Such a Great Big Smile ***Swirlydoos***

Sophia two years ago. I wish I could claim credit for this photo, but that goes to my DIL who gave me not only this wonderful picture but the beautiful little girl with the great big smile!!!!

I made this page for Angelica’s August Butterfly Challenge at Swirlydoos. What you’re looking at is Plan B after almost resorting to Plan C.
Plan A involved another photo and a chippie that I “just knew” I had. It turns out that I had been looking at it longingly and being budget minded that day, deciding that as awesome as it was, I probably would never use it and passed it up.
Plan B was hatched immediately to be implemented on Saturday evening. I had printed out the photo and taken out the papers that I would probably be using. I then selected the cardstock that I needed to make my flowers and leaves and decided to catch up on the Swirly forums before stamping and cutting the images. Irene thought otherwise. Although the wind and rain had not gotten anywhere near the intensity that we experienced in the coming hours, it was enough to knock down a power line. I was in the middle of a post when the lights went out. On Sunday morning, I decided that it was light enough to get to work on my layout. And then it hit me: the Vagabond doesn’t work too well without electricity.
And on to Plan C: go through my stash and find some flowers that would work and move the design around to fit in with the different shapes and shades of blue.
And then, on Sunday evening, the power came back on. (Major props to the utility workers who were out as soon as the winds died down. They’ve done a fantastic job here in NJ.) So, out came the stamps and the dies and the cardstock and I don’t want to tell you how late I stayed up stamping and Vagabonding and shaping and gluing, so happy to be back to Plan B!!!!

Major thanks go to Lisa (StarSailor) for the beautiful butterfly and for the gorgeous alphas that make up the title. They can be found on her blog as part of her Faux Scrabble Letters tutorial: http://what-a-beautiful-mess.blogspot.com/2011/01/faux-scrabble-letters-tutorial.html