Good Day, Bad Day, and Yummy Charm for Brandy

A little while ago I made a bunch of purse charms and offered them to friends on Facebook. My dear friend Brandy said she wanted one, so I chose a purple purse charm as she likes purple. It is full of yummy beads! I also made a card to go with it, and used a technique I hadn't seen before. More on that later, I have a little bit of personal news to share that I'm excited about and worried about.

Yesterday was a good day. I was in my College Algebra class and I had missed a bit about finding the y-intercept of a linear equation at the beginning of class. I little later when checking our work my instructor stopped by and asked me about tutoring. I felt a bit insulted, I was only missing 4 points in the entire class, why did I need tutoring? At the end of class, however, she clarified she meant she wanted me to BE a math tutor! I was taken aback, but accepted her offer. It's a paying job, after all! I like the class so far, I don't know why but I enjoy doing algebra homework for some reason. I know, I'm a class A weirdo.

But today we got some news from my sister that is disconcerting. She's currently in the hospital with two blood clots in her right lung. She was just diagnosed with a blood clot in her lower leg a couple of weeks ago, and it broke up and traveled to her lung. She will be in the hospital for a few days on stronger blood thinners and consulting with a specialist to see if she needs an IVC filter in her vein to keep the clots from reaching her heart or brain. She is very lucky to be alive and tonight I am praising God for not taking her from us and bringing her to the ER. She is a Physician Assistant so thankfully she had that knowledge to know when something was serious enough to warrant a hospital visit. I am leaving it in God's hands and trying not to dwell on it as there is nothing I can do to help her. She is only 31 years old, way too young to be dealing with this problem. But I trust she will be ok.

So back to the fun stuff, the charm and card! Here they are in all their glory.

I love how this turned out. I had some pretty gold charms in my stash and decided to use them on this dangle charm. I really like my purple rhinestone cluster beads from Walmart, I have them in a few different colors. I'm also obsessed with bead caps, I can't just not use them. Most are hard to see but trust me they are there and they are pretty. There are two bird charms and the crown, which is my favorite charm I think I've ever had. I can never pass up using classic pearl beads, so those are of course incorporated.

This card is simple but still nice. For the base I just folded a 5x8.5" piece of light grey cardstock and opened it back up. I put it on my score board and made score marks every 1/4 inch from the edge to the center fold. The last column isn't square on the folded edge but I'm totally ok with that. I did the same thing horizontally to get the grid look. I then took some paper scraps and cut them into rectangles and glued them to a small piece of cardstock measuring 2.5x4.5". Finally I had this really cute package of thin cork pieces, one of them a banner, and used a Sharpie to write "Friend" on it. I popped it up on Stampin' Up dimensionals and called the card done. I love simple cards that just "work."

Feel free to lift my card idea and make your own using the elements or just some of them. If you want to link back if you post it anywhere that would be great, too, but it's not required :) Thanks for reading and craft on!

Katie