A Grevillea Challenge

My father lives not too far from Darkroom Door in NSW, Australia. When I knew he was coming to visit this summer I asked him to pick up some new stamps and bring them over. Not only did he bring what I’d ordered he also studied the stamps and came up with a challenge for me. I completed the challenge a while ago but the busyness of our summer has meant that I am only now getting this post written. Below you will see my dad’s words then I will wrap up at the end.

The Grevillea is a beautiful Australian Native Plant found across the continent and popular in many home gardens. There are many varieties from low ground hugging varieties to shrubs both small and large, sparse and thick. Their flowers are both small, individual and delicate as well as thickly clustered with the appearance of large flower heads. The bright colour of their flowers covers most of the spectrum, attracting many birds, particularly colourful parrots and lorikeets seeking nectar from their flowers and camouflage protection amongst their leaves and branches They tolerate hot seasons, have low water needs in comparison to many plants and have an extended floral season. They are very popular in home gardens as well as parks and their native bushland settings. The grevillea is frequently portrayed on Australian greeting cards and seems to be popular in all seasons. The beautiful range of colour and form seems to relate to a range of sentiments for both personal and seasonal occasions.

The sentiment stamps from Darkroom Door demonstrate that a message, be it seasonal or personal, happy or sad, celebrating or apologizing, or much more, can be expressed in a great variety of ways.
My suggestion to Heather, or was it a stampers’ challenge, was that, before she cuts either of the new stamps into individual stamps, she design a card using at least two of the grevillea images and at least half the sentiment expressions from one of her new stamps. She has agreed to the suggestion and I am confident she will rise to the challenge. What follows is Heather’s response to her dad and her explanatory notes for you, her fellow stampers.

For this first card I based my colour choices on the grevillea juniperina sulphurea . I used distress inks and markers to ink first the flowers then the tips in scattered straw, wild honey and spiced marmalade. I stamped the main image and, without re-inking, stamped pale images behind. The leaves and stem are stamped in peeled paint, again first and second generation stamping. As stated in the challenge I kept the sentiment stamps together (they still are) and stamped the strip three times across the card base in memento desert sand ink. To finish I splattered some spiced marmalade stain, matted with a mustard cardstock and added some linen twine.

The colour scheme for this second grevillea card is based on the grevillea superb. This time I aimed to keep the tips of the petals yellow while the rest was red. I inked the whole flower in love letter and rhubarb stalk ink to fill the centre of the flowers with colour. Then, to preserve  the tips I wiped ink off the ends of the petals and stamped. To finish the flower I added dandelion ink to the tips of the petals and stamped again. To get background images I spritzed the stamp and got a second generation image behind. For this one the leaves and stems were stamped in memento olive grove ink.

To make one sentiment stand out from the strip I first stamped the whole strip in dandelion ink then placed tape either side of the target words on the panel. I inked again with olive grove ink on the smaller section and stamped over the yellow.

I chose an olive cardstock to frame the panel and finish the card.

I hope you enjoyed my response to my dad’s challenge. If you have kept stamps together for projects rather than separate them I would love to hear about or see your designs. I am also interested to see more colour schemes for the grevilleas. I’ve taken inspiration from a few different grevillea so far and have another couple of approaches to share later in the week!

Supplies

Stamps: grevilleas, happy birthday (DD)

Card 1 Inks: scattered straw, peeled paint, wild honey, spiced marmalade distress inks & markers, desert sand memento ink
      
Card 2 Inks: dandelion, love letter, rhubarb stalk, olive grove memento inks &  markers
    
Paper: hot pressed watercolour paper, neenah natural white cardstock, green cardstock, mustard cardstock

Also: stamping platform, linen twine