Monday, July 28, 2014

Petite Petals plus a Baby

Boy oh boy. 

Life has been interesting these past few months. After being told by every doctor and nurse that I'd "sooo deliver early", I ended up having to be induced at 41 weeks with my second son. After 25 hours of labor that included a foley bulb to bring on dilation and hours upon hours of pitocin (thank the Lord whoever invented the epidural), I pushed twice and my uterus ruptured (I was attempting a VBAC). I had to be rushed into an emergency c-section and both my son and I almost died. Connor was born not breathing, had an intial APGAR score of 1, and had to be transported to the children's hospital for a NICU stay. I spent one night in the ICU then three nights in the regular mother-baby unit at the original hospital I delivered in. They wouldn't transfer me to the hospital my son was at (gotta love Army hospitals and how they need to pinch pennies). So I didn't meet my son until he was four days old, and only saw pictures and Facetime shots until that point. It was a very harrowing time.

Connor was on oxygen for about a month, and has been off it thankfully for two weeks now. Because of the timing of everything I had to cancel my intended trip to the Stampin' Up Convention, which I was so bummed about! Fortunately SU was very understanding and didn't charge me the cancellation fee, and Southwest Airlines just puts the fee into a credit. I figure if I don't use it before next year, I'll repurchase a ticket to NEXT year's convention. :)

In the meantime, I've been busy trying to get acclimated to being the mother of two. Son #2 is a heck of a lot more demanding than son #1 was as an infant, and wants to be held 95% of the time. So crafting is on the backburner unfortunately. But I did manage to sneak in some time to create my first proper card in MONTHS. This was a CASE of a CASE, believe it or not. The original was found on a stampers page called Pootles Papercraft, from England. 






I changed a couple of things, including the colors, number of punched flowers and the small flower punch (from last years retired Itty Bitty Punch Pack...but it is only slightly different from this years version). I also used the new Dotty Angles photopolymer set.  I have used clear sets from other companies before and never had much success with ink showing up.  But SU's photopolymer inks like a dream!! I'm very impressed.

I'm planning a class around the Petite Petals class. So many options with this set!

Ingredients:
Stamps: Petite Petals, Dotty Angles
Paper: Whisper White, Pool Party, Lost Lagoon
Ink: Pool Party, Lost Lagoon
Accessories: Whisper White Baker's Twine, Petite Petals Punch, Itty Bitty Punch Pack (retired), Stampin' Sponge, Pearls

Purchase these products HERE.