I got lost in the luminous, iridescent glow of this art, spied on my morning walk in San Francisco's Mission District. I love the contrast of the metallic background with the matte drips. It's super sophisticated and grungy at the same time. Kind of Warhol Factory. I'd love to find some way to replicate it on a huge tote bag and sling it over my shoulder!

Sending a big, beautiful bubble of love and gratitude to friends of February 13 Creative. Wishing you a joyous holiday celebration!

If you're a last-minute elf like I am, never fear! There's still time to send beautifully personalized holiday greetings from February 13 Creative. Browse our selection of easy-to-customize designs, available exclusively at Cardstore.com. Within minutes, you can add your own photos and message. If you like, Cardstore will even take care of the mailing for you. Cardstore always offers free shipping, whether you have the cards sent to you, or directly to your recipients. Just be sure to order by December 15th if you'd like Christmas delivery!

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If you're a business owner or manager looking for the perfect holiday greeting to wish your clients and customers the very best, be sure to check our selection of easy-to-customize designs, available exclusively at Cardstore.com. Don't forget: Cardstore will address, stamp, and pop your cards in the mail at no additional charge. Even the (real, honest-to-goodness) stamps are free!

New and just in time for gussying up all your Black Friday and Cyber Monday gift purchases… Pam Nudel's cut paper tree design on wonderful gift wrap from f13 licensing partner, DesignDesign!

This colorful, contemporary wrap is part of their eco-kind Green2 line. Happy wrapping!

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So I mentioned all these classes I'm taking lately. Voilà! My first screenprint… a little portrait of my new friend, Claude (aka The Featherduster).

I snapped his fine form on my iPhone one night and could see the ultimate print in my mind's eye immediately... such a great, graphic black-and-white shape!

I did the art and color separations in Illustrator. One of my classmates saw the inkjet print-out I had as a color reference for mixing my ink. She asked, "Why do you even bother with the hassle of screenprinting when your inkjet looks so good?" The truth is, I love forcing myself to surrender to the unpredictability of the manual printing process. Screenprinting, like other traditional media, is so maddeningly hard to control. I pulled about 25 prints of Claude and only the very last two or three were anywhere near decent. I had all kinds of glitches from the start…. The transparencies I printed to burn my screens weren't lining up properly, setting me up for all kinds of registration headaches; my teacher accidentally poked a hole in one of my screens so I had to crop the image a little differently than planned; strange spots and blurry areas appeared with each new pull, every one requiring a small adjustment.

An earlier pull… perfect registration on his ear! But wait, what happened to his nose?! And his jawline? Not to mention those spots on his ear that never went away.

In the end (top image), his nose finally printed solidly, but I had to compromise on the registration (nose won out over ear). I also never got perfectly clean, solid coverage. But that's what I came for… the mess, the inability to fuss over every pixel, the opportunity to tell my inner perfectionist: "It's okay."

I highly recommend it!

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I don't know what the weather's like in your neck of the woods, but here in San Francisco it's beginning to feel a lot like winter... the perfect atmosphere for contemplating this year's holiday greeting! We have some great new designs available in our Cardstore.com collection, including these two snowy beauties. 

We're also delighted to let you know that Cardstore now offers free shipping or free postage, standard on all orders, everyday!

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Feeling inspired by a bag of Mexican cocoa powder I've had in my pantry, I concocted these little morsels over the weekend and I have to say they are pretty amazing! You can find the recipe here. I hope you'll give them a try and let me know what you think!

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I've been meaning forever to share these two super birthday greetings from February 13 Creative, produced by Design Design as part of their beautiful Green2 line. 

February 13 Creative's Wish Dandelion and Cut Paper Birthday Banner, available where awesome greeting cards are sold and online at the links above, via Gallery 19. The dandelion design is also available in a boxed set of 16 blank notecards!

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Lately I've been taking more time away from the keyboard and stylus, diving instead into some old-school art-making techniques. I'm in my second semester of monoprinting at San Francisco City College, taking a six-week screenprinting class at ARC Studios, and I just tacked on another round of painting lessons via Get Your Paint On. Maybe too many classes to really get the most out of any one of them, but I am loving having ink and paint under my fingernails and just swimming in the whole, glorious explosion of possibility.

fish school, monoprint (subtractive + stencil)

Monoprinting is a traditional print-making technique that, by default, results in unique prints rather than editions. The image is created by applying ink to a smooth plexiglass plate. The plate is then run through the press to transfer the image to paper. The image isn't part of the plate itself (via etching or some other means), so once the ink is transferred to the paper, you can't go back and print the exact same image again. There's a whole lot of chance involved... you can never be entirely sure what's going to come out on the other side of the roller and you can't simply adjust your inking or your pressure on the next round in order to get the image looking more like you want it to.

fish scales, monoprint (subtractive + transparent color + stencil)

After spending so much time creating images at the computer—where I can tweak and obsess and control to my heart's content—I find monoprinting both frustrating and liberating. It can take hours to build up an image on the plate... and a few seconds to run it through the press and find something completely unexpected on the other side. Sometimes the surprises are wonderful. Sometimes they're truly disappointing. But all in all, I'm loving the experience of getting lost in the creative moment... letting go of my expectations for how it's all "supposed to" turn out.

These images show a few of the different methods I've learned so far for creating monoprints. One of the most common techniques is "subtractive"—the plate is first entirely covered with ink, then the image is wiped away from that ink. The image can be refined with color and detail through subsequent plates and other techniques like stencils or chine-collé (where bits of colored paper or other elements are fused to the printing paper along with your ink).

fish puzzle, monoprint (subtractive + chine-collé)

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