2018 Stamping for Autism Awareness Blog Hop

Hello, lovelies!

Today the Newton's Nook Designs Team is proud to be hopping along for the 2018 Stamping for Autism Awareness Blog Hop!

We are joining Veronica Zalis and tons of other amazing stampers to help raise autism awareness! We hope you will help us spread the word and follow along with us. There are going to be TONS of fun prizes too - including a $25 store credit from Newton's Nook Designs! 

To learn more about this hop and see a complete list of sponsors and prizes, please visit this blog post by Veronica Zalis here.

"Autism Awareness" means so much to me. 
My 3-1/2-year-old daughter was diagnosed with moderate autism 2 weeks after her 2nd birthday. She was already receiving many Early Intervention Services from the county but the diagnosis still hit us really hard. Autism is such a misunderstood condition because of the lack of awareness, which is causing this world a bit more difficult for the people on the spectrum to live. All they need is your understanding and patience, just like we neurotypicals need help and support from our family and friends. Their brains process things in different ways. 

"different, not less".

My baby girl is a very happy but very stubborn girl. She can speak but does not communicate using her words. She loves numbers, shapes, alphabet, pretty much anything that is always in order or predictable. She doesn't do well with changes, repetitive events/routines are good. She also has pretty severe OCD. The biggest concern I have is that she has no safety awareness, it is scaring me to death to send her to school next fall. What if teachers look away for a second and she disappears on them? She does that to me all the time in the house. My house has baby gates everywhere because she is basically a three-year-old with a mind of an infant. However, she is extremely intelligent, she's memorized all the lines from her favorite shows/books. 

Anyway! I can go on and on about it so let's get to my card! 

I chose the Company of Cats set for today's card because 
#1 It's absolutely adorable
#2 it's quite simple...whether you're autistic or not, we're all humans, just different. This image is nothing but that! ;-)

You probably have seen the puzzle piece symbol for autism.
Apparently, some people think of it negatively, but I think having a symbol for any cause helps spread awareness. That is why I stamped the image on white cardstock as my base, then stamped it on poppy, yellow, green, and blue cardstock and die cut puzzle pieces from them. I heat embossed one of the sentiments from the Compay of Cats with white embossing powder on black cardstock and popped it right in the center, and also heat embossed 4 sentiments from the Beautiful Plumage Set. 

I love all these encouraging sentiments, being different can be difficult but if you can't be your true self, what are you supposed to be? We should all be proud of who we are, autistic or neurotypical, with or without disabilities, your race or skin tone, your gender or sexuality, all these things make you a unique individual!  

{Would you like to win a $25 store credit to Newton's Nook Designs Online Shop?}

We will be picking ONE lucky winner from our own blog hop! This prize is in addition to the one we are sponsoring over on the hop hosted by Veronica. 

Here's how to win: 

To win this bonus prize, comment on the NND blog and Design Team blogs (see list below)! The winner will be chosen at random from the posts linked below. Make sure to check out each of their blogs and comment for your chance to win. You will not know which blog has been chosen so the more you comment on the better your chances are of winning! You have until Sunday April 8th at 11:55 pm EST to comment  -- winners will be announced on the blog post on Tuesday April 10th. 

Check out all the awesome Design Team Blogs below to enter:

Newton's Nook Designs

Amanda Bodine

Holly Endress

Ellen Haxelmans

Larissa Heskett

Samantha Mann

Naki Rager

Maria Russell

Tatiana Trafimovich

Thank you so much for stopping by!
Hope this blog hop today encouraged you to learn even a little about autism so we can make this world more autism-friendly ;-)