Welcome to the Spark a Smile blog! Check here for projects we’ve created, inspirational ideas, and stories about our mission to spark smiles in our community!

Can you believe this is our third annual donation to the Seeds of Hope/St. Vincent’s/Salvation Army Thanksgiving dinner? We decorated 398 gum toppers again this year, to accompany over 300 meals served by these community organizations. We are so excited to be a part of this tradition every year! Click …

Remember these fun pink cards? When we were planning out our card designs for October’s Spark a Smile meeting, I cheated a little and made a few ahead of time. I sent them to some girl friends, just because I loved the pink and the encouraging words. I was pretty …

That was our theme for Spark a Smile in October as we created these 198 great postcards for the American Cancer Society! Our theme was PINK, in honor of breast cancer awareness month. It was totally fitting that we were joined for the first time by a group of 11 …

October 6th is World Card-Making Day! What are you doing to celebrate? Greeting someone with a friendly “hello”? Wishing someone happiness on their special day? Or just sending a little bit of love via paper? Why not celebrate with us next Wednesday at Yang & Horsley Dentistry from …

This month, we helped Miss Marlene and her friend Pat with a project for Sunday School. Miss Pat is the director for the 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade department at her church and has recently been sending cards to kids who have been missing Sunday School. The cards are working! …

At our last Spark a Smile party, we celebrated Christmas in August by making blank Christmas cards for Operation Write Home, which sends boxes of blank greeting cards overseas to the men and women in the military, so they can write home. We came up with a few “stick it …

School’s starting soon! What better way to ring in the new school year than by celebrating our local teachers? I LOVE these pink, black, and sparkly mini-cards that we made at Spark a Smile last month! What do you think? (Click to enlarge) Join us next week for our free …

At Spark A Smile in June, we celebrated the 4th, early! We had a great turnout! Here’s just a sample of the mini cards we created. Aren’t these tiny firecrackers cute? Miss Linda came up with that ingenious design! Miss Marlene and I collaborated on these – she cut the …
Check out this awesome podcast about card-making! Well, all of the Paperclipping Roundtable episodes are great, but this one specifically has tons of ideas about our Spark A Smile specialty… making cards!

Just a few days after my last post, my sweet grandma (I call her Ama) took her last breath and joined the angels. She was my constant friend, companion, and one of our biggest Spark a Smile supporters. Even at age 81 with poor vision, she’d still participate and help …