Gap Year Card and Blog Candy Winner

Thanks to all of you who took part in my blog candy. Using random.org, the winner is

Cotnob

Congratulations, email me with your address and I will get your prize in the mail

I spent a good deal of time on holiday making resolutions, do you do that? Sitting in the sun with drifting thoughts, 'when I get home I am going to do that.............and that.............and that'

One resolution was to take part in more blog challenges, it is hard for me to find the time, but I so enjoy doing them. One of my all time favourite challenge blogs is Daring Cardmakers - they always come up with the neatest dares, and the design team are really inspirational. This week they dared us to make a card with a suitcase theme, this is what I came up with.

A word of explanation to those of you outside the UK. Here, it is quite standard for kids to take a gap year between leaving school at 18 and starting university. They go off, travelling the world. It is meant to broaden horizons, teach them independence, and prepare them for adult life, which of course it does, as well as giving them a great thirst for beer, and a chance to put off studying for another 12 months while diminishing the bank balance of the bank of Mum and Dad

A suitcase is probably not really appropriate, they go off carrying huge rucksacks, but, hey, you got the idea. I cut the suitcase at 4" from the Going Places cartridge. The base card is from a fabulous stack by Papermania UK, assorted kraft cardstock, a new favourite of mine

I used my favourite tiny letter stickers from Making Memories

and found another use for these great wheel brads that I found last year in Big Lots

Only one of my three kids took a gap year, the boys couldn't wait to start Uni, then start earning money, but Alexandra planned it with military precision - she did her degree first, then took a gap year before starting work. She went to Thailand, Malaysia, Australia and New Zealand, all by herself, making friends along the way. We saw her off at Heathrow airport, wearing a huge rucksack with all her worldly goods packed carefully inside. I swear if she had fallen over, she would have floundered helplessly, arms and legs waving, like an overturned turtle, until someone helped her up. I sobbed all the way home, and honestly never really had peace until her year was over and she returned to the real world, tanned, happy and confident, to find Mum and Dad had a few more grey hairs than when she left.

See you tomorrow