Could this ‘bee’ spring?

 

What a lovely few days of glorious weather we’ve enjoyed this week.  18°C in February is unseasonably warm but the sunshine was a welcome change from the gloomy grey cloud that’s been around for most of the winter.  The lovely weather inspired us to get outside and do some gardening and I ended up doing quite a lot of weeding.  Whilst this is a tedious occupation, I do like that you can see what you’ve achieved at the end! It was whilst I was on my hands and knees in the middle of the border that I saw my first bee of the year.  I love bees and find it fascinating watching them buzzing around collecting pollen.  It was a white-tailed bumble bee which flew past me to explore the camelia bush and it inspired my crafting this week.

I used the bees from the Stampin’ Up! Dragonfly Dreams and Detailed Dragonfly thinlits.

For my first cards, I die cut a couple of banners and stamped the bee and coloured it in using the Wink of Stella brush and some Gold Glimmer Paint.  The first banner was mounted on some Gingham Gala DSP on a black card base and finished with some yellow organdie ribbon and black twine.

The second card used a similar banner decorated with Crushed Curry satin ribbon and some linen thread.  This banner was mounted onto the card base which had been stamped with a repeating bee pattern.

For the third card, I used a hexagon embossing folder as the background as I thought it went with the bee theme, looking like honeycomb. I used a couple of stitched rectangle frames to back the sentiment (from the Part Of My Story set) and punched the sentiment out using the Pretty Label punch.

The bee was cut out using the die and black card which I then inlaid with some sparkle and gold glimmer paper. (For the inlaid technique, see the Dragonflies and Dandelions post.)

The final card uses another inlaid bee, this time using the Country Florals embossing folder.  I used Crushed Curry card and added a little matching ink mixed with some gold glimmer paint to add a little more contrast.

The embossing folder is incredibly detailed, as you can see from this angle.

Unfortunately, Storm Freya is hitting our shores this weekend so it seems that spring is not here yet after all.