Thank you, Wednesday Stamper, Grunge roses and Cardoons

I want to start this post with a HUGE THANK YOU to every one that took the time to comment (and email) on my previous post. I am overwhelmed that not only so many sympathised with my thoughts on the matter but also for the LOVELY things that were said about my ME-NESS, I never knew you cared!
In the course of those conversations I happened to mention to Hels Sheridan that I am also bored with grunge paper roses.....they seem to be everywhere........Hels came back at me with "well, here's a challenge for you, make one Sue-style"........not one to back down from a challenge I agreed to give it a go!

Now here's my next confession.......I don't really like grunge paper so I decided to make my flowers from something I do like.....book pages.

I stamped these little flowers onto the book page, need three for each flower, cut them out. These things are small, that's a 1p piece, this was fiddly I can tell you!!. Then cut pieces out of two of them, roll them up, glue together and then inside each other. So I suppose these are not really grunge roses but they are MY take on the idea and technique. You will have to judge fir yourselves whether I met the challenge or not?

This is how I used my flowers.......to decorate the cover of my book which is my entry for this weeks WEDNESDAY STAMPER challenge where the theme is STITCHING.

The stitching may not be obvious at first glance, but I stitched the pages together for my book, the stitches run between the strips of paper across the spine of the book. Those strips serve two purposes, first they look good and second they cover up mistakes........some of my stitching was not that good but now you can't see it!
I used recycled old book covers for the covers of my book.

Now to continue with what is turning into an occasional look at flowers in my garden. As you can see I like unusual stuff in the garden as well as in my art stuff! These things are CARDOONS or ARTICHOKE THISTLES, they are a thistle like member of the Aster family.....according to Wikipedia! All I know is they are over 6 feet tall and trying to get pics was hard! The last one I just held the camera over the flower facing down, pressed the button and hoped! I was pleased with the pic I got!!