A Milestone…

I read an article from our local newspaper yesterday about a mom whose son recently graduated from high school.  No big deal, right?  Happens all the time…

Upon further reading, I learned that her son was born with a hole in his diaphragm and the doctors only gave him a 50/50 chance to survive.  While he was in the hospital Neonatal ICU, struggling for every breath, this new mother placed two fingers on his laboring chest and whispered, please.  When he exhaled, she whispered, thank you.  

In the weeks that followed as her son grew healthy and strong with no lingering complications, each breath seemed like a miracle.  This mom continued her prayer ritual of whispering, please when her son inhaled and thank you when he exhaled.  Faced with the fragility of life, each year became a milestone to celebrate with her son!

This story reminds me of taking the time to say, thank you to people who I appreciate in my life.  Sometimes it is good to recognize the milestones that are big and small…

I made the above card for a friend recently.  I was inspired by these beautiful pink roses:

I thought you might like to learn how I made it.  🙂

I discovered that sea sponges make great roses!  Just dab a damp sponge lightly in acrylic paint  and twist your wrist as you apply the paint to paper.  Adding several colors, gives it some depth.  And a few splatters of watercolor gives it pizzazz!

My lettering came from an idea in this book from Joanne Sharpe.  I used a permanent black Micron pen.

One doesn’t have to have a milestone to say, thank you; who do you know that would appreciate getting a handmade card in the mail?

Happy Father’s Day to all the dads this weekend…

Cheers! 🙂

Nancy Drew And Dapper Dan

I decided to add a little mystery to my post today…

I was at a thrift store yesterday, buying old books for a collage class I’m taking…

I’ll share more about the online class in Thursday’s post! 😉

I found several old Nancy Drew books, like this one:

I remember reading the book series as a young girl.  How about you?

This book was only $1.00 so I bought it, thinking it might be fun to read again!  😃  And possibly, include a page or two into one of my weird birds!

Which brings me to today’s post… Dapper Dan:

Dapper Dan almost turned into Dapper Damn when I was creating the hand lettering for his name and messed up!  Ugh! 😬

Thank goodness for white pens (much like white-out!)

Apparently, the “Old Maid” card game was subconsciously on my mind… Do you remember these cards?

Funny how one memory leads to another one…

Happy Weird Bird Wednesday!

May it bring you happy memories of your childhood…

Cheers!  🙂

YOU Can Be…

Just think of the possibilities…

If you started your day,

Being AWESOME!!  🙂

When Charlie at Doodlewash.com had an art prompt to create patterns in watercolor on March 3rd, I couldn’t resist!

So I got out my Ecoline Watercolor markers – which Charlie was giving away last summer on his blog (I won a few to try, pretty awesome I must say!) and I just started drawing:

 

Drawing colorful patterns, just makes me FEEL awesome, how about you?

Yesterday, I decided to cut out letters on the back side of my paper:

I forgot that I had to reverse the “S” but no big deal, I just cut out another one!

After I cut the letters out, I glued them into my journal and added some flowers with my hand painted papers.  Note:  You can’t see the cut into the center of the flowers or letters when you cut one continuous line into the center.

I had some text on my collage table and found this text, which made a perfect flower center:

 

I was thinking this would make a fun card for a friend by adding a special message inside a flower!

I outlined my letters and flowers with a black Micron pen and a little pencil shading to make them pop, as you can see with my photo on the right below:

 

Part of my inspiration for my lettering was the cover of Uppercase Magazine:

Be AWESOME today!

Cheers! 🙂