This and That - Happy Pink Saturday

 Asters and Stonecrop

 Basil

 Coleus and Chrysanthemums

 Heirloom Tomato

 African Violets

Pink Violet - Happy Pink Saturday!

Please visit here and say hello to Beverly, our P.S. hostess at How Sweet The Sound

Mind Wide Open Challenge - Serendipitous – if you will…

I received the email from Gail announcing she had posted the image for her September Mind Wide Open Challenge. I read her message and looked at the image quickly. I thought to myself, I’m not going to participate. But I didn’t delete it from my mailbox. I just was not in a mood to create anything. I was sad, depressed, in mourning, trying to cope with the sudden death of my little sister Judy. We had just celebrated her 60^th birthday in June. I won’t go into all the details of my sister’s health but she was constantly in pain. She wanted to do crafts and scrapbooking and she bought lots of embellishments and other crafting supplies over the years. Sadly, she barely created anything. After she passed away her daughters gave my other little sister, Jo, and I boxes of Judy’s craft supplies and fabrics. I brought them home and added them to my supply stash. 
Then on Wednesday while checking my email I looked at Gail’s image again and I thought about my sister, about all the things she didn’t get to create, and then I thought okay - let’s play.  I pulled the image into my Photoshop program. Something reminded me of the vintage set of alphabet flash cards I recently found at the Graphics Fairy (thanks Karen). I digitally merged and blended the alphabet letter ‘F’ flash card with its daisy flower image into Gail’s image and added the word ‘flower’. I kept thinking about my sister. I printed out the image and decided I would decorate the cover of a Dollar Tree Store composition book. I pulled out one of the boxes containing some of Judy’s supplies. I found the resin daisy flowers, the Rickrack, and the vine stickers she had purchased. I arranged and re-arranged the pieces, adding buttons, Stickles, more trim, and decorative papers to the front and back cover of the composition book. I printed another copy of the flash card, cut out the daisy flower, added a little color and glued it over the daisy on the image. Then I did some research for the poem on Gail’s image and found that the words are part of an old hymn.  I was stunned at first realizing what the words in the hymn actually meant. The second verse cinched it for me that I needed to participate in this challenge, and I knew it was all coming together. 
I took a few photos of the completed journal but I wasn’t happy with the way the pictures looked. A day later another box in my art supply area caught my eye. It was another box from my sister. I opened it and found it contained lots of packs with journaling words and letters. I was drawn to create the word ‘shine.’ The journal was complete, I took one more photo.

There are several versions to the hymn and the author is unknown to the best of my knowledge.  Here are the words I wrote inside the first page of the journal. 

“Is it raining, little flower?

Oh be glad of rain!

Too much sun would wither thee;

Soon ‘twill shine again.

Though the sky is black, ‘tis true,

Yet behind it shines the blue."

"Art thou weary tender heart?

Oh be glad of pain;

Sweetest things in sorrow grow.

As the flow’rs in rain.

God is watching, thou’lt have sun,

When the clouds their work have done."

Call it serendipity if you will. There is one more thing about the journal. My sister's oldest daughter's favorite flower is the daisy. I know who we made the journal for.

Thanks Gail!

The Domino Effect

According to Wikipedia the domino effect is a chain reaction that occurs when a small change causes a similar change nearby, which then will cause another similar change, and so on in linear sequence. The term is best known as a mechanical effect, and is used as analogy to a falling row of dominoes. It typically refers to a linked sequence of events where the time between successive events is relatively small.

A few weeks ago I made 4 domino pins and gave them away to some co-worker friends I hadn't seen in a while when we got together for lunch. They all seem to like my little gift and I really enjoyed making the pins and giving them away. Photos of my first domino pins are in my previous post. The mini set of dominoes came in a pack of 28.  I made more pins with the remaining 24 dominoes.

A week later my husband and I had lunch with another group of our friends. I wanted to give the ladies in our group one of my pins but I had a hard time deciding which of the 24 pins to choose for each of my friends.  I place all 24 of the pins in a cigar box then I decorated 4 match boxes to take along to our get together.  While we waited for our food to arrive at the table during our lunch I gave each of the ladies an empty but pretty match box. I told them that they could choose one of the pins to put in their box. They passed the box around the table and each one picked out a pin that they liked. I discovered I would have only chose one correctly.  They were delighted with the gifts and all of them elected to wear the pins immediately and slip the gift boxes into their handbags.  

I took the remaining 20 pins to a family gathering last week. There are 12 pins left.  I'm sure I'll give more away and I just might put a few in my Etsy shop. 

Oh, I bought the mini domino set at the dollar store. I did make a trip back to the store and purchased two more sets. I'm going to make more pins and I have some other ideas for what to do with dominoes besides game playing.

I'm going to share this post with my Pink Saturday Pals. If you haven't already please hop over to visit Beverly at How Sweet The Sound, our Pink Saturday hostess, and say hello and check out all the amazing blog links at her party.  Click here!

The flower decorations on the boxes are the paper bag flowers I made a few weeks ago and shared in a previous post. 

 Some  of the images and backgrounds are from Dezinaworld ,  Gecko Galz  and Lisa's Altered Art. 

If I missed anyone please let me know, I like to give credit.