Mmm, flowers!

When I got married (we celebrate thirteen years on Monday!), I walked down the aisle carrying a bouquet of the most beautiful peonies and ranunculus in the prettiest ivory and pink shades (can you tell I just loved my wedding?). A dear old friend and locally famous costume designer went with me to choose flowers to compliment my bridesmaids dresses. He made all of the floral arrangements. From corsages, boutineers, big arrangements, decorated bird cages, and floral garlands for the smallest of my attendants to a garland for my hair and my bouquet . . . that man did it all! He died a couple of years ago, and I always think of him when I look at my bridal portrait, or see pretty peonies. Anyway . . .

When I saw the Stampendous Peony Square, I got a major warm fuzzy (and now I realize I need the Panel, too! Look out Daisy and Joy!) thinking of happy times. Here’s the first card I made with it.

I can spend forever picking and poking on a card, and have amazed even myself at the amount of time I spent on this ONE image. I putzed and putzed on watercoloring these peonies for about an hour. I couldn’t sleep, so I just watercolored and watercolored, and then added Stardust Stickles for sparkle! Trimmed the image, then went digging quietly through stacks of patterned paper (to keep from waking sleeping kids up) for something that would work. Totally backwards for me. I normally pick some paper and then watercolor. Or pick some colors of cardstock. Nope, not here!

The patterned paper is from The Angel Company, and came from the 8×8 “flywithit” collection. Such pretty papers, and such a neat thing that the flowers and colors matched up with my watercolored image so beautifully. Because the paper has that border on one side of the floral paper, I cut it so that I would get a good amount of both parts of the pattern on the card, and then layered it on black cardstock, and then on a full Regal Rose card base. It fits nicely in a business envelope, thankfully!

I adhered the stamped, matted image to the patterned paper, and then was stumped. What to do with a sentiment? What else could I do? I shared the original with my sweet friend Cami (love to bounce ideas off of friends!) and she said it wan’t me without ribbon, and suggested some brads and a sentiment down at the bottom. That so made the card, don’t you think? Thanks, Cami!