Hampton Court Palace Flower Show

We had a lovely family day out on Thursday as my Hb and my SIL took the day off work and joined my daughter, myself and darling Daisy at the Hampton Court Palace Flower Show.

This post is very photo heavy so if you have come just to see my card challenge entry please just scroll down to the last 7 photos at the bottom of the post.

We have not been to the show for the last 4 years and if I am honest it is not quite the flower show it used to be. It is a very spectacular show but the emphasis seems less on buying flowers and more on buying very expensive furniture, building etc. There used to be several floral marquees now there were only 2. The cost for 2 to get in was also £68 which I thought was pretty high. However we still manged to find some lovely plants and there were still some spectacular floral displays. We were also incredibly lucky as the weather stayed dry all day. My parents who only live about 15 miles from Hampton Court had torrential rain all day.

We spent some time in the floral marquee, the displays were stunning. I love cacti and succulents, these were superb.

 Fly catchers of every kind

 Black and yellow lilies

 as well as the more traditional pinks.

 Flowers and vegetables together, these are tomatoes in the centre of the flag.

aubergines....

 and beans and cabbage.

 Outside I fell in love with this dahlia called Art Deco.

In the Rose Marquee the colours were bold and themed around the circus. Roses are one of my favourite flowers but they struggle in my tiny garden. I still loved looking at all these beauties.

This is an incredible new rose called For Your Eyes Only and will be available from next year 

It's buds start off like this

Other varieties

some fun circus colours inspired displays

We enjoyed a lovely picnic by the water. Daisy could hardly wait to start.

After lunch we had another wander around and also enjoyed an ice cream again sitting on the picnic mat together, such special family time.
We looked at a few more displays before we headed home.

So what did I bring home then?
I  found a really great bag for sale, it only cost £1.40 and came with a copy of The Telegraph and a jar of jam.

I also managed to find and buy that wonderful Dahlia, Art Deco and enjoyed potting her up on Saturday

 I adore the little flash of pink that is on just a couple of petals....just gorgeous..it reminds me of Fruit salad sweets (if you remember those little square sweets wrapped up from the 1960s and 70s)

I also bought a lovely purple delphinium

 and a selection of alpines for my front garden.

I also decided on Saturday afternoon to make a new Moment for my journal. I wanted to use the colours of my stunning new Dahlia and also the yellows,bright pink and green on the bag. Pink is never in my usual colour palette but I thought they worked really well together.
I wanted to use the embossing resist technique so I used one of my favourite Rose stamps by Visible Image. I first stamped the roses with Picked Raspberry and Spiced Marmalade Distress inks and then added clear embossing powder. I heated with my gun to emboss them. I then chose Picked Raspberry, Lawn Green, Spiced Marmalade and Squeezed lemonade Distress and blended them on. It's fun the way the embossing resists the ink.I also flicked on some water using Tim Holtz's spritz and flick distress technique.

I loved this colour combo. It's so bright, very outside my normal choice of colours but so hot for summer!
Next I added some stencilling with my new Honeycomb T Holz stencil. I was really lucky to be a recent winner at Frilly and Funkie and my package of goodies had arrived during the week.

Once I had this background ready I started to put together my ideas. I wanted to use one of my new TH quotes which was also part of my prize. This is such an apt one. I stamped it using Leaf Green Archival ink

 I also wanted to feature more roses so I used one of Ignacio's Henderson Giants Images which are available on his website. I love these vintage rose images. I also wanted to remember our family picnic together so I decided that I needed a daisy (of the flower not baby version) and some grass.
So here is my finished Moment.

Here are some close ups, a little seed tag and a grass die cut

 and a daisy and leaves

I would like to enter my Moment into the following challenges;

Craft Stamper Take it Make it  the embossing resist technique
A Vintage Journey Dies and Distress
Country View Stencil it
My Mum's Craft shop summer or bright colours
Stamping Sensations summer blooms
Whimsy Stamps summertime
Frilly and Funkie summer heat with a flower
Pan Pastels inspired by Tim Holtz
Fashionable Stamping dreaming of summer
Artistic Inspirations 100th challenge, anything goes

The garden is looking gorgeous as the weather this summer has been a rather mixed bag but with sunshine and showers the flowers are in heaven and are blooming their hearts out.
Today the sun is back in a blaze of glory and it's scorching outside...my bold colours seem really apt for such a hot day.

Thanks for visiting and I hope you enjoyed visiting  the flower show with me and my rather bright Moment for Jane's Journal.

Back soon,

Bye for now,

Jane x