Hold the phone!!! (or... Pack the truck!)

I have not been around much this year, and for that... I am sorry. I have made more cards and little minis as gifts but forgot to take photos. I have a new piece of equipment or two that you will be seeing a WHOLE lot of in the future ;)... but for now I have an announcement.

I am moving. I am moving this weekend. I am moving this weekend from Memphis, TN to Annandale, VA to start a new life. This Saturday marks one year to the day when my husband "disappeared." He "left" to go to his grandparent's house for the weekend, and that evening they called to see what time he should get there. He should have been there hours earlier than they called. The police found him the next day. They took him to see a doctor. I'll spare all the details, but I took him home after he saw the physician. Just after Thanksgiving, 2011 he ended his life.

I've had quite a bit going on. I flaked on first swap ever, and I still feel bad about that, but I think all of the ladies understand. It took a long time for me to get back into creating. I wanted to do something, ANYTHING way before I finally was able. I have made and have it in me to make some more hardcore therapy type pages about my feelings on the subject. It really makes me feel better.

If sad/bad things happen, use your medium... wether it's paper/paint/digiscrapping... the medium doesn't matter,  but your health and sanity do. You can keep the work private or you can choose to share. I have another blog, it's just a therapy blog. For all my whining and poor me stuff, that helped too. And so you know, I did see a professional until she dismissed me. She said I was welcome to come back at any time, but that I was doing a wonderful job working through my grief myself. She gave me tools, exercises. And I was willing to try, even the things I thought were so STUPID, and how could ANYONE wake up on a special day and KNOW they were GOING to PLAN to devote some time to just grieving. But told me to plan on giving in to the sad for a while on special days. And when the first one came around, it worked. I planned for some sad. I had my little breakdown. The rest of the day was fine. I wrote about it in the therapy blog. And moved on.

I'm moving away. I AM leaving so many friends and people I truly love and care about. I am so thankful to have them in my life. This wonderful thing called internet insures that we can chat and visit on some sort of regular schedule. That's how I keep up with them for the most part already. I've started telling them that we can crop together on google+.

You sometimes don't know what people go through in their private lives. My close friends have learned so much more about me this year. The biggest compliment I received was from a really close friend from my college days who told me one day that it was really good seeing "Charity" come out again. I hadn't realized how much of who I WAS had disappeared over the years. I also had forgotten there was anyone who ever knew just single me. That comment made me feel SO GOOD!

It let me know that what I was doing was working not only to myself, but to others.

:)

Halloween Frame Mini

I enjoy watching craft videos (duh) and was watching some over at My Craft Channel and was inspired by a video that I can no longer find listed on their channel... I'm not sure if it's gone or just out of their current lineup, but I am loving the variety I can see over there, it's not just scrapping.

Anyway I was inspired by a video where Heidi Swapp made a mini that she attached to an awsome frame that she had purchased. Going with my trying to use up my stuff thing I have going on, I decided to create a halloween themed mini using a frame that I've had at home forever. I did not paint the frame or anything, I just pulled it out of a box. It was already crackle finished.

Jokey Birthday Card

So one of the doctors that I work for is 50 today. So I asked the peeps at work if they wanted a really jokey "sympathy" card for his birthday. Of course they said "yes" :)!

More cards and another video :)

I completed some more cards using the Woodland Park Collection from October Afternoon

and then using up some of my Sketchbook by Amy Tangerine.

I also dug out some of the scraps from the Daily Junque collection by Pink Paislee and some Teresa Collins.

All of the sentiments are from Paper Smooches and I LOVE those cute fonts and the ability to Mix up words and phrases! 

I finally made a video of a thank you paper bag album that I made for one of our clients at work. Please to enjoy :)

Surprise Happy Mail

Okay, it's been a while since I played with my camera. So I decided to practice with it some more. I like this photo of the LO better than my previous one. You can really tell it was a patterned paper before it got saturated with Licorice Metallic Maya Mist. The background paper is Blue Sky from the new Woodland Park Collection by October Afternoon. I purchased both of these product from my LSS and linked the products to their website. I couldn't find the Mist available online, but if it's available they can order it for you :). The heart stickers I got a couple of years ago from the 1.00 spot in Archivers and I'd never used them. I think they were the perfect accent. I used my copic liner to journal black ink over the black metallic mist. The journalling is very sentimental regarding my late spouse (God rest his soul) and my trip to the Dark Knight Rises with someone else.

Now for some cheerier new :)

I recently went and perused the 12 Tags of 2012 by Tim Holtz. I hadn't gone anywhere near Timmy's blog since my spouse passed. I had enjoyed his Christmas tags for the last several years but felt I just couldn't face them for 2011. And just this month I went to visit one of my scrappy girlfriends and she asked me if I had seen the August tag. I admitted to her that I hadn't seen the first tag for the year. She fussed at me a bit but said I had to see the August tag because it was " SO CHARITY." I went and looked and agreed it was me, then I waited a few days and carefully went through all the tags from the year. I was awed and inspired and so I sent him an email to thank him.

Little did I know he would respond. 

He also wanted to send me the tag.

It came Saturday.

It's wonderful, and he signed the back! 

Who knew Rock Stars could be so precious???? 

My heart is really touched by his kind words and the fact that he sent me this awesome little tag. 

Tim Rocks!

I've been really creative and inspired lately. I even made a project and a video. If you need help using your stash, you should play along. This video is posted as a response to Tonya over at Psychomoms on yt.

The Dark Knight Rises...

This movie was one I both anticipated and dreaded. I didn't know how I'd react to seeing a movie that would have been important to my late husband (God rest his soul).

This layout has more journalling on it than any layout I've done before... and I'm so happy with how it looks, and how it felt making it.

I'm not crazy about this pic, but wanted to share it asap.

Card Frenzy!

I have finished a DC project that I filmed, I just haven't edited yet. I'll try to work on that today. I've been very, very creative lately and inspiration just seems to hit me like a ton of bricks from everywhere. I thought I'd share some cards I made over the weekend. I picked up the new Woodland Park 8x8 paper pad (by October Afternoon) from my FAVORITE locally owned scrapbook store Eclectica