An Old-fashioned Hello

The roses are safe for another day. They are calling for 90% chance of rain today and so the lawn and garden work is postponed. In case you are new to growing roses, here’s a quick lesson for you. Yes, in Southern Ontario we have to let the roses go dormant and they survive the winter better if they are not pruned after Labour Day. Pruning does promote growth and we don’t want that after August. The roses need to send their energy to the roots instead of new growth. We bought eight bags of top soil yesterday to cover them up after I cut the tops off so once we get at it, it won’t take long. Once it starts to get warm in the spring, I move the dirt away from the crown, do a good pruning and start feeding them Miracle Gro about every 10 days or so.  Some roses will not winter over in some parts of Northern Ontario and they are actually treated as annuals – which is a little too expensive for me but I guess if you love roses, you pay the price! End of lesson.

I’ve been on a card making binge lately so I have lots of new cards to show you. This one is another made from a .99 stamp from Paper Wishes, which is also Hot Off the Press.

 

I fell in love with this old fashioned telephone the moment I saw it and I just had to have it. Not much colouring on this one this time. I kept it very soft. The background behind the phone is distressed to give it the vintage feeling although you can’t see it well in the photo. The background paper is one of my own creations. I took some ugly 12x12 scrapbook paper and started applying various inks and stamps and stencils and gesso until I liked what I got. This is one of the first that I made and it’s quite dark because, duh, I forgot to dry in between coats of ink so I ended up with a lot of brown. Oh well! Now I just cut them down to fit the cards. They are a little dark but they look all right as background paper. The stamped image and brown were die cut with a Spellbinder die. This set was on sale at Michaels for $9.99 and I’m loving it! The ribbon and bow is from my stash. The little sentiment also came with the same stamp set as the phone and it was die cut from a different Spellbinder die.

That’s it for a Thursday!

Cheers

Violet