Homage to Hermione

This year I've decided to tackle the garden, bit by bit, focus on certain areas because its a big garden. Its only taken us 10 years but who's counting!  The first space was the border near the patio and conservatory, we like cottage gardens so there are lots of cottagey plants and the bees and butterflies are certainly enjoying it.  We planted three new David Austin roses, a white (Winchester Cathedral), a pink (Gertrude Jekyll) and a pinky mauve (Gentle Hermione).  They all smell divine and the Winchester is a gorgeous repeater.

So the theme over at PaperArtsy is flowers, so I made some flowers and the colour scheme was chosen by the beautiful mauve of Hermione.  

I started by colouring an A4 sheet in Dolly Mix and Chalk, stencilling in Elephant and stamping in Watering Can.

I then cut out as many flower shapes as I could with a PaperArtsy flower die, these were then put together in fives with a coloured brad.

 

Spritz the shapes and carefully scrunch up, the water allows you to do this and it soaks in the paper and distresses the fibres to give a shabby look.

Carefully unfold the flowers and leave to dry.

Now you could use the roses as they are, put I wanted to put metal stalks on them and "put in something" (I hadn't quite decided what).  I took some metal wire, flattened it by bashing it on a metal block and shaping one end into a spiral, bent the stalk at right angels so the spiral would sit on the base of the flower.  The stalks were stained with alcohol ink.

I was thinking of painting a glass jar to be a vase but in the end decided on wooden blocks, sanded and painted in Chalk with some small scraps of text paper and walnut ink.Drilled some tiny holes and put the wire in and glued the flower to the spiral (I have to say I'm rather in love with these wooden blocks)

 

So just a few more shots of the roses, so you can see the texture.

These are really fun to make and it made me laugh that Jennie over at Live the Dream was doing the same thing! Nothing new in art, just interpretation and variation. 

Hugs
Jo
xx