Colorfully Creating: On Boots and Water

There is PLENTY of it – water that is! The past week has been quite something with all the rain. Therefore, I thought it was a good day to share a recent layout featuring WorldWin DoubleMates cardstock – about rain boots! I loved working with this cardstock as a June sponsor for the Scrapbook Playground. Thanks Worldwin!

My family and I spent most of Saturday in the safety of our basement as severe weather thundered outside. Then it would get eerily calm, and soon another storm front rolled in. The only good thing about this is that my scrapping area is in the basement - I scrapped while the kids crafted. Fortunately for us, the tornadoes touched down north and west of us. This was a repeat yesterday afternoon as well as more severe weather dropped inches of rain on us in a few hours time. Severe storms continued through most of the night, but thankfully I awoke to a calm morning.

Our 5 yr. old was at Vacation Bible School when the storms gained momentum and sirens went off. I was to pick her up at 3:30. Around 3 pm it rained so hard you could not see….and I wasn’t going to venture out into it. At 3:15 it was still raining hard, but I could see to drive. I went over to the church…pulled just in front of the fire lane, so I may have still been illegally parked (hopefully pulling way over so trucks could get through was good enough). I had no umbrella, and we were having serious, driving rain. I grabbed the visor thingy that goes in my front window and used it as a shield to run into the building. Not too many kids were to be seen so I assumed parents must have came to pick up their children as soon as the weather became threatening. After not finding Abby in the gymnasium, I ventured back to the main entry and asked the whereabouts of my child, to be informed that all the kids were under the stairwell. Hmmm…wonder why they didn’t have someone telling parents this as we arrived…I must have looked like I knew what I was doing. Not! (LOL)

Stairwell number one…no Abby. Stairwell number 2 – no Abby, but did find my friend Renee singing happy songs with the pre-schoolers. She is such a great leader of children’s music – all those little kids were full of smiles as they sang happy songs.

Stairwell number three – I peeked in and before I could focus I heard, “MOM!” and out came our daughter. Wow – what a blessing that the Catholic church in town has so many stairwells to shelter those children from a storm. Apparently the volunteers practiced the day before, and all the kids were secure in storm shelter areas in less than 30 sec. after the sirens went off. Amen for good planning and huge thanks to Vacation Bible School volunteers everywhere!

The rain stopped (yeah!) as we were ready to go outside. A cop car was behind mine…oh no…did I get a ticket for parking in the fire lane? No, whew! I decided to hurry out of there, buckled up Abby and away we went. As we drove off she said, “Mom, I was so BRAVE! The sirens went off and I did not cry or anything, and did what the teacher told me. I was so brave mom!” I praised her up and down – no doubt the teachers told all the kids how brave they were.

I wanted to share Yellow Boots with you and an idea you may not have considered. Have you tried printing your photos on textured cardstock? When your photo has one color that stands out, as do the yellow boots in this layout, printing on a similar color really packs a punch. I have done this as well with subtle patterned papers. Some papers will have a pattern on one side, and a less busy design on the other – not quite a solid, perhaps a linen print, fine dots, distress smudges – these all work well for printing photos. If you are printing photos of people you need to be more aware of the design and how a persons face might look with a bunch of little dots on it. (LOL)

The fun part of working with WorldWin DoubleMates is that the cardstock is two-sided. I tore the edges specifically to allow the darker yellow of the back side to add a design element to the layout. If you haven’t tried something like this consider it. Everyone probably has a favorite flower photo – and it’s a good subject to try something like this.

Yellow boots – our youngest is always wanting to be like her older brother. Of course, if they don’t get holes in them before being outgrown, she is the recipient of all of his rain boots. She was excited to get yellow boots that matched her brothers. Unfortunately his own yellow boots began to leak and we had to get him new ones. We could not find yellow, so in this photo he was wearing black boots. Boots are THE footwear of choice for a quick escape to play outdoors. And these days…there are plenty of puddles to play in.

I hope that this post finds you safe and dry. Our family continues to pray for everyone who has been affected by the flooding and tornadoes. May God give you strength as you persevere through this time of trial.