Inspired by an English Country Garden #3

Yes, I'm still drawing inspiration from the lovely day we spent exploring the gardens of Froyle in Hampshire!

At this time of year, wild poppies make a bold splash of colour on roadside verges and around the edges of fields, and it's good to see these days so many farmers and councils leaving some wild spaces in these areas, rather than cutting right to the edges. So of course the wild spaces that some of the gardens had were scattered with poppies, but their cultivated areas also had some wonderful specimens, huge, boldly coloured ones that were really eye catching.

After stamping and colouring the poppies, using an old unmounted stamp I've had so long I can't remember the origins of, and layering the image on die cuts made from snippets, I used that as a topper on a background made from half a sheet of poppy-patterned paper that's been in my snippets box for years. Things always come in handy eventually!

Then I wanted some flowers to finish it off. I didn't have any ready made flowers that looked even vaguely poppy-like, and neither do I own a poppy die. And there wasn't any of the backing paper left to fussy-cut flowers from. Then I had a light-bulb moment. I have a Spellbinders die that cuts and embosses a six-petalled flower  - why not trim the ends of the petals to make them more poppy like? So that's what I did, trimming the edges with deckle edged scissors and layering two together for each poppy. Problem solved! I think they look quite effective.

I'm sharing this with

Pixie's Snippets Playground week 182/183 (again)
Ooh La La Creations - Here Comes Summer
Allsorts Challenge Blog - Flower Power