Monday, September 22, 2008

Cammie's Heart to Heart Challenge

Cammie has issued a wonderful heart to heart challenge accompanied with blog candy over on her blog. Her grandmother recently passed away from complication with Alzheimer's. Cammie felt the urge to do what she could to raise awareness about the disease and she has been quite successful. A few weeks ago she released her very own stamp set through Gina K. Designs. She has donated and will continue to donate all proceeds she makes directly to the Alzheimer's Association. Yesterday she challenged everyone to celebrate World Alzheimer's day by making a card for a caretaker of a person with Alzheimer's. I truly hope that many, many people participate in this challenge!!! Lets use our talent for card making to make someone smile. It's wonderful when you can surprise someone with a handmade card, but it is even more special when that someone isn't expecting it. As I was making my card, I couldn't help but do some reflecting. We all personally know or have heard of someone who has a family member fighting this disease. A month before I was to graduate college, I had to participate in a month long internship. I decided to do mine at a nursing home in the next town over. I always volunteered to go and collect data from the charts in the Alzheimer's wing. I just loved sitting in the office and having the residents who lived there come up and ask me the same questions over and over again. They made me smile each and every time. I spent a lot of my free time with them as well. It definitely takes a certain kind of person to have the patience to care for those individuals. This also reminded me of the Baxter series by Karen Kingsbury. If you have not read it yet, you must! She is a Christian author and she has created a wonderful series based on a very inspirational family. I bring this up because my favorite character in her books is Ashley. In the second book in the series, Ashley finds herself working in a facility that takes care of Alzheimer's patients. You can't help but fall in love with the characters. They make you giggle and they make you cry. It truly is a wonderful story. The card I created is fairly simple. I wanted to make a few of them to send out. I used my favorite flower image from Gina K and stamped it in Palette Noir. The image was colored in with Koh-i-noor pencils. I then paper pieced some flowers on top. I curled the edges up a bit so you could still see some of the red underneath. I added a brad to the centers and went over the vase with my Pearlescent chalks to give them a wonderful shimmer. Thanks so much for stopping by!!!

Stamps: Gina K, Noteworthy
Paper: River Rock, Chocolate Chip, Basic Grey: Infuse, White
Ink: Palette Noir
Other: brads, Koh-i-noor pencils, OMS, Pearlescent Shimmer chalks, Chocolate polytwill ribbon.

8 comments:

Rachel Hope said...

OMG!!! I love it!!! The paper pieced flowers...Genius!!!!

Danni said...

Great job! Love the way you did the flowers!

Colleen Wold said...

What a beautiful card...and for a beautiful reason too! I love your flowers. You are so good and cutting things out and making them "pop"! Gorgeous coloring on the water in the vase as well.

Anonymous said...

So pretty. I love those wonderful flowers!

Tammi said...

Aww...you made me a little teary reading that and how you used to listen to them (hugs).

Wow Kim I LOVE this card, so cool how you did the flowers and how it matches the background paper, just beautiful!! I know this will make whoever gets it smile!

Catherine said...

WOW, this is so pretty!

Carolyn King said...

wow...beautiful! THanks for participating and spreading the word. Hugs-Cammie

Suzanne said...

WOW! THis is beautiful! Those flowers - wow!