Hibiscus Flowers

I've been feeling really frustrated lately, because I've SO wanted to get into my ARTHaven and have some Fun but was prevented from doing so by having to do other things and then having no energy left over.

However... Today I was determined, and after spending some time setting up my hubby's laser printer and printing off some music for my dad (the printer is a dream and is going to be soooo useful in my creativity!!) I was able to sit down and do something creative, just for the fun of it - with no particular end in view.

I am soooo grateful to Penny Duncan (see her blog: http://pennyduncancreations.blogspot.com/) for her wonderful tutorials, and have been wanting to try some of her flowers recently. Today I made some of her hibiscus flowers. Until I get my Cricut cutting machine, I have to cut these by hand from her .pdf file, and this wasn't hard as the shapes are very simple, but it did take a long time. Also, colouring the flowers took me longer than expected, because I initially chose colours that were too pale, and had to go over them again with darker ones to get the effect I wanted. After accenting the petals and leaves with purple and green ink pads respectively, I then spritzed the flowers and leaves with my Tim Holtz DIY glimmer mists in spun sugar (pink), wild honey (orange) and chipped sapphire (blue) mixed with Perfect Pearls (in perfect pearl colour) for a bit of sparkle. The petals and leaves were assembled with hot glue from my glue gun, and the centres were the ones I bought the other day in the cake department of our hardware store.

I am very pleased with the result, considering this is my first attempt, and I am sure I will get better at it (and quicker) with practice.

When I spritzed them, there was quite a bit of glimmer mist on my craft mat, and I didn't want to waste this, so I got some card scraps and mopped it up on them - with some quite interesting results. I am going to keep these pieces for use in other projects.