ENJOY THE SMALL THINGS IN LIFE

There are just some moments in time that we get to be blessed with if we only tune in to them and they usually become a true blessing if we take the time to enjoy them. Some can be so tiny that if you blink your eye and you don't take the time to take notice they are there and gone before you ever even realized that they were right under your own nose in the first place!! Well, that is what this mini album is all about.... a small blessing that we might have missed had Avery not found this little nymph of a cicada bug. His passion that morning was to get up and go out side and look for a live cicada. Little did I know that he meant a nymph so of course we were looking for two different things. Just when I was about to give up looking for a live cicada, he came running over to me with this nymph, which if you don't know what that is, is the cicada still in it's shell alivel. Well, of course I was looking for a winged one already out of it's shell. Yes, you have all seen those nasty kind of brown shells hanging on the trees, on the ground with the backs split open... Well he was soo excited and was saying... I found one thats alive... well sure enough there it was in it's glory of nymph-hood of getting ready to come out of it shell. The shell not even split one tiny bit. To be honest I didn't even think it was alive until it started moving it's legs. Well, of course we placed the nymph in Avery's handy dandy bug holder and we watched a small miracle happen right before our eyes. We watched with delight as this cicada shed it's shell, dried and expanded it's wings, change from a bright green to a dark green with magnificent color with specks of orange and black and a bluish tint to it. So I made this mini album to reflect this moment in time. It was a great day in a little boys heart and his mommy's too to share this joy of an adventure. Although when it came time to release the cicada at the end of the day, I can't say Avery was so thrilled with the idea at first and had a really hard time with the thought, but he did realize that that was the right thing to do for it to have the full glorification that God wanted this little bug to have. So, next time you are out walking around, look around, you might just find your own little miracle that day, maybe not in a nymph of a cicada, but maybe in something very small and tiny that if you blink your eye ..... walk right by without noticing it..... you will have missed it!

This is my first acrylic album and I just love it to pieces! I think a good hint for these popular little albums is 1) to use double sided paper 2) using a spray adhesive to attach your paper you don't have to worry about how you will attach it and if it will be seen... but this particular adhesive sticks really well, you can move it but I would try to place it as close to where you want it prior to sticking it down. I always lay out all my pages before sticking down, so that was not a big deal for me. I did not use lots of bulky elements only because I figured my son would be picking this up all the time to look through it and wanted to keep it as simple as could be with the elements and used mostly, paper, stickers and doodling. I used my adirondack acrylic paint dabber to add color to the edges of the book. Also, I placed black dots on the scalloped edges with a glaze pen. Although with this dark background you can't really see them. I would say if you haven't tried doing an acrylic album, do one. They are a lot of fun and can be also a bit challenging, but who isn't up for a good challenge?! LOL...