snow

The snow has returned but the strong sunshine is making a comeback, too, thank goodness.

two shades of blue

The sky casts a blue tone over everything. The first shot of the Boston skyline was taken from the subway train Friday evening. The second at Fresh Pond when the snow had only just begun coming down on Sunday.

march is here

Spring begins on the 20th. Beautiful silkscreened calendar available here.

white

As someone who has always been a big fan of color, I've been noticing lately just how striking white can be. When looking for stock to put together cards with my photographs I tried card stock in color, natural and white tones; bright white was definitely the way to go. When I work with collage it's been about layering colors, the background included, so this is a change. Looking for new towels, white jumped out with its classic clean ambience. Finally, white paint for painting trim around the house: white provides the contrast and accent no other color can vie for.

reflections

the countdown is over

Samantha left for Australia yesterday (Sunday) morning. Among the items she packed were 15 Larabars and 10 bikinis. She's been counting down the days for about 2 months now. It took her 6 hours to fly to LA where she had a layover of 12 hours. While she was there she saw 2 celebrities at LAX, Paris Hilton and Natalie Portman, within 15 minutes of each other, while waiting outside the airport for her 3 friends to pick her up. Paris strutted in wearing uncomfortable-looking high heels and Natalie was leaving with a little dog and an airport escort who did his best to chase away the 2 paparazzi who were hounding her and her hound. It will take Samantha 16 hours to fly to Australia and once she arrives she will have lost 13 hours since Australia is 13 hours ahead of Boston. So far 180 people have died in the fires in Australia, with one suspect arrested so far (WHY would anyone do this?).

happy v-day

This year my homemade card for my husband, Larry, features this photograph, which I mounted with a glue stick on card stock. Using photographs for cards feels a little like cheating compared to when I've made my collage notecards. The challenge with the photos has been figuring out how to hook up the photo printer and now that I've conquered that hurdle I'm turning into a photo printing maniac. Within minutes there's a polished, finished product and voila, I have a card that's as good as the one I saw in the Mount Auburn hospital gift shop selling for $4.00 last week (which, by the way, is a very nice gift shop).

My main objection with all these holidays is the commercial aspect which can lead to a potentially impersonal aspect as well. Valentine's Day is the one holiday where you can really get away with giving a homemade card. So if you didn't get around to buying a card for your sweetie yet, not to worry. Just pull out a pen (or camera) and some decent paper and get to work. Oh, and happy v-day everyone!