Three weeks ago today my sister found out that she has breast cancer.

Since that initial diagnosis, she’s had a surgical port put in, a hair-cut (to minimize the trauma when her hair falls out), a round of chemo and the resulting nausea and fatigue, an immunity booster shot (which made her very tired and achy, ironically because she’s still pretty healthy, other than the cancer).

We bought a fabulous wig for her – she looks like a rock star when she wears it – and we shopped for new make-up because she’s going to need new products each month to minimize the possibility of infections.

Today she went in for her weekly blood draw (they have to be sure her blood count doesn’t get too low), and afterwards she went shopping for a few new blouses, because she didn’t have any button down blouses, and those will make her chemo appointments easier.

Oh, and last week we ordered some breast cancer scrapbooking papers and elements so she can complete some layouts for the California state fair coming later this summer. She originally was planning to enter scrapbook layouts designed around a weekend camping trip – but chemo came up instead and the camping trip had to be cancelled. Now she is planning to scrapbook our hair-cut appointment (I got my hair-cut too, along with another good friend of hers), and maybe she’ll do a page on the wig shopping experience. The breast cancer kits came today, and she is feeling pretty good, so hopefully she’ll have time to get the layouts done before her next chemo this next Monday.

I know this is a lot of info about my sister, and it’s not really digi-scrap related, but I promise it will all make sense if you finish today’s post.

My sister is a paper scrapbooker, and she loves to scrapbook and make cards. She is really good at it, and has won a bunch of awards at the California State fair, and she was slowly building a scrap-for-others business. But right now, she needs to concentrate on getting better, on beating cancer. And she is going to need financial help to do it. Her husband was laid off from his job right after Christmas, and they have no medical insurance.

So, I put my thinking cap on, and combined Sarah’s love for paper scrapbooking with my love for digi scrapbooking, and I came up with a plan to help raise money for my sister. I’m going to be creating a series of templates based on sketches I made while looking through her scrapbooks.

And today’s Wednesday WOW post is not a post about a beautiful layout, or even a fantastic kit that you NEED to buy. Rather, I’d like to say thank you to some fantastic folks in the digi scrap community. Specifically some extremely generous designers who have offered their help, designs, and encouragement for this project.

To help me make REALLY COOL templates, I asked for some help, and to date, I’ve had over 25 responses from designers willing to let me use their products to make the templates even better than I ever could have made them alone.

There have been plenty of “choke me up, make me cry” kind of moments in the last three weeks. More than a few of those moments have been while reading the responses from the designers. I won’t ever be able to say thank you enough, and this post is really only the beginning. (Believe me, you’ll be hearing more as the project continues!)

So, ladies… THANK YOU, from the bottom of my heart. THANK YOU for being so generous and kind and willing to help someone in desperate need. THANK YOU for the encouragement and prayers you’ve offered. You are all truly WOW worthy!