Operation Julie’s Smile – Blog Hop!

I am so glad that you joined us on this amazing blog hop for Operation Julie’s Smile. If you came here from Laura Davis’ blog, then you are in the right spot. If not, you may want to start from the beginning at the Sweet Stamp Shop’s blog and take your time. You have ALL WEEKEND to hop with us and win prizes!

So what is this blog hop all about?!  Well..The creative blogging community is coming together this weekend to help one of our friends, Julie Ranae. You may know her as the Design Team Coordinator for many wonderful companies from bakers twine, die cuts, rubber stamps and more. What many people don’t know about Julie Ranae is that she has had some pretty major dental surgeries in her lifetime due to medication she had to take as a child. It was in her plans to think about having all of her teeth replaced at some point in the next 5 years, a decision that was pretty easy to plan out. But then it happened…she chipped her front teeth on a weekend a month ago. The dentist told her there was no way to save them & that it was his recommendation that she give in and have all her teeth removed as soon as possible, but for that day they needed to get her front teeth done so her gums could begin to heal. He said he would 'work out payments with her to have ALL this work done’...but when she called to make her appt for the first step of impressions, they told her the amount of money that was needed and that the 'payments' applied only to the two teeth that were extracted that day. Her husband Paul was with her & that too, was his understanding as well. So this is how she has found herself in this situation…Needing at least $4000 to get started and another $3000 to finish the process…a total of $7000.
Nicole Rixon, owner of Sweet Stamp Shop put together this benefit after finding out about this situation and before Julie Ranae knew it, it took flight!

Because she is an event organizer by trade, she has taken on the job of organizing all of the blogs in this hop as her way of ‘working overtime’ for what she needs, the same as if she were able to work overtime at an outside job to pay for the work to be done.

It is the goal of all of these generous friends & sponsors to help make this situation more do-able for our friend so that she can share a brand new smile with all of us soon.

If there is anything you can do to help with a financial donation, there is a donation button further down this post (or in my sidebar) ready for you to click. Any amount is appreciated and ALL DONATIONS will be eligible for prizes from our sponsor pool of over $2500.

This blog hop is HUGE, but so are the prizes!!  Because of the size of this blog hop there could be a break somewhere in the chain so please bear with us.  A complete list of blogs on the hop is posted on the Sweet Stamp Shop Blog. You have a complete weekend to get around to all the blogs to be eligible for prizes by leaving comments. What a great way to spend the weekend by being inspired by some amazing designers and getting the chance to win lots of goodies too.  We have over $2500 in prizes donated by the very generous companies. A complete list of sponsors is listed on the Sweet Stamp Shop Blog.

I know so many other wonderful designers and friends are joining in on this hop, so grab yourself a cuppa and a piece of cake and take the time to be all out inspired!


Over at CAS-ual Fridays the idea is to either take inspiration from the quote or use it as the sentiment if you get stuck.  That sentiment is SO true!

So here’s my card..


As my regular followers will know I’ve been doing on line Copic colouring lessons over at Color Me Creative which I’m really enjoying.  I love that now I can use my stamps in so many ways. I used to just paper piece but now I can do both paper piecing and colouring.  I was great at collecting the Copics but using them was another thing!!  I was scared of how amazing all of those other Copic colouring queens are out in the blogging world!!  If you want to get those Copics out I highly recommend you joining in on the challenges and classes, they are so much fun and you really do build your confidence with them then.

My little scooter has been coloured with my Copics and then I’ve paper pieced the little clouds and the seat.  I just LOVE these open images from the Sweet Stamp Shop, they work so well for both techniques and they’re really cute too!  I’m not sure if you can see all of the detail but I used black enamel accents on the centre of the wheels, tied some Baker’s Twine around the handlebars, added some crystals to the rear thingy (sorry I’m so not technical when it comes to this kind of thing but you get it, it’s that thing at the back of the bike!) Behind that I added some fumes using some ‘fluffy’ paint, it’s a little tube of white paint and you heat it with your heat gun to make it bubble up, I’ve had it for years but it’s still so fun to use (see links below)!  Finally I printed the sentiment off on my computer and added it to some stripy paper to finish.

I used the fab Christmas 6 x 6 MME papers for the design, thanks to Suzanne Dean for my little gift!!  I love the fun colours and like the way you don’t have to use all of them for Christmas, there are a lot of papers in the pad that are just gorgeous colours!

I wanted my card to be personal for Julie..  Yes, she heads up The Play Date Cafe Challenge Blog and Design Team that I’m on and she’s also my friend and mentor and I wish her so many blessings at this juncture in her life and going forward.  It’s incredible the way people have rallied around in this blogging community to help her…

So the little sentiment ‘Just Scooting By…’ seemed to work really well with what I wanted to say about her blog hop.  Julie, this card will be winging its way across the waters to you x

If you’d like to donate to Julie’s fund then please click the button below, you will also find the donate button at the top right of my sidebar.

I hope you enjoyed your stop here on the hop! The next stop is my fabulous teamie Jaclyn Miller’s blog. Make sure you leave a comment here before you go so that you can have a chance at the amazing prizes up for grabs and if you can, please make a donation so we can help bring back a new smile for our friend!

The blog hop is running from Friday October 7th at 8.00am EST through Sunday October 9th at 11.59pm EST.  

Happy hopping!

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