Salaric

I made this pressed flower card for my friend who was having lots of stomach problems. The previous spring I had collected a few petals and leaves from various plants in our garden and pressed them in the book that had inspired the whole project – a pressed flower book I had picked up in a Red Cross book shop. I pressed the flowers by putting them between sheets of tissue paper and kitchen towel, as I like the texture this gives the finished petals. I don’t think this would work for whole flowers rather than individual petals.

Blotting paper is the best thing to use for pressing flowers, but this was one of the first projects I had tried since being a child. I used copydex glue, a fineliner and a card blank with an oval cut-out in it. I got the card blanks from The Works in Cheltenham.

I looked at the petals I had and thought that some of them would make a nice picture of a woman on a hill with long flowing hair. I was thinking wild innocence dancing on the stormy hillside in a sodden pink dress.

I started off by folding out the card so that I could get to the panel behind the oval cut-out. I stuck on the hill, which had been a large white petal, then I stuck on the hair, which had been the petal of an orange-coloured poppy.

I then stuck on the arms and upper torso of the woman – this had been a small white heart-shaped rose petal. I then stuck a pink foxglove petal over the bottom half/pointy bit that’s joined to the flower. This made the formal dress of the dancing woman and was exactly the right shade of pink.

I then stuck on a small ’rounded corners’ triangle for the woman’s face, this had been a small burnt orange fading to red colour before pressing, and now is a lovely deep red.

Once the glue was dry I folded the card back up so that the picture of the woman was trapped in the oval frame and around it at the top and bottom I wrote, “MAY THE LADY DANCE YOU BETTER…” with the fineliner.