Small Hands Creating Hope - The Purple Girl

Last week I introduced you to MaryAnne from MamaSmiles.com and the Small Hands Creating Hope project on Kitchen Counter Confidential. Small Hands Creating Hope is a celebration of MaryAnne's 30 years of cancer survivorship...how awesome is that?! An ebook, and a soft cover book, has been created that is packed full of wonderful ideas from bloggers all around the world. Today, I am thrilled to be sharing our contribution to the Small Hands Creating Hope project...The Purple Girl book.

We have a fairly intimate relationship with cancer, my mother passed away 3 years ago from Colon Cancer. I loved the idea of switching our perspective and celebrating survivorship. We have a neverending love of books, so making a book seemed like a logical place to start. Using only the colour purple, the colour of survivorship, my daughter jumped in an created an amazing story book. Here is what my daughter did (you have to get the book to see all the pictures!)

1. Gather up your supplies; paper, purple markers, purple crayons, purple pencil crayons, purple images from magazines, purple fabric scraps, purple anything and everything!

2. Let your child create their story on the paper, using whatever supplies they choose

3. Once the story is completed, bind the book together. We decided to sew our binding, however you could simply staple the book together.

4. Create a label for inside the front cover. On your computer, or by hand, create a label that identifies the Author & Illustrator, Publishing Date and Publisher Location. This step makes the book more "official" for your child.

5. The book is now complete and can be presented to a friend or family member who is living with cancer. Or, in our case we will be keeping this books as a reminder of Grandma Gail and her love of books.

We were so excited when our copy of the book arrived in the mail last week. It truly is a wonderful book. We have already picked out a few projects to try this summer!

a sampling of the projects inside

So, are you wondering how you can get your own copy? Here are all the details. Simply make a donation to the American Cancer Society for a minimum of $15 and you will receive a link to the ebook and information on how to purchase the soft cover book, for an additional cost. If you do not recieve the follow up email please contact smallhandsproject(at)gmail(dot)com.

Take a look at some of the other contributing bloggers posts. There are some very heartfelt and beautiful projects in the Small Hands Creating Hope book.