Tuesday, June 14, 2011

The Lily Pond


The Lily Pond
by W. Ashburner, 1882-1932

Painting Description: Wearing a long blue gown, and holding up one side of the hem, a woman stands the lowest step in front of a lily pond. Her dress is adorned with a white shawl-collar, edged  in a wide ruffle on the shoulders. The collar is tied in the front at the waist. The curved stone stair step leads behind her through a gate opening, and the entire background of the painting consists of foliage with dark pink flowers. The water shows a slight blue reflection of the gown, as the woman casts her glance downward to see the lilies.

Here are a couple of ways to create home made cards and letter-writing materials:


To make these you will need some pages from a daily removeable page picture calendar, some heavy paper or card weight paper, scissors and glue.  Match up the pictures to the card and glue in place.


Since the inside is blank, write on it as though you were writing a letter, and use the back, too. Or, just stamp your greeting, if you have one, that fits the occasion.


Using decorated stationery might develop your interest in writing letters.
Decorate blank paper to make special writing paper by rubber stamping various areas around the paper, and then placing a ruler on the straight edge of the paper. Draw lines with co-ordinating crayon or special pens just to join the images, like this:

It nicely frames your letter with a lovely border.

9 comments:

Lydia said...

For those who love sewing their own clothes, this dress could be easily adapted to a modern style using any long dress pattern, and adding a shawl collar. The sleeves could be duplicated also. I would suggest princess seamed A-line type of dress with v-neck. As for the collar, there are collar patterns available that have choices of collars, and it can be a detachable one.

Anonymous said...

I really like the new blog design at the top!

Anonymous said...

I like the new blue theme. It is very pretty! I also like the idea of stamping with the same color as the paper. I have a few stamps and gold ink, which I use to seal letters, which is an elegant look.

Amy said...

What a pretty painting! I like the pretty papers, too. One of my cousins makes her own cards and gives them as gifts every year. I always look forward to them!

Far Above Rubies said...

Lady Lydia, I'm currently learning to sew and am enjoying myself tremendously.

What a beautiful way to make lovely stationery paper. I will have the girls do some of their own.

Thank you for all the wonderful tips.

Glad to see you posting again. I have missed you.

Jasmine

Miss Linda said...

This was a wonderful idea. I hate discarding the beautiful calendars with lovely images after the year is done. This gives me a wonderful way to re-use those images.

Marqueta (Mar-kee-ta) G. said...

Dear Lady Lydia,

The dress is so pretty! I can see it being adapted to modern day use.

Thank you for the great ideas for making cards and stationery; I love having something different each time I write my pen friends, so I am very thankful for new ideas. :)

Love,

Marqueta

Anonymous said...

In one of the writings of a prominent feminist, I read that she thought homemakers should be made to want feminism. They used "economics" as a way to get them to leave their homes. The love of money...

Anonymous said...

The paintings you show are always very nice. There is a park not too far from my house which nearly every time I pass it I see someone taking wedding, children’s or family taking photographs. There is a nice waterfall a gazebo, park benches and paths lined with pretty flowers. No doubt many will have photographs that are pleasing in the years to come.
I like the stationery you have been showing. This particular one is very nice in that it requires only one stamp. Just this week one of the home shopping stations was showing all kinds of scrap booking equipment, but everything was very expensive. With a 40% off coupon from one of the fabric or crafting stores a beautiful stamp could be purchased and used for making pretty writing paper. I also was just thumbing through some older craft magazines and came across an article on making embossed writing papers. It seems that the higher technology gets for so many things, the more some of us seem to like incorporating some of the old ways into our lives.

I have always tried to make sure that my daughters had blank cards, mostly for writing thank you notes. When in college one of my daughters professors gave the seniors in orchestra a tea at her home, my daughter mentioned to one of her friends that she needed some paper to write a thank you note. The friend told her just use some printer paper, “not my mother’s daughter she told her, I‘ll just get a blank card at the dollar store”.