Cards for Ukraine - Sunflowers

Yesterday on IG cardmakers were asked to post Cards for Ukraine.  I took a little time in the stamp cave to go through my stash and found some leftovers from previous projects to put this card together.  The sunflower and flowers are die cuts from The Greetery.  The blue and yellow background papers - in the colors of the Ukrainian flag - were amongst many yellow and blue papers that I had used for our daughter's graduation scrapbook as they were her college colors.

I posted the start of my mini sunflower canvasses the other day.  I took the basic flower on the right and added linework with my Posca pens to make them more realistic.  

The squares are 4 x 4 and the rectangles are 4 x 6.  I'm debating whether to add any splatter to them before I package them up for Art and Found Day.  They've already been sealed with fixative but I can do that again if needed.  There's still time to decide.  

And whilst I was going through my stuff I found another blue and white card that was a duplicate of a card I used for Rachel a couple of years ago.  

I collect words, quotations, poems, etc. in a notebook and yesterday I added this with a little illustration.

I've been following Max from Dancing With the Stars fame on IG as I had seen that he was in Ukraine working as a judge on their DWTS show when this horror began.  It has been very eye opening to see what he and his friends are seeing and have been through - unedited.  Our news programs are very sanitized and they show you the bombs going off in the distance and the remains of buildings that were fired upon but they don't show you the carnage in the streets or the blood-stained faces of children.  And I'm sure that there are many that say that we don't have to see that.  But I think that this just contributes to a disconnect with reality.  It's not like a video game or a movie.   

Max talked about how it took 31 hours for him to get to Poland by train and how guilty he felt taking up space as a healthy man who was leaving to return to his home in the US amongst an overstuffed carload of mostly women and children who had to leave their homes and husbands behind.  How he watched the mothers try to comfort their children, especially those that were old enough to realize what was happening.  He talks about a dancing friend of his from Poland who has been transporting people from the Ukraine to Poland in his personal vehicle.  He has thanked the Polish people over and over again for their sacrifices to help the people of Ukraine.  And he has warned that if they take Ukraine they could also go after Latvia, Moldova, Lithuania, any country nearby.  

I made the cards and painted the pictures as a response to this trying time.  But that was for me to feel like I was doing something.  I've (we've) also made a monetary donation to help with gas and medical supplies for the refugees in the hope that it will actually help in some way.  And I continue to pray.