A 100 Year Old Rose

Hello all!  Thanks so much for your lovely comments on my bright and dark posts - from the Sunshine Watercolour Dwellings to the Glint of Moonlight on Broken Glass.

We're moving from those brights and darks back into the gentle, natural colour palette which is more usual around here.  But the project itself is a rarity at Words and Pictures...  it's a card.

Not just any card, but the card I made for our next-door-neighbour, Rose, for her 100th birthday.

With a name like that, the choice of subject for the card is easy (just as well, since I find making cards really difficult for some reason).  If you follow Cestina's Dollshouses, you'll have seen the lovely miniature rose arbour she created for Rose's 100th birthday present.  And there's lots of rose-related music, trivia and ephemera in the post too.

Rose's favourite colour is green, so that took care of some of the decision making too.

The background panel is made with Tim Holtz's Floral layering stencil.  And it started out as a tag before I trimmed it.  (I've found that starting with a tag is a pretty good way of tricking my brain into card-making.)














I applied texture paste through the stencil and then spritzed some Tattered Angels sprays over it once it was dry... mainly English Ivy, but there's some Patina and some Shade in there too.















I'm pretty sure those are wild roses on the stencil (or dog roses as they are also known for some reason).













The paper roses are from my stash.  I needed the card almost immediately on my return from New York, so I'm afraid there wasn't time for handmade flowers.













But I did manage to squeeze the foliage punch onto the trimmed off top part of the tag to get a few leaves to add to the open bloom.














And I couldn't resist adding the Stein quote from my stamp set PaperArtsy EAB01 Trees and Flowers... well, it was inevitable really, wasn't it?!















It's stamped in Olive Archival to tone in with the background.













Tim's Simple Saying stamps earn their keep again, with the greeting stamped and embossed in Bright White Wow powder both outside... 














... and inside.











And plenty of white spatter finishes the whole thing off.

A fairly simple card, but I'm happy to say it's standing on the mantlepiece right next to the one from Her Majesty the Queen!

I'll be back in a couple of days with an exciting post, so I'll hope to see you again soon.

The first fact about the celebration of birthdays is that it is a good way of affirming defiantly, and even flamboyantly, that it is a good thing to be alive.
G.K. Chesterton




In a bit of pretty serendipitous timing, the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge is celebrating its 7th birthday by playing Happy Birthday this week, so I'd like to share Rose's 100th birthday card there