Prayers...

 Hello everyone and Happy Tuesday!

This is sort of a hard post to make.  After many many years with the Tuesday Throwdown challenge team, we have decided to close the challenge down.  Life just continues to get busy for us all and it's become too hard to manage everything that goes into a challenge blog.  It's really hard to see this team go...we've been together for so long.  And I have absolutely loved being the sponsor coordinator for our challenges.  But I just no longer have the time...our team leader doesn't either...and it's just best for us to step away and focus on our families instead.

I'd like to say that I'll still be around on this blog...but the truth is I'm not really a blogger.  When I started this whole card making/blogger journey back in...2011?  It fit, I felt like I could really dig into it.  But as the years have passed...so have my interests and my desire to create fancy, attention grabbing blog posts has faded.

This year, I have felt the pull to get involved in other things.  Other crafting elements, yes.  But the main thing I've felt drawn to is bringing awareness for pediatric cancer, with a major focus on DIPG (diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma...learn more here).  This is a form of pediatric brain cancer that is aggressive and fatal.  And once I started looking further into this field, the more I learned how many different forms of pediatric cancers there are, how aggressive they are, and how there is so little funding for children's cancer research that most treatments are over 30 years old....  

I've been searching and searching to find a way to get involved to start making a difference for these kiddos.  We all get into the routine of ignoring stuff like this.  But it's out there, it's real, it's not rare like everyone wants you to believe....and someone needs to make a change.  I haven't found my path or place yet...but I'll continue to search and do what I can to try and make a difference.  

I hope you will too.

So this card is dedicated to the families that have struggled this year with a child loss...or are watching their kiddo struggle through the horrible cancer monster.  You are always in my prayers, and I will fight to get everyone I know to RISE UP and make a difference.

Gold is the color for Pediatric Cancer Awareness, so I really focused on using that color on my card.  I used lots of glitter paper as encouragement for those kiddos fighting to keep shining!

There's a Prayers die cut on top of the heart and a simple embossed sentiment beneath it on a piece of Lawn Fawn's shimmer vellum.

All of it is mounted onto a scallop frame from Newton's Nook.

Please join us for our last challenge at Tuesday Throwdown.  It's an Anything Goes theme, and we'd love to see all your wonderful creations one last time! 

<3 Emily