Roses in December

A long time ago, when my Mum died and I had the task of sorting out some of her papers, I found a little text that has stuck in my mind ever since. It read "God gave us our memories that we might have roses in December". These days we hardly need our memories for that, as roses seem to bloom most months, and I have had a flower in my garden at Christmas. But when I needed three cards for December birthdays I remembered the text and I decided to make them using my newest Altenew set of rose stamps and dies. I have had their small roses set for a while, but they have now released a single larger bloom and I love it. So here is the first card I made.

There are six layer stamps for the flower and four for the leaves, enabling you to build up the colours to give a very realistic image. Fortunately I used to have a passion for collecting complete sets of ink-pads, and although I don't use a lot of the different coloured ones now, I was able to find six toning shades of pink for my flower. So I stamped my flower once - my Misti stamp positioner, or a similar one, is essential for aligning the layers of these flowers - and the leaves twice, and cut them out with the corresponding dies. 

The background is a white card blank lightly dusted with pink distress inks. I then used a leaf stencil with Prima Art Alchemy acrylic paint in Rose Gold. I bought this new recently and wanted to try it. It is so pretty, and ideal for adding some gentle shimmer to my card.

I sorted through my green snippets for a piece large enough to cut out the mat using another new purchase - a die by Gina Marie designs. I put them all together and cut a sentiment with another green snippet using my Silhouette cameo and Desire pro font.

I was pleased with this card, so I decided to repeat it using other roses that I had stamped in various colourways when I was first playing with the set. So I ended up with four card in all.

I used white snippets to stamp all the flowers and leaves, and a variety of plain and patterned snippets for the backgrounds, mats and sentiments. I like the darker rose best, but prefer the backing of the first one, but they have all been sent now so I guess I could be trying out some more!

But first I will hop over to Pixie's Snippets Playground with these. It is a while since I made them, but they have not been shown yet. I have been really poorly with a cold virus ever since Christmas, so I have not been down in my chilly craft room very much. But I am trying to get working again now, so hopefully I will have something more recent to show for my next post.