Sunflowers

My co-worker has a green thumb and grows so many wonderful things. She blesses my day each time she brings in her beautiful flowers and places them around the office in such a thoughtful way. It brought tears to my eyes to tell her how much I appreciate it. I told her I felt like God used her to bless so many others with just the flowers alone. It's not the only thing she does for others. She is quite special. I'll have a special post on her tomorrow along with more flower pictures from last week. :)

I have always loved sunflowers, but never really looked at them as closely as I did last week when Vickie brought these in. The petals grow in a straight line, but half of them lay forward and half lay toward the bottom to create that "double petal" look. How beautiful!

OH, and then the back of a sunflower is just as gorgeous! The spiky leafy base is made up of scrunchy-looking leaves and there is the softest little fuzz on the underside. Neat!

How can you not look at this and see God smiling at you? He makes the most extraordinary things for us to enjoy! Wow! This one looked like it had a sponging of rust color over the golden yellow color. The yellow ring around the center just glows behind the intricate center! A double wow! See, isn't nature gorgeous! Doesn't it bless you, too? Wow!

The flower in the retired set Looks Like Spring reminds me of either black-eyed susans or a sunflower in a lot of ways. It can be a daisy, too. It just depends on how you ink it. After seeing these gorgeous sunflowers from Vickie, I was inspired to create this card. It will go to my dear friend Merrill in Kentucky. I inked the petals in Summer Sun craft ink and stamped it. Then, I inked the flower again with Summer Sun, Really Rust and Chocolate Chip craft inks. I used my Stamp-a-ma-jig to get the right rotation of the flower so that it had the "double petal" appearance of the real sunflower. The card isn't as bright as the real ones, but it was directly inspired by the flowers. I count my blessings twice in regards to the sunflowers. Once with Vickie's generosity and being able to really look at them. Second by being inspired to create this card that gives me a chance to be creative. The blessing will keep going all the way to Merrill. I hope it blesses her heart when she receives it.

Thanks for stopping by....Happy Sunday!