Every now and again Xtina Lamb changes my life for the better. Five years ago she taught me how to make websites, she's helped me get work when I was desperate and she's the woman responsible for my She-Wrestling Appreciation Society t-shirt that gets everyone drooling with envy whenever I wear it. In short, she's a real pal.

Xtina is also a creative force whose beautiful illustrations regularly appear on the cover of The Idler, and many other places besides. Recently she's been moonlighting as the Deathridge family's talented youngest daughter for the BBC Get Writing website's storybook maker tool. Anyway, the reason she's here is to talk about her involvement in Mark Pawson's Print More Post Cards project because I took one look at Fairground Wonder and wanted to know more. Take it away Xtina...

What's a Gocco?
Print Gocco is a Japanese printing machine, about the size of a chunky laptop. In Japan they're really common as there's a tradition of sending hand-made New Year's cards. The process is kind of like a cross between screen printing and rubber stamping. I think gocco means fun and Print Gocco lives up to its name.

How did you make your postcard?
Mark Pawson invited me to be one of the 10 artists in his Print More Post Cards project using a Print Gocco machine. I drew the artwork in pencil, worked on it a little in Photoshop and printed it out, photocopied it, then drew on the copies a little in pencil again. The artwork must be carbon-based as when you make the print masters, it fuses with the screen and leaves tiny holes where the carbon was. The original gets destroyed in this process.

I made two masters as I wanted to do colour separations. You ink up straight on top of the master with splodges of thick ink from tubes. The great thing is that you can use as many colours as you like on a screen and because the ink is so solid, the various blobs don't blend easily with each other. That said, the colours do spread during the printing as the machine squeezes them through the screen. The way the colours shift around is part of the charm of printing this way though. I'm particularly fond of the black cloud that has unexpectedly spread above the grumpy girl with the happy balloon on my card.

Lo-fi printing makes a nice change from making digital artwork. I learnt Photoshop because I tended to make such a mess with inks and paint. Computers are great but a bit too clinical sometimes. I love the effects you get on block-printed wallpaper and old children's books where the registration's out a bit.

What's Mark's project about?
Mark's an artist and has a lot of experience printing his own gocco postcards, but for the Print More Post Cards project I think he wanted to explore what could be done with the machine. It's pretty interesting to see how other people will react to a process that you've become very familiar with. He got funding from the London College of Printing and bought a new machine with all the available ink colours for us. We were like little kids in a sweet shop.

Three or four of the ten participants have bought their own machines - me included! One go was definitely not enough.

Could you say a few things about the imagery on the card? Is that a self-portrait in the middle?
It's based around the endpapers of a book I had as a kid. I found a copy of it recently and realised I must have spent hours staring at the detail of this amazing fairground scene, thinking about what was going on there. I was particularly obsessed with a bit where a girl has won a black rabbit and is surrounded by other children. My card was an attempt to recreate that small scene and expand on the odd bunny cult sub-text I'd read into it. I drew the girl in the middle from photos of me as a kid and wanted her to look odd in a carnie folk sort of way. Maybe she came out a bit more mutoid than I'd hoped for but that seems to work.

Where can people buy it?
Postcard sets from the Print More Post Cards project are available from Mark Pawson. You can buy the machines and supplies from an Australian website. I also have half of the 500 print run of my card so anyone who wants one could send me something nice as a swap. Write to Xtina, BCM Box 8962, London, WC1N 3XX

Is there anything else you'd like to say?
A storybook maker tool using 20 of my illustrations has just been launched on the BBC Get Writing site. You only get four random pencil drawings at a time with the tool, to see them all you have to close it and start again. The story is very dark and twisted - great material to work with. The Deathridge Family disappeared after their house burnt down and you have to try and work out what this weird family was up to.

http://www.xtinalamb.co.uk