Friday, August 17, 2012

Playin' With a New Stamp

I'm so glad it's Friday, aren't you?!

I've had this Square Pattern background stamp from Hero Arts for awhile now and finally had the chance to play with it last night. After making one card, I didn't want to stop, so I ended up making three!

I'm entering this first card in the challenge at A Blog Named Hero - to use kraft. I stamped the Square Pattern on the kraft panel with Hero Arts' Soft Brown Shadow Ink. The die-cut flowers are from Memory Box. It's their beautiful, Hibiscus Flower die. I colored them with Copics, then sprayed them heavily with Perfect Pearl water.




This second card is for the Hero Arts challenge this month, using one of the sketches they provided. I white embossed the Square Pattern this time, then masked off each side of the panel before coloring it with Tombow Markers. The extra three squares are suppose to be handmade buttons - not sure if I pulled that off! :)



And finally, a card I created for all the nurses who took care of my son while he was in the hospital earlier this week. (You can read about that here.) For this one, I again white embossed the Square Pattern. Then I pounced some Broken China and Shaded Lilac Distress Inks onto my craft sheet, spritzed them with Perfect Pearl water and smooshed, twisted and rubbed the embossed panel into the mix - love these colors together!


I want to thank all of you for the sweet comments you left on the post about my son. I really appreciate all the love and concern! He is doing so much better now - more energy and feeling like himself again!

Enjoy your weekend! :)

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

A Rough Couple of Days

Hi there,

In the last few days, I've been going through something I hope I never have to experience again! Many of you know my 21 year old son is a Type 1 Diabetic. He's had the disease since he was three years old. For the past 18 years he has done so well dealing with this nasty disease. He has been doing great on his own, managing and balancing his food intake, exercise and insulin needs, for many years now. But when he started to throw up on Sunday morning, it all took a turn for the worst.

I figured he had the stomach flu, which can be dangerous for a diabetic. But we've been through it before, so we both knew what to do, what he needed, etc. Come Monday morning, looking at his sweet face, I knew we needed help. I've never seen those big, beautiful eyes so sunk-in looking. He was very lethargic, barely able to move, and that's when I made the decision to take him to the hospital.

They finally released him today and we are back home - yay! So relieved! To make a long story short, and to try and keep it simple for those of you who don't know much about this disease, he had what diabetics can get when they're glucose runs way too high for too long. It's called Ketoacidosis and it can be life threatening. He was actually in the ICU unit of the hospital for the last three days.

He is feeling so much better now, resting upstairs as I type this. He and I both talked about how impressed all the nurses and hospital staff were at the fact that he has never had Ketoacidosis in the 18 years with the disease. They were all very surprised it was his first time ever experiencing it, and told him quite often how good he must be at managing his diabetes. That made both of us feel better and less guilty! I kept telling myself I should have thought it might be Ketoacidosis, but since he had never had it before, it didn't even come to my mind - I just thought he had the flu. You can bet if it happens again, I will definitely be thinking about it!

So, with all the drama, fear and stress of the last few days, I wanted to sit down to check in here and over on Flickr. Boy have I missed a lot! You've all been creating some fabulous cards! I can't wait to eventually catch up with everyone and start commenting again!

I've also been doing a little creating today - feels soooo good! :)