The light remains...

I saw this card from the curlygirl.com the night before my grandpa's funeral and as I sat staring at it the tears started falling. It say's everything about my grandpa. So at 8 pm I decided I NEEDED to make this. I made it a 12x12 page and I searched and searched for the right paper on line that I could print, nothing was right. So then I went through all of my papers and still nothing. I did find a paper that I loved as the back of the 12x12 it's by K&Co. But nothing else "fit" so by 10pm I was in a frenzy because I needed to make this for his service I just had to. So I decided to make my own background paper. I took a cream card stock 8 1/2 x 11 lightly sprayed it was spiced marmalade pearl mist that I made until the paper was damp. I blotted it with a paper towel and then took my stamp pads and stamped the whole pad on the paper in random pressures and patterns. I used light blue and med. blue, white, walnut and antique linen stamp pads. I used my sponge to daub and blend the colors and then sprayed a little bit of blue pearl mist and dabbed with a paper towel.. then I hit it with the heat gun to dry. I distressed the edges and then inked them with walnut ink. When it was dry I ran it through the printer and printed the sentiment onto the paper. The blue I did the same thing but I used blue pearl mist and Med blue, dark blue a bit of eggplant, walnut and white ink. The jar is a stamp that I stamped and then inked with the white and blues and then pop dotted for dimension. I didn't have fireflies so I cut the dragon flies from gypsy wanderings and hid the contour and then cut the antenna off. I cut them in 2 different sizes quarter size and nickel size. I cut the scallop border from my gypsy and stretched it to fit. The green was just green that I pop dotted on and then cut the blades. Cut the circles from accent essentials and then inked them with white for a glow...And then I stickled it all, the jar, the glow rings, to accents, the grass. I went stickle crazy. At 2 a.m. I finished it all. But I didn't have anything to display it. I ran into my mom at the store the morning of the service and we looked for something to hold it...and then I showed it to her and she cried. My grandpa's favorite possession was his Buzzard. It's a 2 1/2 foot tall wooden buzzard that my grandpa alway's had a sign hanging from, and my mom had been looking for something for the bird to hold and couldn't find the right thing. So my page was held at the service by my grandpa's buzzard lol.