Today: Snow in North Bend.

Well, at least snowflakes - of the handmade paper variety - decked on the windows of Pneuma Studios, located at the base of the former North Bend Hotel.

The creations were not whisked there by Old Man Winter, but by Ellen Craine, a 63-year-old woman who's been cutting and snipping air mail stationery paper into the crystalline-like treasures - and scratching her head to say “How did I do that?” - since 1962.

“I'm not an engineer - I just like to cut,” Craine, an Ashland native, said as she glanced down at the ruby red carpet that served as the backdrop for her latest wintry creation.

She had taken a 3-inch-by-3-inch square of lightweight paper, folded it just so, cut it as she liked, and within five minutes transformed a bland sheet of paper into a six-pointed flake, with holly leaf and burning candle motifs.

Just like in grade school.

Well, not just like in grade school as it turns out.

“I started in the third or fourth grade,” she said. “We put them up on the window and I just thought they were ugly. Every year I have made them better.”

The proof is on the windows at Pneuma.

Like a surgeon wielding a small pair of Fiskars snippers on a day off (scissors don't work well, she said) she's made about 150 snowflakes for the storefront windows. She just wanted to decorate the place, she said.

Up until this holiday season, the flakes have been nothing more than a family tradition. (And by “family tradition,” she said, she, and she alone, would make them as gifts for her kids and grandchildren).

But, soon enough, with the window serving as an unintended advertising space - a customer came a calling.

“Until people started wanting to buy them it had not occurred to me to sell them,” she said.

So she decided to see if she could make a little extra cash, selling a set - consisting of about 25 flakes - for $25.

“I love them because they are beautiful and different - if I do say so myself,” she said.

For the last 44 years, Craine has been nipping the paper here and there around the holidays and putting them in her home. For the most part, the snowflakes have found themselves, in what she described as a snowdrift pattern, in the crooks of windows. Incidentally, one year her family decided to dip them in paraffin to harden them, and sprinkle glitter on them, transforming them into Christmas tree ornaments.

But she said she prefers them as window decorations. A little Elmer's glue on each of the points and the little gems stick just fine. (You can peel them off with the help of a razor blade).

But, at the moment she has run into a dilemma. Her preferred paper - air mail stationery - isn't being made anymore.

“Now, people just fax things,” she said. “They don't even remember what air mail is.”

She has exactly 12 sheets of stationery left, and after that, she fears she is going to have to resort to inferior paper, that likely will turn out a product of less quality. She's even taken to saving the scraps she once threw away.

Paper, obviously, is the key ingredient. Too heavy a paper, like a 20-pound paper, and the paper won't fold correctly. Too thin, and the paper will not cut clean and will transmit too much light, she said. The folds must be tight for the really fine work she has come to enjoy.

When one of her customers heard about the scarcity of the paper, she decided to help Craine hunt down a new supplier. They found some available in the United Kingdom, but Craine said it was too expensive. As she readily admitted: “I'm very picky. I'm an artist.”

If need be, she said she will use erasable bond typing paper - her second choice of paper because of its opacity.

But, there's not a lot of typewriters around anymore either, so finding that paper also is proving difficult.

“Someone out there, has a box of erasable bond, or an old pad of airmail paper,” she said hopefully.

She's scanned several of her favorite designs - stars, holly leaves, candles and fir boughs - into her computer, in hopes of replicating them.

But, they never turn out to her liking.

And, in a way, she likes it that way.

“Usually I just fold the paper and start cutting and whatever comes out is what it is,” she said. “It's always an adventure to unfold them, because you never know what they are going to turn out like.”