Tuesday, July 17, 2007

friendship is a shelter

I've been pondering that for the last few days - what a beautiful thing friendship is... In American hospitals when a friend is sick, we bring balloons, flowers, plants, stuffed animals...no one brought us any of those things. Instead they were concerned with meeting our immediate needs so that we could stay focused on our son...running errands for us, bringing us food (you think hospital food is bad where you are...........), taking our laundry home, bringing us things we needed from the house, passing on updates to our families and friends. We had 2 single guys stay with us the whole time, and they were ready at any time of the day or night, going to the pharmacy for us (each patient is responsible to purchase their own medications and supplies, down to needles and IV bags), emptying my son's catheter bag, purchasing food outside the hospital, helping us communicate more clearly, etc. Amazing.

This is the gatefold card I finally finished last Tuesday and never got a chance to post. All stamps are available from smARTworks. I stamped the mouse in brown ink, masked him, and stamped the mushroom so he could be sitting under it this time. The ladybug was an afterthought, but it pulled the card together for me.

Coloring is done with Prismacolor pencils. The embossed panel was done with a Fiskars Texture Plate - I have a bunch of them but don't use them often because I don't have the right tools to use with them - on this one since just the edge would show I used the end of a paintbrush to find the lines. I inked just the "hello" from the saying in the ladybug set ("A little hello from me to you") and positioned it in the message box. (My Stampamajig is on it's way...) I added the exclamation point by hand.

The mouse panel is attached to the left "gate". To make the closure tab, I used the smallest circle on my Coluzzle template, lined it up, and just cut a half-circle. The eyelet was added "just for cute".

4 comments:

  1. This little mousie is sooo cute. Love everything about this card - such talent you have!

    Wow, such a scare for you and your family. Hopefully, when you say *we are home* that means Benny, too! It sounds like you live in a caring community.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Gosh...I'm glad you're back...and that Benny is improving!
    Earlier when you wrote about him being sick, you said you had come down with the same thing...
    how are you doing now?

    And...your mushroom card is precious :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Wow - how we take things for granted - especially hospitals! Such wonderful caring people God has blessed you with! Hope Benny's recovery goes better than expected. Have a blessed day!

    ReplyDelete
  4. What a sweet little mouse! So sorry to hear about your awful time.. hope everything is better.

    ReplyDelete