Not really. At least I don’t think I’ve broken any hearts. But I have been making lots of postcards.

My days have been consumed with my day job, which is generally very busy this time of year. I work for a university, and contrary to what many believe is a pretty chill couple of months for staff (with the students away), it’s actually go time, as we have to get ready to receive the students in late August. They do come back, you know! 

Aside from my normal day-job-craziness, I’ve been extra busy making things. (This site isn’t Mel Makes for nothing!) As I described in my last post, I’ve had my hands in just about everything from comics to photos, writing and more. And this week, I started another project – well, an extension of a project: Designing and printing my own postcards.

If you’re familiar with my postcard party, you know it’s become a little addiction. I’m up to my eyeballs in postcards purchased online, and recently, I bought some blanks. The possibilities are endless, and I’ve been working at these all week, attempting to define what “endless” means.

I started out using a toner transfer process, by where you flip a printed sheet face down on a surface and rub the back with furniture stripper. It transfers the toner onto the surface. It’s a pretty satisfying process once you get the hang of it. 

And earlier this week, my block printing kit arrived. Block printing, also known as Linocut, is the process of carving pieces out of linoleum to create an image, rolling ink over what’s left and stamping it on the surface to leave an imprint. I hadn’t practiced this in years, and it was just as time-consuming as I remembered, but also really fun!

So once I was reacquainted with these two methods, I decided to combine them. The result was pretty fun and even more time-consuming. One of the first two ideas I’d created was the Greetings from Hell postcard, which was a multi-step process and took forever to produce. I made only a single card, and I’m not sure I could ever part with it! I’ll re-examine the process and see if I might create more. 

Until then, have a great weekend! Today is my Friday!