Sweet digital set: Asters Abuzz

Hello there, hope you enjoyed a spectacular celebration for the 4th of July—and now I’m here to wish you a Happy 5th of July! In addition to today being the birthday of the love of my life, Doug, it is ALSO the first of our new “Digi’s on the 5s” releases. Yep, we are adding even more illustrations and sentiments to feed your coloring addiction. Can you ever, EVER have enough flowers?

Let’s not even go there.

As we announced in the e-newsletter this week, we’re so tickled to introduce even more beautiful digis for you to print and color. We’ll supply a freshly remixed Marcella Hawley illustration on the 5th of each month, a brand new Instant Garden digital set on the 15th, and ANOTHER digital design on the 25th. (For all of our fabulous clear stamp lovers, you’ll still get your fix with juicy photopolymer releases every other month!)

Today, we’re sharing a set that is as sweet as a summer meadow in bloom, just brimming with honeybees. My image was inspired by this watercolor illustration I painted 20 years ago for Honey Acres, a family-run apiary in Ashippun, Wisconsin. I learned so much about bees, honey, beekeeping, and the flowers that make honeybees so happy.

When this was painted, I had just moved back from New York, where I’d been working at Martha Stewart Living magazine, to return to the cozy and creative college town of Champaign, Illinois. Having my own freelance design and illustration business for passionate, interesting, entrepreneurial clients was exactly what I wanted to do (and Martha kept me busy with art assignments for her start-up Martha by Mail catalog, which was superfun). I got a phone call one day that seemed right up my alley! The owner of Honey Acres had seen my flower catalog illustrations for Klehm Nursery, and wanted me to create a cover for their new cookbook. I drove up to visit their operation in the rolling hills of southern Wisconsin, saw the fields of clover and wildflowers that surround the apiary, and toured the honey museum they built to share the story of beekeeping. After my visit, I came up with two options for the cover. The illustration above was my favorite of the two, with a busy-as-a-bee mix of Sweet Peas, Bee Balm, Goldenrod, Thyme, Asters, and Cosmos.

Honey Acres decided to publish my alternate design, with its romantic little summertime scene, below:

I never did get a copy of the printed Honey Acres cookbook, until Doug found this one for me on eBay and surprised me with it for my birthday a few years ago. He is sweeter than all the honey in the world!!

OK, so that little show-and-tell brings us to today’s set release. I originally created this illustration to be a simplified take on my 1995 bee bouquet. I am so excited to release the artwork today with an updated design and two new sentiments, as a digital set, just for you. Asters Abuzz is available for your downloading, printing, and coloring pleasure....

Would you like to get some awesome inspiration for using this breezy bee-sy image? Check out what members of our Bloom Brigade AND Instant Gardeners teams did with Asters Abuzz!

Stacy Morgan

Tosha Leyendekker

Julie Koerber

Cindy Lawrence

Cheryl Scrivens

Thank you so much for coming by to check out the latest from Power Poppy by Marcella Hawley, and I sure hope you’ll enjoy playing with this one.