Our March Instant Garden Introduction: Spring Meadow Bouquet

Hello all! Today let’s move beyond our “standard” Spring flowers. There are the cherished tulips and daffodils, yes, and we will always have them (in fact, more stamps will be coming out very soon featuring them!). But as spring is sprouting all around us, it is tempting to celebrate some of the other gifts from the ground — the unsung rockstars!

Imagine walking along a little winding creek near a dewy spring meadow. The sun is flickering across the scene as nodding fronds of what appear to be tiny hearts cascade over the creek. What might these nodding fronds be?? The old fashioned Bleeding Heart is what I have in mind! Dicentra spectabilis with its puffy little danging hearts.

And a bit further along in the meadow are what look to be giant snowdrops — but snowdrops have already finished blooming, the meadow is greening up. If that’s the case, what could these bouncing pops of white be? I’m looking at Leucojum aestivum, which is the beautifully whimsical plant called Summer Snowflake (there is also Spring Snowflake, Leucojum vernum, and others do actually nickname them snowdrops, though they are not the same plant as actual snowdrops, which are genus Galanthus).

What more do we come across? Well, flowering at the base of a creekside tree are masses of checkerboard-patterned flowers that could be straight out of a Mary Engelbreit card! Known as checkered lily or snake’s head fritillary, Fritillaria meleagris is a plant that you might fall in love with after seeing it just once. They are so unique looking. How do they get that checkered pattern? Nature!!! You astound.

Lastly on our meadow outing, we come across an old Lilac tree sprawling along a wooden fence. Year after year, it blooms with abandon, and scents the country air with its spicy perfume.

Imagine gathering up a few stems of each of these jewels, and you have our March Instant Garden digital stamp set offering, Spring Meadow Bouquet!

This set is available now as a digital image (complete with sentiment!) that, after you order you receive it in an email as black-and-white jpg files. Save it to your computer, and then you just print it out from your home printer, and color away! If you ever have questions about working with our digital stamp sets, sit down with these great tutorials created by our Bloom Brigade design team:

I bought a digital stamp. Now what?

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Working with free digital imaging software

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Simple digital effects on a Mac computer

Now, back to our new Spring Meadow Bouquet. What started with an imaginary gathering of flowers in my head, initially looked like a fuzzy blob. I roughed out how the flowers might be collected in my sketchbook:

I then redrew the concoction on my illustration paper (I use Canson Bristol Smooth). Now, we’ve talked in the past about how, once I get going on an image, sometimes I just can’t stop. This one ended up being quite rich with details and bits and bobs... and even a little meadow butterfly came along to rest on the foliage of the checkered lily. I like to get pretty detailed in my pencil sketches so I can really get a feel for how the drawing is going to look. For ink drawings that are meant to be colored in by others, I try to leave space for markers or colored pencils to go, and some airiness for any background coloring you may want to add.

After the bouquet was drawn in pencil, came the really fun part. Things start to get real! I grabbed a handful of Sakura Pigma Micron pens, ranging from .01 to .03 size nibs, and inked in the details, created the lines, tinkered with the weight of lines and the amount of tiny dots and details. By the time I finished up, it was late in the evening, and my photo was taken by the light of the lamp next to my little cozy spot on the sofa where I like to draw. (Not shown in photo, cat sitting next to me with one paw on my arm.)

And there you have the nearly finished piece! I scan my artwork into the computer and “clean it up” — which essentially means that I can fix any boo-boos like slips of my pen, or proximity of one plant to another. I fine-tuned this one in Photoshop, and now the Spring Meadow Bouquet is all filled up with unique and wonderful plants, plus a buzzing bumblebee too (at some point I decided I wanted more LIFE happening in this image, and along came that little dude...)

Now I’d love for you to see what our talented Instant Gardeners have come up with to show off this bustling bouquet. Bop around and be sure to say hello when you do!

Broni Holcombe

Cheryl Scrivens

Barb Walker

Jennifer Dove

Would you like to get your hands on this newest digital stamp set? Come and grab Spring Meadow Bouquet in the Power Poppy Shop right now!

I hope you have a wonderful day, and continue to enjoy the unfurling of spring’s abundance.