Pretty Petals!

I came home from work the other day and my lovely husband had a surprise for me - he had found an old poetry book on our bookshelf full of pressed petals.  It's a lovely old book that I had picked up in a charity shop when I was in the throws of wedding planning two years ago - it didn't make it on to my wedding table plan - I used a more battered and stained book for that one (!)- but I did fill it with rose petals from our garden as a little experiment to see how they would come out.  I promptly (and helpfully) forgot anything about them.

Rediscovering them is a total treat - it worked brilliantly and I really wanted to get creative with them.  I had a little look online at pressed flowers/petal designs and couldn't find any inspiration - I didn't want to recreate a flower and that seems to be one of the only things I could find to do.  As you can see from my last card I'm loving the brushed gold card and the gold embossing powder at the mo so I wanted to use those again. The card base is brushed gold and them I layered up the petals using snail and tweezers onto a piece of scrap Very Vanilla measuring 5mm less than the card front in both directions. I used the browner petals at the edge first and then built in towards the middle with gradually more colourful flowers.  It needed glue dots for the final layer as snail would have ripped the petals.

It needed a little extra and I love the Papillon Potpourri butterflies.  I felt it needed to be translucent to compliment the flowers so I printed these on velum in embossed gold. I then used the blender pens with rose red and a little blushing bride/pink pirhouette to build up some colour before applying them with glue dots and here is the result.......voila! ;) I hope you like

I will definitely be pressing all my roses this year! :)

Clean vintage

It's a real shame that brushed gold card doesn't look as amazing in the pics as it does in person. It's a really subtle effect and if you haven't got any I highly recommend buying it! I embossed in gold onto velum and then coloured the flowers and leaves with blushing bride, a little strawberry slush, crisp canteloupe, pistachio pudding and always artichoke. I then backed it with very vanilla and put it on a background of brushed gold with the vintage wheel in crumb cake and a little gold ink with gorgeous grunge stamps.