The Card Concept "Sunflower Serenade"

Hello everyone!  It's time for our new challenge, "Sunflower Serenade" over at The Card Concept Challenge!  Being a Kansas girl myself, I am quite familiar with this sight as it is the State Flower and Kansas is known as" The Sunflower State".  However, in recent years there have been some new varieties and there are several colors available now, including Pink which is the Strawberry Blonde Sunflower.  I thought these bright happy colors would make a nice get well card.

I make cards for a friend who lives in Kansas and who unfortunately knows several people who are battling cancer so I know she would really enjoy a bright happy card to send to one of those people.  Because I love pink Sunflowers so much, I also decided to make a second card using Pink Sunflowers.

"Native Americans were using native sunflowers for food over 3,000 years ago. These wild sunflower seeds were only about 5 mm. long. Over hundreds of years and careful husbandry (selecting only the largest seeds for cultivation), the Plains tribes began the development of today's large modern sunflower, rich with oil.

Sunflower heads consist of 1,000 to 2,000 individual flowers joined together by a receptacle base. The large petals around the edge of a head are actually individual ray flowers, which do not develop into seed.

There are more than 60 species of sunflowers. The native sunflower grows to 15 feet tall with flower heads up to 2 feet in diameter and can produce over 1,000 seeds from one plant. The flower head turns and faces the sun throughout the day - tracking the sun's movement. Sunflower seeds are rich in protein and yield a high-quality vegetable oil".  Source: here.

I don't have a specific stamp set for Sunflowers, but the 2016 Papertrey Ink Anniversary Set has this flower that is similar enough that I use it as such.  It's called Painted Petals and unfortunately is no longer available so I'm thinking I might have to look for a set that has sunflowers.  The "Strawberry Blonde" sunflower has yellow tips on the petals with kind of pink or coral inner petal color.  It probably depends on soil conditions like other flowers do such as Hydrangeas.

I also happen to really love the leaves from the "Gran's Garden" Set by Papertrey so I took a lot of liberties to use them instead of the ones that actually go with the Painted Petals Anniversary Set.

That is it from me today!  Be sure to hop along with all the Design Team Members to see their projects today.   Here's the hop list!  

Tangii Crain

Vicki Finger (You are here)

Julie Gearinger

Michele K. Henderson

Kim Lackenbach

Nancy Penir

Susan Powell

Maureen Plut

Angel Rivera

Mackie Robertson

Marcie Sharp

Pam Staples