SOS390: fabulous february

even for the shortest month of the year, february seems to have flown past particularly quickly! so this fortnight at shopping our stash seems like a good time to celebrate some of the things that make february fabulous, such as the birthstone, amethyst; or the official flowers, iris and violets! here's what i made:

velvet violets and leaves, plus the ledger paper behind the pot: petaloo; clay pot fashioned using a clipart template from tonic studios embossed specialty paper; purple patterned paper: bo bunny; ink: ranger archival; adhesives: elmers brand gluetape, 3m foam tape, gluedots

by an amazing coincidence, just before i started working on this, my friend elisabeth gave me a whole pack of some older but still very beautiful velvet violets with equally beautiful velvet leaves. so i knew immediately what i wanted to do. i printed out a piece of clipart in a shape of a clay pot, very much like the ones in which jeff's grandmother used to grow african violets. I used the clipart as a template to cut the pot from a scrap of embossed specialty paper in the right shade of terracotta. i cut out two of the rim, so that i could add a little dimension at the top of the pot, which is a little easier to see irl than in the pic, but yeah, it wound up mostly being covered by the leaves lol. i added a bit of shading with an archival ink pad and a sponge applicator. since the package was still sitting right on my table, i had time to notice that the cardstock from which it's made is this gorgeous distressed ledger paper. AND it just happened to be perfect colors to serve as my background. my purple mat is actually an ancient piece of halloween paper-- the black pattern is spiderwebs!-- but i don't *think* that's obvious the way i used it and the dark shade complements the flowers really well.

i hope you'll be inspired by fabulous february to play along with us at SOS. remember that we are fortnightly now, so you have until march 11th to link up! ♥