Hello Thursday -- A Story Begins

Hello friends. I've had a lot on my mind lately and today I'd like to share a little bit of it. I hope I won't offend you by sharing a bit of the real me. I know that for some, you come to blogs to be inspired and you're not to sure you care to read about the unpleasant 'life' stuff. If that is you, just skip on down to the photos.

On the other hand, if you are interested, I'll share a bit of me today.

I'm a strong believer that life is about relationships. Experience tells me that connecting with other human beings is essential to our well being.

Of course, all of us have connections but some of those connections are strong and good and true and real and some are just plain unsafe.

My own story is riddled with unsafe connections. I've been debating for a while about sharing some more of those stories with my readers.

It can be difficult to know how much of one's story to share and how much really should be kept private. I ask myself, what could bring some freedom and hope into my reading friends lives. I hope I've come up with the right answer to that question.

I want to share because I'm guessing that my story is not so very unique and that there are lots of other people out there who've walked an eerily familiar path.

And yet........you feel alone on that road. With that in mind, I am cautiously sharing with the hope that you'll know you are NOT ALONE. Never alone.

This is not about scrapbooking or paper crafting, though those things do come into play. This is about learning how to navigate the unsafe connections and finding those people in our world who will love us just for being us, who will be safe for us. This is about joining hands with the gal next to you and knowing that she isn't there to judge you. This is about trusting the people who've invested in us freely to keep loving us even when they can see the ugly parts.

Are you interested? If you are, please leave me a little note that says so.

I'm on a journey and it is in my nature to take some others along with me. But I don't want you to feel like you have to go if you really don't want to. I'll leave it there for today. Consider it an invitation.

If you think this is a bad idea, then let me know that too, just do please be gentle. Maybe a different blog is the place for that. That would be okay too.

So here is the layout I'm sharing today. It's a little piece of my heart that you'll see in this one. This is a tribute to my sweet kitty cat, Maddie, who died on May 6th. She was 11 years old and I believe I loved her more than I've ever loved a pet before.

I wanted to create a layout that would put down some of the things that made her unique. The things that made us laugh or even made us mad. I wanted the focus on the photo, so I made it large. I cut down one of the Heidi Swapp folders and used it as a mat.



To get the embossed name, I used the new Smash Label maker and ran some photo paper through it. You need a pretty thick paper for it to work. It took some trial and error but I got it to work.

You may also notice the black and white diagonal, that was packaging from the photos. Use it ALL!



I embossed the circular polka dot stamp with Zing so it would show up on the dark cardstock.



You can see the dotted scallop edge above, that is the washi tape that was in this months Studio Calico kits, applied to cardstock and then cut out with a border punch.



Here's hoping your Thursday is beautiful! I'm getting a hair cut, wish me luck!