meandering mari: Inspired by Roses: Sponsored by The Bouqs

You know by now that I looove messing about with flowers, right?

My hashtag project #emojisinbloom is plenty of evidence of that.

So, when The Bouqs generously offered to send me some blooms to play with, I eagerly accepted!

Read on to see what happened next...

After that fairly innocuous first photo, things immediately started getting weird.

Well, I say FUN...but others might say weird.

After transferring the beautiful blooms to many different vases (The Bouqs sent so many flowers, I wasn't able to fit them in one vase!), I was cleaning up a few fallen petals. I noticed the three-dimensional shapes kind-of-sort-of looked like...bear heads. I got out my craft paint and did a little experimenting.

See what I mean?

Isn't it cool how the panda face is coming out towards you??

I know you thought I was crazy when I said "bear heads."

I'm okay with that.

Back to cleaning up the petals:

I also spied...what looked like a cape.

Aaand I had some peanuts.

So, I made Super Peanut!

Who wouldn't??

Side note: Super Peanut led to a whole slew of cape-less Avenger Peanuts.

No matter how hard I tried to perfect his distinguishing features,

Iron Man Peanut just looks like Mr. T to me.

I'm not sure what will become of Avenger Peanuts.

They may turn into a print.

They may just live on in my Instagram feed.

I, of course, enjoying looking at my roses...but I couldn't resist playing with them also. I plucked a few petals off a white rose to see if I could dye them with watercolor.

Nope.

The water beaded up and rolled right off of them -- which I should have foreseen.

Hey, that quality is perfect for paint-mixing cups!

The pink roses were feeling a bit neglected...they were a perfect powdery pink. I started layering them, eventually arranging them into a dress shape.

The rest of the little girl followed naturally. I used some other bits of fresh flowers we had in the house, including hyacinth leaves for her belt and legs and dried hydrangea as her parasol.

I liked her so much, I turned her into a print.

You can find her here!

After her photoshoot, I stole her hair and spent a bit of time painting a single rose petal.

I love doing that sometimes, concentrating on just a single element like a petal. Really studying every nook and cranny, every slight color variation, trying to capture the texture...needless to say, time flew and when I looked up at the clock, I had spent the baby's entire naptime painting one petal. #noregrets

I got in a bit of a ballerina mood after that.

I actually do these quite a bit, whenever I'm inspired by whatever fresh flowers we have in the house. I originally wanted to make rose petal tutus, but I just couldn't get them to lay right. I ended up with a rose leaf tutu on one and a rose petal leotard on the other.

I got a lot of requests for prints with my previous ballerinas, so I finally made some with these gals. Wahoo! You can find them here and here, if you are so inclined. :)

By now, my roses were starting to fade.

But! That doesn't mean my playtime comes to an end.

If anything, playtime has just begun.

Tic-tac-toe, anyone?

Are you noticing a pattern yet?

Yep, I turned this into a print as well.

You can find Tic Tac Bloom here.

Back to my bouquet: I'm fascinated by dying flowers. I love how the colors deepen, the petal edges start to curl up...and they take on an entirely new texture.