Road Trip

For those of you who know me, those words do not give me a warm and fuzzy. For 10 years I spent about 1/2 of each year travelling and doing corporate training. I was away from home for a week or two weeks at at a time. I learned to dread all things airport, for if it could go wrong, it would if an airport was involved. When I quit work, I was so looking forward to being at home. That lasted about 3 months and for the next 10 months, I traveled by car to Flora, MS(about 155 miles from my house)staying 3 to 4 days each week, helping my older brother care for my mother in her last months. Since her passing, going on long road trips is something I avoid like the plague. A week ago, we drove to Orlando and back, attending a nephew's wedding.


Today, we're driving to Flora and back for a family(this time on my side) barbecue. One of the nephews is home with his family(wife and seven children) and since we don't see them often, we're making the trip. I'll be tired tonight when I get home, but it will be worth it, to see my siblings, my niece and nephews and the great -ieces and -nephews. This nephew is a Marine, and although he has served overseas in some terrible places, I think he's got as difficult or more difficult job now. He's stationed in Wisconsin and is the Marine "presence". What does that mean? He's the military person that gets to tell a spouse or parents that their wife or husband or child has lost his life and won't be coming home . One more reason I have for supporting OWH.



Now let's get to the good stuff. This first card is one I did for this week's Sassy Cheryl's Flower Challenge. The image was a freebie that Cheryl posted a while back. I love this bear with his bouquet of posies. I colored the image with Copics. I obviously had Patriotism and picnics on the brain when I chose colors and papers. The papers are from a Paper Studios Back to Basics mat stack(don't you love those small pieces of paper so there's not much waste) The sketch I used was from the CAS site. The punch is MS Daisy Lace Edge. My flowers are floss flowers made using a needle tatting technique. The tutorial I wrote for making these can be found here. Flower centers are baubles I purchased from Stamping Bella.







This card whipped together fairly quickly, so I also had time to get another 8 OWH Any Hero Cards made for the Shrimp Boil. This one was also made using the CAS sketch for the week. Star paper is also from Paper Studio and from a border pack. The rest of the paper is cardstock I had on hand. I used my Cricut and MTC software to design the layered stars. The punch was of course MS. I'm up to 40 Any Hero cards ready, but will gear up this next week. I also want to do some cards for the troops to send out.



Hope you each have a wonderful and blessed day!