Crafting is great therapy!

Hi everyone - on Thursday my sister and I hauled out the craft supplies to make thank you cards.  Tami has plenty of people to thank - lovely neighbors, dear relatives and sweet friends who brought food or housed relatives, sent flowers or gave moral support during these tough times.  Tami is more of a scrapbooker than a card maker but she asked me to help her make some cards.  I thought it would be very healing and it was!  I have accumulated many supplies that I leave at her house, plus I usually bring a few stamp sets.  She says she can only create when I'm in the room for inspiration but I'm sure she could do it on her own too!  Here we are creating:

 

Here's about 1/2 of the cards we created together:

 

We used some wonderful Hero Arts clear and wood block sets, especially an excellent 2013 release CL663 Thanks a Bunch.  I had Tami repeat some of the designs if they were going to different areas. Then I stayed busy creating while she addressed the envelopes. And, of course, here's a shot of our messy crafting table:

This mess was over at my parents' house earlier in the week, then I cleaned it all up and created a new version at my sister's house - LOL! And they didn't even mind that I left it messy for several days as I continued creating. We did a lot of running around to the post office, the outlet mall, for lattes, etc. so I didn't get a chance to publish this until today. Crafting is great therapy - it really helped to heal as we personalized the thank you cards for the people who sympathized & shared with us. Thanks for stopping and hope you have a safe and crafty weekend.

April Card Chain Challenge

Hi all - another Card Chain Challenge has arrived on Deborah's blog.  She extended the deadline which I appreciated as I had a lot going on and missed the original one. 

My dear brother-in-law Dave lost his nearly 3 year battle with lung cancer last week.  My sister Kari went right away to help my sister Tami and I came in for the funeral.  Tami has been such a trooper taking care of Dave; you may remember I visited them in February while he was in the hospital with pneumonia.  Well, he recovered from that but the cancer had spread to his "good" lung.  He didn't even last two months after that.

We're all glad he's not in pain anymore but I will miss him soooo much.  We both love to read and we shared many books over the last 27 years - John D. MacDonald, John Sanford, Lee Child and many other authors.  I made a bunch of sympathy cards - for my sister, the three kids and Dave's 3 siblings.  Didn't get a photo of any of them but they were appreciated by all. 

Now I'm visiting my parents and was able to pull out enough supplies to make a CCC card.  Here's what I came up with using this month's sketch and the theme of friendship:

I used a Hero Arts Shallows folded card, My Mind's Eye papers (The Sweetest Thing Bluebell), a zig zag cling stamp from Hero Arts, and a sentiment from a clear set by Hero Arts called Friends.

Thanks for stopping and I hope you're living life to the fullest and doing what you love!