Feathers from Emily

As some of you know, my dad was recently diagnosed with cancer. Fortunately, it is a very slow progressing form of leukemia, and he is under the care of one of the foremost experts in the country at Ohio State, which is only 2 hours away. His prognosis is extremely good, but in the beginning, I'm sure you can understand that I was scared and a little freaked out (although I hid it very well). Since reading my first Emily Dickinson poem as a college freshman, I have loved her. Her distinctive use of punctuation, her word selection, her great ability to immediately set a mood and draw a scene, have always drawn me to her. As corny as it sounds, I think Emily and I would have been great friends if we had lived in the same times. Sadly, I haven't read her lately, and so it surprised me that her words came so instantly to me during my saddest and most frightened times after first learning of my father's condition. This stanza is now my mantra whenever I get scared or worried about my dad:

"Hope is the thing with feathers,
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all."




So, that's the inspiration behind this card. The main image is from Birds Galore by Inkadinkado, first stamped with clear embossing ink and Powder Keg's Black Sparkle EP, then repeatedly heated and layered with regular detail black EP, to build up the image. I like that it isn't a perfect image and that it has depth (more visible in person). The poetry is printed onto CTMH self-adhesive vellum, and heat set (learned that from trial and error), and then adhered to a scrap of cardstock matching the card base. The pattern paper is from My Mind's Eye Magnolia collection (a huge 12x12 stack), which I picked up on special during National Scrapbooking Day from Archivers. Photo corners are punched from black cardstock using the SU! punch (these are the larger size ones), and the brads are SU! Hodgepodge Hardware in Pewter. "Hope" is stamped using a clear alphabet from Impression Obsession. I was really happy with the fuzzy effect. I think hope is like that - similar to faith - sometimes stronger than others, but always there, even if you can't see it clearly or grasp it firmly.