Hello

Today's card was created for the Send A Smile 4 Kids. I love donating cards to sick children in the hospital. Many of you may not know but my granddaughter Journey spent the first two and a half weeks of her life in the NICU at Cardinal Glennon with cCMV, a viral illness that caused her to lose her hearing at the age of 6 months. At a little over one year of age she underwent a very long and grueling surgery for cochlear implants. She can hear now but still has a major language deficit that we struggle with every day. We still have to travel regularly for updates on her equipment and to meet with audiologists and speech pathologists. So, it goes without saying that my daughter and I are all too familiar with the children's hospitals in St. Louis near where we live. We both got to know families that have suffered, and even lost young loved ones through chronic illness. We know how hard the staff work at these hospitals to comfort and care, not only for the children in their ward, but for their families too. It genuinely makes my day to create something that will put a smile on a child's face, either because one of my cards was selected by a staff member to give to a child or vise versa. If you are a cardmaker reading this blog post and want to donate some cards to this worthy cause you can check out the SAS4K blog site here. Anyway, to create my card I started by layering some patterned paper I found in the $3 bin at Target onto a white card base. I then stamped the adorable acorn from Paper Smooches Falling For You stamp set onto more of the same paper. I fussy cut the image out, edged it with a Memento dual tip marker. I colored some of the image in using my Prismacolor colored pencils and then went all around the outer edges with a sponge dauber and some Tim Holtz tea dye distress ink. I stamped the acorn image one more time onto white Copic-friendly cardstock and colored the leaves in using a Copic marker. I then fussy cut the image out, edged it with the same black marker, and then popped it up off of the image using Stampin' UP foam dimensionals. I added some American Crafts green twine around the stem and tied a small bow. I die cut a pretty edged circle using a Gina Marie Design die, adhered the acorn directly onto it and stamped the greeting from Paper Smooches Word Salad stamp set off to the side. I added some dots along the leaves using an American Crafts metallic marker in copper for some additional interest.  Thanks for visiting my blog and I hope this card put a smile on your face!