WOYWW 147

Yes, it's Wednesday again, so time to pop over to Julia's blog to see what my crafting friends are up to this week. I have had a couple of weeks off trying to shake a very nasty flu' bug, and I am pleased to say I am just about back to normal now. This week I have had the company of my sister from UK, so we have spent a lot of time just wandering along the sea-front, or sitting out in the sun chatting. But we did manage a bit of crafting time too and we decided to have a go at a technique featured in the latest issue of Craft Stamper magazine, which uses fresh flowers to make pretty backing papers. I have very few flowers in my garden at the minute so at the weekend we went for a walk across the campo to pick wild flowers. We managed to get well and truly bitten by the mosquitoes that hatched out after the recent rain, but we did get some pretty flowers, but it wasn't until yesterday that we managed to use them. So here is my desk as it was yesterday with the flowers, a general mixed bunch and some of the yellow chrysanthemums that grow wild very abundantly during March.

The idea is to make an arrangement of petals on some uncoated paper or card, add a another sheet on top of the flowers, sandwich these layers between the A,B and C plates and pass the whole lot through a cuttlebug. (I presume this would work just as well with other die cut machines too). Some of the leaves and petals are very juicy so you need a piece of kitchen paper handy to mop up any over spill. When you gently take apart the two sheets of paper, both have an imprint of the flowers on them, but one is more detailed than the other. You carefully remove the squashed debris of flowers and leave the papers to dry. It is a case of trial and error as some flowers did not shed any colour while other were quite dark but not necessarily the colour you expected. For instance, bright red poppy petals left a deep blue print on the paper. The yellow daisies gave the best result. An alternative is to spray the arrangement on the first sheet with mica mist, (I used bright green perfect pearls spray and a pale lilac glimmer mist), and then add the second sheet of paper and pass them through the machine. This means the second sheet will get a print of the flower shapes in the colour of the mist.

This made some lovely subtle coloured papers which will be perfect behind a larger image on a card or ATC. Here is a selection from our trial run. I shall continue experimenting with different flowers as they appear, and try making more precise arrangements as well as random patterns.

I shall link this to Julia's blog now while it is still Wednesday, but as my sister flies home this evening I am going to sit outside in the sun with her for her final couple of hours. But I will be back tomorrow to visit you all and see what you had on your desks this week.