SDBT: Girls Just Wanna Have Fun

The anthem of young women for 30 years.

This is going to be a musical year for the Scrap Designers Blog Train. Each month, we're building our kits around a chosen song. This month is the Cyndi Lauper anthem, Girls Just Wanna Have Fun. (If you're one of the three people in the world who haven't heard this song ever, click the link and listen right now! It'll give you a bounce for the rest of your day.) Of course, "fun" may be different for different people. Thankfully, our designers realize that, so there's a wide variety of fun ideas represented in this month's train.

You can visit our designers and pick up their goodies at their blogs:

KJDdesigns
Songbird Scrap Designs
Rush Ranch
Miggins
DigiJen Scraps  <-- You Are Here
Promethean Concepts
Joy’s Creations
Made by Angelhaze
Skinni’z Statz, Scrapz and Stuff
Scrapbookcrazy Creations by Robyn
Lady DG Scrap
AnnieC Digitals
Moore Blessings Digital Design

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Hopefully you'll find something here to give a kick to some of your "girls night out" layouts. Have fun (but not too much fun!) and we'll see you back here next month!

DigiJen: AnXiEtY

Anxiety.

Right now, it's taking over family life.

I know there are many different kinds of mental/emotional struggles that people deal with. As a member of a couple blog trains, I've designed kits about various kinds of mental illnesses.

But right now, our family is living with anxiety.

My 12-year-old grandson has struggled at school for awhile, mostly in math. He knows the material, but isn't able to process it and get it from his brain back onto the paper for his homework and tests. Then he started to get overwhelmed with time pressure (i.e. during tests) and would simply freeze up, unable to do even the work that he knew.

Then he started worrying about things that might (but probably won't) happen - having everyone leave while he's asleep in the middle of the night, or having his loved ones be in a wreck if he isn't with them, or people breaking into the house and kidnapping him at night.

A few weeks ago, my husband and I had to be out of town for several days for a funeral. With us gone, his anxiety spiked and went into full-blown panic attacks that were so bad he missed a couple days of school and his mama missed a couple days of work to stay home with him.

Since then, we've all been learning coping skills to help him fight back when his anxiety starts to take hold. His mama deals with anxiety as well, so she is the perfect person to walk him through this new journey. The same for his teacher at school - she also lives with anxiety, so she understands and knows how to help. He has a solid therapist ("solid" meaning she's really good, he just doesn't like going) and a psych nurse who prescribes his meds. And his grandpa and I are learning more about anxiety every day so we can help him, too.

One of the things I've learned is that people who deal with anxiety can't always find the words to express to others what it is they're experiencing. I've created this set of word art in the hopes that it can help someone find their voice and use their artistic talents to chronicle their journey. I've also intentionally NOT included a lot of graphics so the focus can be on the words.

BTW, I know it's hard to read here, but the text block above - the conversation between a person and his brain - is the way my grandson found to explain to his friends at school what anxiety is like.

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Besides my word art, the layout above includes:
Template: "Love Birds" by MDD Designs (available Feb. 8th)

Kit: "Boys Rule" by Magical Scraps Galore

If you deal with anxiety, my love and prayers are yours. If you have any coping strategies to share, I'd love to hear them. We are definitely in a brainstorming mode right now, trying to give our grandson an arsenal of weapons to fight back with when anxiety starts to take hold.

See you back here in a few days with the Scrap Designers Blog Train!