Pink rose

When I did the watercolour rose page for Wanderlust earlier this year, I had a spare rose left over and no idea what to do with it.

It ended up floating around my craft room for ages and every time I came across it I would have another think about what I could do with it. But I never came up with anything that really grabbed me.

Then, the last time I found it, I decided that I absolutely had to turn it into a finished piece somehow and stop it haunting me. So I started by fussy cutting it out. Then I got out my box of background papers and worked my way through them, trying to find something that would look good without overpowering the rose. I went through the whole box and… nothing. Nothing made me happy.

I chucked it back onto my craft desk. Where it landed on top of an old paperback that I had been using to clean brushes.

And it looked perfect. The pink and green over the black and white paint and the brown of the page. I tore the straight page edges to give a soft finish on all sides and glued it to a sheet of textured mixed media paper. Rather than glue the rose completely flat, I cut some card pieces to fit behind the flower head and the leaf to lift them up a little.

And now it’s finished and it looks great and I can move on to the next thing…