The Camellias have cometh

Today I’ve got something special to share. A digital stamp set featuring a floriferous display of buds and blooms and leaves and stems. One that cannot help but leap from the front of your cards and creations: the Camellias have cometh.

If you live in a temperate part of the world, you might be a little more familiar with this showy plant. (Sweet Katie Sims of our Bloom Brigade has beloved bunches of them in her Georgia yard!) Here in St. Louis, I have come to admire the Camellias at the Linnean House at the Missouri Botanical Garden, on display from February through March. Their glossy, dark green leaves and ga-zillions of blooms create a magical display. Pinks in various states of saturation; shell and salmon and peach; creams and whites. Red and burgundy. Even candy-striped — and some that appear to have been spattered by Jackson Pollack’s paintbrush. Some are plump double blooms with so many petals, they create a pool of color beneath the bush when the flowers finish blooming. To see such lush flowers bursting forth in the middle of winter, well, it is heavenly indeed.

Camellias have long been the subject of poets and writers and painters the world over. They symbolize passion, longing, and enduring love. //>HOT STUFF!<\\ They also symbolize refinement and perfection. Here’s an ode to Camellias that I think is pretty wonderful:

In Nature’s poem flowers have each their word

The rose of love and beauty sings alone;

The violet’s soul exhales in tenderest tone;

The lily’s one pure simple note heard.

The cold Camellia only, stiff and white,

Rose without perfume, lily without grace,

When chilling winter shows his icy face,

Blooms for a world that vainly seeks delight.

Yet, in a theater, or ball-room light,

I gladly see Camellias shining bright 

Above some stately woman’s raven hair,

Whose noble form fulfills the heart’s desire,

Like Grecian marbles warmed by Phidian fire.

The Camellia
Honore de Balzac

WHEW!!! I’d love to see a card that’s a tribute to that imagery... I may need to fan myself after reading it.

Whatever way you approach the Camellias, the sentiment that comes with this set (“Life is better with friends”) is one I bet you’ll use again and again. Suggested to me by Julie Koerber (who contributes many of our wonderful sentiments), it really sums up how I feel but don’t know that I express often enough. I know for sure: Life is better with your friendship, Jules!

Care to see some truly stunning creations made with this set? I encourage you to travel ’round the Internets with us now, and have your eyeballs blasted with beauty, compliments of the Bloom Brigade:

Allison Cope   
Christine Okken
Dina Kowal
Julie Koerber
Kathy Jones
Katie Sims
Leslie Miller
Stacy Morgan
Tosha Leyendekker

Tomorrow, Monday, we’ll be having a big ol’ BLOG HOP — and — if you go around and comment on all of the Bloom Brigade designers’ blogs, you’ll have a chance to win both digital sets in the Winter Blitz Collection. (So you may want to hold off purchasing until Monday, unless you just can’t help yourself... believe me, I understand if you do!)