Remembering Japan

Well, I tried posting this yesterday, but for some reason, it went up as a blank post!  Anyway, I'm a day late now, but I still wanted to share this post with you.

Last year at this time, I was on my first trip to Japan.  You can read more about our Tokyo adventure here...

While in Japan, we were there for the earthquake and tsunami.  Luckily nothing bad happened to us but we were still scared and frightened being in another country.  Through it all, we developed a deep respect and appreciation for the people of Japan.  There was no crime, looters, panic or anything uncivilized during this tragedy.  You could sense the worry, but still everyone continued to work and go about their business.  If you were there, you would not have even realized that the tsunami had happened on the other part of the island.

We heard many stories of how residents had to walk 10 hours to get home or got stuck in hours of traffic trying to get to loved ones.  It's just incredible that thorough all of that, everyone seemed to stay calm, cool, and collected.

Just wanted to share a Sister Stamps card with you because Sister Stamps was on my mind while in Japan.  I got inspired by many of the things I saw while on my trip and hope to go back there again soon.

To make this card, I distressed the background with a few colors.  After staring at it for awhile, I decided to do something simple this time and just stamp Yohimi onto the distressed background, so you could still see the blended colors.  I added the black kanji for birthday (giving it away to a friend) and on the right, I used an old kanji stamp and stamped it with versamark and applied gold mica powder for a subtle look.  To balance out the black, I matted it onto black cardstock.

Even though I'm late, please take a moment of silence to remember the people of Japan who passed away or lost loved ones through this disaster.  They have gone through so much with such grace and honor.