Welcome Wishes & Whimsy

Somehow the last half of July slipped right past me. I did say last month that I didn't think I had time to really give my all to the Benevolent Boutique charity kits, but I pulled something together at the beginning of the month for one of the kits - Wishes. Two kits were designed, both using the same color scheme, but one was floral grungy & the other whimiscal. You can buy them here.

This month Benevolent Boutique is donating all proceeds to Reece's Rainbow, an International Down Syndrome Orphan Ministry. Their mission is to:

1) To raise awareness of the plight of children with Down syndrome in foreign orphanages and their availability to be adopted.
2) To raise adoption grant donations for each of our waiting children
3) To locate new adoptive families for orphans with Down syndrome internationally.
4) To "de-mystify" the process and costs of international adoption...it IS affordable!
5) To encourage families to consider adopting a child with DS through education and financial help.
6) To offer financial assistance to adoptive families through our Sponsorship Program.
7) To participate in medical missions for urgently ill children with Down syndrome.
8) To participate in humanitarian aid opportunities to improve the quality of life of children in foreign orphanages.

I got my hubby one of the memory coffe mugs for Father's Day and I love it. Here is a mug insert with a few pieces from my portion of Wishes - one with a quote relative to the mission this month and one without.

Meet Jack & Jill - Kits for Charity

Drum Roll please......

I'd like to introduce Jack & Jill. These kits are the first offerings from Benevolent Boutique, a digiscrap store in the making. Benevolent Boutique will feature a forum, gallery, chat, store and of course a blog. The best part of Benevolent Boutique is the name represents the store's philosophy. All kits sold at Benevolent Boutique are created for to raise money for a charity.

For the first kit, the fearless organizer, Crystal from DigiScrapalicious chose the Make-a-Wish Foundation as the charity of choice. This was due in part to June being Potty Training Awareness month (I know, who knew???). I happened upon the BB blog while she was looking for designers and applied and now I'm a part of history. The idea of creating for charity really appeals to me since I don't want to sell kits, but I really welcome the challenge of creating something spectacular. This was a great learning experience and I think my latest freebie (Spring Swing) was a result of the growing process that occured during the creation of Jack & Jill. I was fortunate to contribute to both kits, and they both have many possibilities for creating many LOs of your little man or princess.

Check out the fab designers who pitched in to create these kits...

Contributing designers for Jack: KimB, Elegant WordArt, DigiScrapalicious, By God's Design, Sweet DigiScraps, Sarah Belle, & My Digital Moon.

Contributing designers for Jill: Raspberry Road Designs, Elegant WordArt, DigiScrapalicious, Sarah Belle, My Digital Moon, & Farrah's Creations.

To whet your appetite, I created some QPs. Pick them up and then head over to Benevolent Boutique and check out Jack & Jill.


Pick up the Jill QP HERE
Pick up the Jack QP HERE

I won't be able to participate in July's kit, as I am being inducted (sounds serious right?) as our Mother of Multiples newsletter editor and its a big deal and I want to do a super job as I take over the reins. I'm going to modify the style just a bit, so I need to spend some time doing graphics & layouts and deciding what program works best for a newsletter. I tried Publisher, but it made my e-mail go CRAZY, so I won't do that again. Any suggestions?

And another little toot! for me. My Spring Swing kit was selected as the Digi Pick-o-the day at Scrap N' Art ezine today! I hadn't even stumbled across Scrap N' Art until I got the notice, so you can just imagine my socks were blown off. Sometimes you need a little validation from a complete stranger to make you realize that "WOW, I am doing ok at this". Now just to win the big prize they are offering just for subscribing to their emagazine, and I think I'll have had a huge run on good luck!