Up All Night

Friday, May 14, 2021

Pansies for Thoughts

The Snowdrops bid you 'hope,'
The Bluebells say, 'I'm true!'
The pansy is for 'thought,'
Good luck (Heather) sweetheart for you!

The Victorians may just have perfected the Language of Flowers. Guides to flowers and their meaning were printed in 19th century ladies magazines, why? Proper conversation was dictated and defined; often thoughts that may not have been considered proper to whisper aloud or in person could be subtly conveyed with the presentation of a bouquet of symbolic flowers.

Ivy was symbolic of fidelity, red roses of love, lily of the valley of purity, daisy of innocence and so forth.

Flowers were sent between women and friends as well as between opposite sexes. London born writer and artist Kate Greenaway produced a small hand sized volume titled Language of Flowers in 1884. Reproductions are still available.

The pansy is sometimes considered the best flower for beginner gardeners to plant and grow. Even I have never killed a pansy plant ~ about the only one.

But, I can turn to paper pansies thanks to the new Stampin' Up! Annual Catalog 2021 - 2022.

In my garden, a pair of scissors is my trowel and glue is the soil so that perfect flowers grow abundantly. This card was inspired by Jennifer Cotton. Before it looked like this, it looked like

something of a mess. The inspiration was just the beginning: which Designer Series Paperpatterns from Pansy Petals work well together, I asked myself. Then, which of the three gingham colors to choose? How to layer two patterns on top of each other? What color or colors for the pansies? I won't tell you how long that process took, but, I do like the result.

My upcoming May class will feature the Pansy Patch Suite and the new 2021-2023 InColors, so one card design is not enough.

More inspiration was found in a sweet fun fold card designed by Windy Ellard, and I wanted to play with it a bit. This is still in the works, but Stampin' Up! has more gardening tools I can use.

The Pansy Petals Dies include two different leaf outline dies and two flower outline dies that prune these perfectly. In each set of Pansy Petals Designer Series Paper there are two sheets of printed leaves in a variety of greens and two sheets of two sizes of printed pansy flowers. The new InColors of Pale Papaya, Soft Succulent, Evening Evergreen, Fresh Freesia and Polished Pink combine with a few old favorites to create the sweet faced flowers and leaves.

And an extra feature of these dies is that they fit in the new Mini Stampin' Cut and Emboss Machine. Die cutting them is just about as quick as cutting them yourself from the garden. And, they don't wilt or fade. Of course, the dies also fit quite easily into the larger Stampin' SU! Cut and Emboss Machine.

You can find all of the items in the Pansy Petals Suite on pages 28 and 29 of the Annual Catalog. All images Stampin' Up!