing so hard - CALLING A GIANT STINKY TOW TRUCK into the parking lot to remove the offensive 14mpg vehicle from the premises. Hilarious!!!
Wanna see my fuel efficient low emission carpooling bunnies? Head over to Project Reanimate or click the picture! This project was made with Suiboku clear stamps by Kodomo - they gave me some stamps to design with at CHA and I love these images, especially the bunnies.
Yes, more ghettopress. One of the things I like about letterpress is the combination of plain debossing with printed debossing, so that's what I tried to create here.
Next, I punched the same shape heart out of a scrap of cardstock, and applied Dotto and placed this on top of my sponged and stamped image, being careful to precisely cover the heart. 
Then, turn the card over, and from the INSIDE of the card, trace the edges of the punched cardstock card. This creates debossing on the front of the card, or a recessed heart. Use both the fine and wider ends of the stylus to get good definition.
Then, to create debossed hearts that are not inked, I punched three of the smaller hearts from cardstock and affixed them to the front of my card with Dotto. Again, flip to the inside of the card, feel for the edges of the hearts, and trace them firmly with your stylus.
Here he is dribbling the ball before the setup.
Am I the only person who has read Thomas Pynchon's "The Crying of Lot 49?"
like in The Crying of Lot 49, there's a small chance I might end up in a junkyard in Gilroy, CA, making a deal with a man with one eye, who only speaks in James Joyce verse and is accompanied by an anteater wearing a bellman's cap.
Still in popup mode, I paper pieced this one and varied the heights of the elements... I loved putting my teeny version of Rupert, who is in love with the sun, into this scene. Could he be any cuter? Looks like the sun loves him back. :)
