A Lesson in Persistence!

The Morning Glory design turned into quite a lot of greeting cards:

It wasn’t quite the right shape, though, to make into a repeating pattern easily. And as a one-off, it was too tall and thin for some of the products I would have liked to create on Zazzle.

But I think it does look quite pretty on this tea pot 

Blue, White, Green Tea Pot, Morning Glories by helikettle

 - and on this Ladies T-shirt:

Blue, White, Green Ladies T-shirt, Morning Glories by helikettle

I was decidely premature last month in thinking that Spring had sprung. We’ve had a fair amount of sunshine in April, but biting cold winds and showers of rain, sleet and hail, with snow on the mountain tops!

Sadly, I think the pair of blackbirds who built their nest just outside my dining room were also caught out by the changeable weather. On Wednesday I had seen the two ‘chubbies’ sitting outside the nest and on Thursday morning one of them was on my back lawn with Father Blackbird.

But that was the last I saw of them and the nest remained empty all day.

Father Blackbird spent practically the whole of Friday, perched up high on my garage roof, giving out his warning song and by the time I closed my curtains in the evening, he was looking quite forlorn and bedraggled! Meanwhile, Mother Blackbird banged into my kitchen window whilst attempting to land in my window box where she often comes to peck out my seeds!

She seemed fine though the following morning, when I spotted her building a new nest, high up under the eaves of the house next door, where I can see it more clearly than the one under my honeysuckle bush. It’s a much bigger nest and it was finished by lunchtime, so she’s obviously learning from her experience. And Father Blackbird has been treating us to his usual beautiful song ever since!

What a lesson in persistence for all of us, when we are tempted to give up because of setbacks!

Somewhat inspired by her persistence, I made up my mind to tackle the December birth month flower, Poinsettia. I'd been putting it off because it didn’t feel like the right time of the year to be working on something so Christmassy.

I was also wondering how I could differentiate it from a Christmas card and I hope the solution I came up with – using a non-Christmassy colour for the pot and the lettering – will work.

Here it is, my Poinsettia painted paper collage, and it completes my set of birth month flower greeting card designs.

I’m sure I’ll also be using the image as a Christmas Card design and maybe a Christmas T-shirt or Apron? In fact, it’s not too soon to be uploading Christmas designs for next year from the search engine point of view . . .