A bit of purple

26th March is Purple Day - a day to get people talking about and to raise awareness of EPILEPSY!   My youngest has it and it can really break your heart seeing your baby go through this.  He's now seventeen, and the seizures are (touch wood) under control.  His last seizure was late 2019 and he had been almost three years free prior to that.  It's always necessary to tweak his meds now and then to make sure they can keep up with his growth (he's grown 7cm and put on 18kg in the last year) so they've just been tweaked again.  I hate giving him the meds but I hate the seizures more.  We're fairly certain the reason he had the seizure in late 2019 was because one of his meds had been lowered (because another had been raised) which answered the question "I wonder if he still needs them".  When I say a seizure it's more a cluster of seizures.  They won't stop until he's admitted to hospital, given a large dose of diazepam, put on a steady dose of that for at least 24 hours and then (assuming they stop) slowly reducing the levels until he returns to normal and we can return home.  He really is the most lovely child though - my little ray of sunshine!  Well actually he now towers over me so not so little really!

That's the view of a parent of a child who suffers from epilepsy.  If you want to get an inkling of what it's like to have a seizure, I can recommend this song from a young girl Zoe Wees called Control.  You can watch it on Youtube here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrGS_6_HglU.  She wrote this song as a tribute to her teacher who helped her through numerous seizures.

Anyway back to the card.  A few days ago I saw a brilliant card made by Sandie of London Days - you can see it here!  Mine is a much simpler version because I used patterned paper rather than creating my own background, but I loved the subtlety of it.   I cut the cross from the background, stacked up 3 plain crosses and then added the original cross to the top.  It's almost invisible because the pattern is seamless.  My die (a no-name die I bought in Dortmund end of 2019) cuts a framed cross - let me tell you keeping that outer cross from twisting is a right pain so I simply reinserted the original frame cross into the background and only raised the middle cross.  Here's a photo of the card more head on so you can see the how the pattern of the paper seems to run over the top of the cross.

I picked the patterned paper before I went to bed last night,  and went to sleep dreaming up a design.  In my dreams though the cross was bigger than it actually is so my "dream" plan to place an egg or two at the base of the cross wasn't going to work - not with the egg dies I have in my stash!  I was just going to place the blessings die cut at the base but it looked too much like a sympathy card without the eggs, so I spelled out "Easter" on the top.  I also added some flowers (Tim Holtz Funky Foliage - Oh I love this set) and coloured them with alcohol markers.

I didn't really make the card with any particular challenge in mind, but I knew there were a few Spring challenges at the moment so I'll be entering them.  I would also like to enter NBUS Challenge #24 because the "blessings" die is NBUS - sadly Winnie and Walter have closed their doors now.  

Challenges

Daring Cardmakers Challenge - Say it Loud;

Addicted to Stamps Challenge #401 - Make Your Mark (coloured the little flowers);

Pixie's Snippets Playground - used snippets for the flowers, the sentiments and the underneath crosses;

Modsquad Challenge Blog - Springtime;

The Sisterhood of Crafters - Spring;

Timeout Challenge # 184 - inspired by Words

Thanks for stopping by, I hope you enjoyed your visit.  If you leave a comment, I’ll be over the moon!  I’ll also know you were here, so I can check out what you’ve been up to and we can get better acquainted!

Kate