Flowers & Style

This is the first post about flowers and scrapbooking.  The reason is quite simple; except for the few occasions I've used paper flowers - in very limited quantities - on a scrapbook page, I haven't seen a need from them.  There's a dimensional aspect that I figured would fail when used in a traditional, sheet protected 12x12 album-bound book.  

For the past couple of months when doing the scrapbook store run I've began picking up a package or two of assembled flowers when found on sale.  They aren't cheap.  Last week, TM had a sale on Prima Flowers (the industry standard) which reduced the $4.00 packages down to 99c each.  Talk about building a rapid inventory! 


Though I'm not quite sure where to start, I'm fascinated by the flowers made by I am Roses. You get a big bang for each buck there, and they are truly lovely.  They have a huge assortment of flower types, sizes and colours, and priced very reasonably.  Except that I have to restock on some very basic supplies, I would order enough to sample and play around with.


The big box craft stores all carry silk flowers, which they regularly have 50% sales.  This is an area to pay more attention, especially the bridal section.


And in no way least, there's virtually an unlimited range of paper flowers created with the Cricut.  I've watched scores of YouTube video demonstrating techniques of creating beautiful flowers I never would have thought possible.


Primarily through the warehouse sales, I've built a reasonable collection of Tattered Angels sprays and glimmer paints.  These consistently put out stunning effects, but they really need to figure out a better spray system.  I've yet to complete a project without having the sprayer clog.  Everywhere I turned I kept hearing about Lindy's Stamp Gang, a direct competitor of Tattered Angels.  I watched several videos from both the manufacturer and independent reviews, and I'm convinced this line definitely has a place in my growing spray paint/mist collection.  Lots of them!  The mention of the sprays and mists while posting about flowers is because these play such an important role in colouring flowers... and so much more.


The white flowers at the lower right corner are some left over from a wedding several years ago.  Cheap, cheap, cheap.  The coloured flowers are the same set but with a stingy application of differently coloured Tattered Angel's mist sprays.

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It's taken awhile to figure this out, but I do have a "style".  It is the colours and images predominate between 1910-1960.  Yes, that's a sizable range, but these are the colours I love working with best.  G45 probably helped with that, but it holds true across all paper lines and graphics.  When I heard yesterday about an online store, CraftySecrets.com carrying vintage papers, postcards, and images; I had to go check it out.  Using incredible ultra-human restraint, I left the site with only a large stamp set (perfect for the G45 On the Boardwalk line!!) and 32 page postcard collection, and two booklet sets.  Yes, all from the 1930-60's.  And as it happened, they had a sale in place.  I will go back to "visit" again, some time soon.  Oh, yes, life is good!


Then, as if the gummy karma worms weren't helping along most wonderfully, today I found a blog site here called The Graphics Fairy LLC, with free(!) vintage images... thousands of them.  Too good to be true.


On a sadder note, one of my all-time punches got damaged somehow.  The question becomes:  do I go out and buy another, or do I go with a similar punch? This is really discouraging; having to buy something a bit pricey twice.