Patchwork Underground

Yahoo for the holidays and thank god they’re over.  These are the place cards I made for our big vegan x-mas dinner.  The theme was Rockstar Virgin Christmas.  I like that the Virgin Mary, Britney Spears and Lady Gaga are all represented here.  I made these on a whim at my mother-out-law’s house so they are comprised entirely of sharpie, pen, scotch tape (no white glue!), computer paper, metallic angel cutouts and a few issues of Entertainment Weekly.

(We had 5 people at dinner - the 6th card with Lady Gaga on it is for Elijah, the angel who comes to Passover.  I always like to have a little Passover in my holidays.)

Happy 2010 everyone!

My latest craft addiction: linocuts (a.k.a woodcuts or block printing). It’s a super-easy way to basically make your own huge, arty stamp. Once you’ve carved your “block,” you can reproduce the image again and again fairly quickly….

Unfortunately, what we’re talking about here does involve carving tools. These can be spendy but I found my set at a thrift store and they work great. The rest of the supplies you’ll need can be picked up at your local crafts store - you’ll need a block of linoleum and some printing ink (I used Speedball’s black). Beacause I was planning on making a lot of prints, I invested in this glorified rolling pin called a brayer. You use it to apply ink to the stamp - er, block. Prints are made by placing a piece of paper on top of the inked stamp and then rubbing the paper with the back of a spoon. Hours of enjoyment.

Here’s some new purdy pictures I took of our latest block print/woodcut mini-journals and cards….

I want to post them on my Etsy shop but there are so many different color combinations (we made a BUNCH….seriously) that I’m overwhelmed by cataloging it all for folks’ shopping pleasure….in the meantime, you can see more pics from my photoshoot here.