Here in Akron, Ohio, snow started falling early last Sunday morning. It was a light powdery snow, but the flakes fell consistently for hours to bring 12 inches.

I was preparing for a potential power outage. I bought some snacks, extra AA batteries, and filled my car with gas after leaving work on Friday. When I got home, I saw that my fresh supply of glass pieces and metal settings for earrings arrived in the mail. Timing for a snow day couldn’t have been better!

I’ve been making these earrings out of marbled paper for about five years now. I select small pieces from my marbled paper stash, then I use a very clear, hard glue to attach them underneath the little glass domes. It isn’t as easy as it looks to get them to look perfect without any shiny spots or air bubbles. I love the way the glass enhances the saturation of the marbled colors and gives it the wet appearance it has when it was first pulled out of the marbling tray!

This process can be tedious, but that’s why I like it. It’s a great project to work on while watching a movie. Which is exactly what I did hehe. I started playing with the glass pieces and my paper stash on Saturday after dinner and turned on Elizabeth (1998, Cate Blanchett). This is in one of my upstairs bedrooms that I use as a studio.

Snow was expected to start falling Saturday evening, but it didn’t arrive until early in the morning after I’d gone to bed.

With no plans to start shoveling until the snow was done falling (at that time, they were saying late Monday morning), I picked up where I left off Sunday. With the British monarchy in my imagination, I turned on some clips from The Crown to play in the background as I worked.

I feel sad that I have to be alone when I’m working on projects in my studio, but it’s the only way anything will get done. My black cat Claude is needy, inquisitive, and has zero sense of personal space. Hence, he has to get locked out of the room (whomp whomp…). He and Cosette slept in my bedroom together most of the day punctuated by moments when I would stand up to stretch and rudely interrupt their dreams by raining kisses upon them.

Later in the afternoon on Sunday, I was at a point with the earrings that I had to wait for glue to cure. I decided to do a little bit of double marbling. I have a stack of papers I’ve been wanting to double marble. These are papers that 1) I wasn’t quite happy with the first round and 2) papers that I made last year with the intent of marbling a second time. I was really interested in doing some with a first layer of just black and white.

There’s something about slipping and sliding to work on I-76 during sudden-onset white out conditions that has given me feelings of dread and frustration about winter that I haven’t felt in previous years. At least to this extreme. But I could never fully hate you, Winter. What I appreciate this season for more than anything is that it’s so quiet, and it makes me appreciate the cozy warmth of my home cocoon more than any other time of year.