I’ve mentioned before that I am a member of an online walking forum. Gail is one of the organisers of the site and a wonderful lady. She’s shared a lot over the last 15 or so years that I’ve “known” her including a lot about her family. It was shocking last year to hear that she needed brain surgery and that she had a tumour. She’d truly give the shirt off her back to anyone if it would help and it hurts immensely to have to report that she died recently. So of course I made a card. I don’t know that it helps at all. When Mum died, reading the cards just made me cry. But I guess it’s good to hear the memories. Eventually. So Gail, Fabulous Flora is for you. It fits, you were so passionate about your garden.

I took the image from Fabulous Flora, stamped it on scrap paper and then snipped it out. Then I stamped it onto my watercolour paper and then masked off that stamping and stamped again. I used my aquapainter to colour in the figs in the archival basic black but that wasn’t quite right so I added some elegant eggplant. I think that the combination of the two colours works. I used garden green for the leaves and I tried not to be too precise since the image is sketched rather than precisely drawn. I then added the sentiment from the Thoughts and Prayers set and glued this to an elegant eggplant cardbase with a skinny basic black mat. I really find that a black frame pulls everything together when I’m watercolouring – and thus using archival basic black to stamp the images.

Rest in Peace Gail. I’m glad that you’re no longer in pain, that you no longer have to lug around heavy equipment to live. But we’re going to miss you.

Liz