Snowpocalypse #2 in Full Force

Greetings from suburban MD, where we're buried underneath 21-22 inches of snow! No joke. For some places up north (i.e. NY, Boston), perhaps that's normal winter weather. However, for this area, it's historical. The snow was so bad that there was no postal service in this area today. I had to put a notice in my Etsy shop announcement saying that shipment of orders would have to wait until I felt it was safe to venture out to the post office. Hopefully buyers will be understanding.

Snow Pictures

There wasn't much we could to today other than stay at the house. There was no where to go because the streets hadn't been plowed, and the cars were still under a lot of snow. I spent the day helping Dad shovel a little, napping, yakking up a storm on the phone, and eventually making some cards.

Here's the card for today. I decided to try a new stamping technique called emboss resist that I saw on Nicole Heady's blog tonight. It took me a couple of tries to get the card just right. I don't think it was the technique that was particularly difficult, but getting the right intensity of color wasn't as easy as I thought it was going to be. I went from a dark pink to a medium pink and finally settled for a light pink. The embossed image is difficult to see in the picture on the left, so the picture on the right shows a close-up. I also used Mom's fabric scissors to cut the ribbon. Man, those babies are sharp! What a difference they made compared to the scissors that I used before.

Card Specs:
Embossing powder: Stampendous! in clear and white
Embossing ink: VersaMark
Ink: StazOn in Timber Brown, Ink It Up! in Pink
Stamps: Hot Off the Press- Delicate Patterns (script), SEI- Moravia (flower), The Paper Company Studio- Whimsy Greetings (sentiment)
Punches: Fiskars Twist & Flip 2-in-1 corner punch, Fiskars Scalloped Sentiment border punch
Foam Adhesive: Making Memories
I also decided to start preparing for the next major holiday (Easter) with this new origami panda card. He (I suppose it could be a she) was very popular with Valentine's Day.
Song of the day: "According to You"- Orianthi. Repeat from yesterday.

Christmas is over- meh, ok

Despite the slight disgruntlement that I expressed in my previous post about Christmas being over, maybe it's not such a bad thing for several reasons.

• I can watch movies at work. Yep, no joke. Like last year, during the week between Christmas and New Year's, we got to watch a movie at lunch time in the conference room. Today's film was "Iron Man." Super cool movie. Can't wait for the second one to come out in 2010.
  


• I can get back into the spin of things. Ha ha, get it? Ok, lame-o. But seriously, I'm hoping that the avalanche of holiday food temptations will be gone and I can get into my regular routine of going to spin class. I haven't gone in 2 weeks. 2 WEEKS! I don't even have a good excuse, and now that I think about it, I don't know how not going to spin class is related to the holidays. I've just been a lazy butt, but today, I made my conscience feel better by going to a super spin class (1 hour!).


• I can work on cards for the next holiday, Valentine's Day. I worked hard on making Christmas cards to prepare myself for a craft show in early December, and I'm definitely ready for a new challenge. No more origami Christmas cards for another 10 months or so. Bring on the hearts and lovey-dovey stuff!

I made another Valentine's Day card. This time, it's with one of my favorite origami models- the panda. Anyone who's seen my Etsy shop has probably seen the origami panda birthday card with a paper punched cupcake. Similarly, I used a paper punch to create the heart.

Song of the day: Hmm, I don't really have one. HOWEVER, I did hear this Mashup of the top 25 songs of 2009 on the radio this evening on the way to spin. I thought it was rather creative. You can check it out here on YouTube. Happy Jammin'.