When Life Hands You Lemons

Hello, Stampin' Friends. I swear I just wrote a post about coming back from an unexpected break, and then I went off on another break. Life has been quite the roller coaster around here. Since we last visited, I've lost my mom, and one of my sisters, and we also suddenly and with almost no notice  moved. I've barely had time to breathe, never mind put ink to paper, and that has certainly not been a happy place to be. I'm slowly unpacking and reorganizing what's left of my stamp room finally. When I ran across the May Stamp of the Month I thought it was about time that I started making space in my life for crafting as therapy, so I stopped unpacking and took a moment to enjoy the feel of inky paws again. 

I started off with this week's sketch from Freshly Made Sketches, and combined it with this week's Color Throwdown. Sometimes it helps to have a helping hand to get going! I stamped the white cardstock background with lemons and the banner dots in Lemon and Pebble inks. I layered that stamped panel with Poppy cardstock and some brick wall B&T from the new Central Park paper packet. The mason jar was stamped with Pewter ink onto vellum, and colored with a zig clean color marker on the back, but stamped with ice cubes in Lemon ink on the front. I'm also linking this project to the Heart 2 Heart Creative with Vellum challenge.

I stamped and cut out some lemon slices and the straw to slide behind the mason jar, which was glued behind the coloring so the adhesive wouldn't show. I "sugared" the lemon slice images and the LEMONADE sentiment using a shimmer pen. I especially love the tiny dot border/banner images in this set! 

I'm not going to promise to blog every day, or even very regularly right now. Some days I'm fine, and some days I'm super sad. I'm grateful to all of you who are still here with me while I'm learning how to make some lemonade out of the lemons life has been handing me so often of late.