Thursday 17 April 2014

What does a Daisy mean to you?




What do you think of when you hear the word ‘daisy’? 

My first thoughts are of the little wild daisies that grow in my lawn, followed by the tall, semi-wild Ox-eye Daisies that my father loved to grow on his allotment. Or the Michaelmas Daisies that my mother grew in our garden, to provide some colour in Autumn - but which refuse to thrive for me! And then there’s one of my favourites, the white Marguerite, especially when grown in a pot . . .

As if that weren’t enough, there are actually so many more types of daisy – click HERE to read about five of them – and they come in all sorts of colours too. These are from a photo of a friend's garden that I made into a screenprint years ago:



But for my new April Birth Month Flower cards I’ve chosen the little daisies, that we used to make daisy-chains as children. 

I made the motif from a handpainted collage as that seems to add depth and texture to what could otherwise have been quite a bland illustration.



The symbolic meaning of the Daisy is: innocence, loyal love, hope and purity and they can represent, ‘I’ll never tell’ so can be given to a  friend as a promise to keep a secret.


You can read more interesting facts about daisies HERE.

But when I think of daisies, I think of cheerfulness and sunshine and that's the message they often convey in greeting cards and other situations that call for something akin to a smiley face! Maybe that’s because they open early in the morning and love the full sun upon their faces?



I’ll let you into a secret; when I saw that the Daisy was the Birth Month Flower for this month, I thought it was going to be really hard to come up with ideas for patterns that I would be enthusiastic about. 

How wrong I was! This one unpretentious little flower, nearly always regarded as a weed, soon had the design ideas flowing and flowing . . . and I’ve ended up wanting to carry on and make more!




Click
to see my full
Daisy Chain
Collection


2 comments:

Carole Barkett said...

Your designs capture the cheerful sunny disposition of those beautiful little flowers

Judy Adamson said...

Thank you, Carole. I'm glad I succeeded in conveying the cheerfulness that daisies seem to spread!