Today I am honoured to be talking part in an Instagram Hop in honour of Brain Injury Awareness. To hop along with us & see the fabulous projects made by the incredibly talented artists taking part, and even have the chance to win some fantastic prizes head over to Instagram! (here)

I really wanted to post a little bit more information about this cause which is really important to me because it personally affects one of my closest crafty friends.

The amazingly talented, & constantly inspirational Deborah from Right Brain Artist suffered from a brain injury and her story is one of strength, courage and downright determination which I challenge anyone to be unimpressed by!!

I am lucky enough to call Deborah a friend and I am taking part in this hop to highlight her story, along with so many more & to support Deborah’s chosen charity ; The Ontario Brain Injury Association.

As part of preparing for this Hop Deborah sent us some graphics to use, and this was one of them; it really resonated with me and I felt it was such a powerful visual representation of such a complex subject matter. It massively inspired my project, as I’m sure you can see.

I used the stunning Calming Reverie floral image, which is HUGE, stamping it twice to give me a coloured and non coloured image. I used Versafine Onyx Black over a yellow base and also on its own, which created this amazing b+w image with only one stamp!!! (I really like how this looks and I will definitely be revisiting that idea again!!) I also stamped a set of leaves in green with black detail and one just black detailing straight onto white.)

I cut both of my flowers in half to add onto my card to symbolise the image I posted above and to represent the way that it feels to live with a brain injury.

I created an A2 size gatefold card by cutting a card base down to 5 1/2 x 8 1/2 inches and scoring it 2 1/4 inches from each end.

I cut a panel of 80lb Neenah cardstock with a Catherine Pooler cover die and cut this straight down the middle and glued each half onto one of the gatefold sides of my card base.

I used some foam squares to attach each half of the flower onto one of the sides, but I chose to turn it slightly to offset it, which I feel gives it some more interest once opened. I slipped the leaves under the corresponding flower halves.

I used one of the sentiments from Altenew’s Mega Label Love that I already had stamped and fussy cut on my desk, but I decided to cut this one in half so that I could mirror the offset look of my flower.

I added some Shimmering Onyx sequins randomly across my card, including two placed on each side of the flower that would allow the edges of my sentiment pieces to slot underneath which will help keep the card closed.

This picture gives you a view of how the card opens. I am really happy with how it turned out and I think it fits quite well with the theme and the sentiment fits well as this hop is for my wonderful crafty friend Deborah.

So please head over to Instagram to check out the other stops on the hop, and don’t forget to comment on my Instagram post for the chance to win a prize!