It has been a while

To say that things at work have been hectic would be an understatement. We are still only half-staffed (since the rest of our guys are still in Iraq), we had our triennial quality audit at the end of January, and the units that we support have been getting tasked with providing a bunch of equipment for Afghanistan. Which means we are tasked with calibrating and repairing the test equipment before it deploys. We have been SWAMPED. So I have been putting in a lot of hours, plus doing a lot of work from home. Crafts have definitely been forced right past the back seat and into the trunk. Luckily, everyone has been busting their tails, so we are in good shape at work. And we did OUTSTANDING on our audit. I've caught up on my rest, and only have a few minor work-related things to do, so I can finally scrap again.

Today's card I actually started on January 17th. It was a combination of four different challenges: The OCC color challenge (use two shades of blue), The OCC Technique Challenge (emboss resist), Splitcoast Stampers sketch challenge 211, and Sparkle's Christmas card challenge. And, I totally ripped-off fellow BB Brandi's snowman from the card she made for our stamp of the month swap. It took me until today to get this card finished. Admittedly, it isn't a true emboss resist. I was having a hard time embossing the snowman head and body, so I finally broke down and used liquid glass on him. Unfortunately, the liquid glass caused the paper to curl a little bit. I should have used my sponge daubers to apply Versamark, and then pour on the embossing powder. My two shades of blue are CTMH Twilight and Outdoor Denim. The paper is CTMH Aspen, and cardstock in Twilight and Outdoor Denim. Stamps are CTMH All Decked Out and Shining Star. The stars are mounted with 3-D Foam Squares. There would have been two cards, but I tried using my embossing pen to emboss the snowman for the second card and I ended up with a blue snowman.