Monday 3 December 2012

Last of the summer flowers

Hello everyone.   I am still on my yearly visit to the UK.  It's been lovely to see the family but I must admit that now I am looking forward to being home again.  In a few days I shall be reunited with my man, animals, garden and craft stash, but until then I will just have to be happy plugging the gap in my calendar for the Craft Barn Challenge.  I am looking all the way back to week 3 when the theme was white/yellow/green.  I must admit that I have had to stretch the brain cells for this one but am quietly pleased with the result. 


For the background I have used a fab technique I discovered in Craft Stamper April 2012 in an article called Pressed Petals.  Basically you collect some fat juicy leaves and flowers, layer them on paper and run them through your die cutting machine and ..... WOW!!  Actually I didn't really think this would work but it does.  It's pretty amazing.  You get loads of juice oozing out of the sandwich and an instant flower paper.  I love this effect.  I have never had the patience to press flowers but here it's almost instant and no need for sealing the paper cos you only have the impression and the dyes from the flowers, not any actually organic material.  The only funny thing was the red begonia flowers gave a blue impression!!  A bit strange.  The technical amongst you will probably assure me that it's all something to do with light reflectance or the way the eye sees colour or red flowers are actually blue we just see them as red....... Whatever, it's a great trick and gave me a great white/yellow/green (with a bit of blue) background for these pages.  The birds and the saying are chipboard pieces by Basic Grey.

I have just spoken to my man and he says there is 50cm of snow in our bit of Norwayland and the chickens are on strike.  Brrrrr.  At least it's seasonal and I might be able to get my head into Chrimbo mode.  At the moment I am still hoping for some sunshine!!  Ah well, there's always cake.  

Be warm, take care, thanks for dropping by. 

I am entering this into
 The Craft Barn Calendar Challenge Week 3 - White/Yellow/Green
Artful Times Challenge 18 - Anything Goes

5 comments:

Sylvia said...

Catching up on my blogging before I go away, love the calendar pages the birds are lovely. Hope you have enjoyed your stay here and wishing you a safe journey home.

Sylv x

ionabunny said...

Thanks Sylv, my man says its -6°C and blizzing so I am glad I managed to find some sun today.

Chris Stern / CS Designs said...

Beautiful project, and interesting technique running the flowers through a Cuttlebug. I have heard of something similar called flower pounding where you sandwich the flowers in between two sheets of paper and then pound them with a mallet to make an impression but your Cuttlebug idea sounds so much easier. I have pressed a lot of flowers in my time because I like to create book marks out of them and it is not all that usual for red flowers to turn blue once they are pressed, this also happens with magenta and some purple flowers as well. The trick is to pick the flowers when they are in their prime and then they do not fade as much and are better able to keep their original color when dried. Not sure if this would help when smashing them.
:) Chris / CS Designs

Neet said...

Great result. Years since I did the flower pounding taught by either Jen Lowe or Jane from San Diego via the Wizard as was.
Fun to revisit and you got such great results.

Von said...

Super flower smashed flower background a perfect backdrop for the love birds :)
Thank you for sharing with us at Artful Times
Von ♥