Faded Rose Flower Page/Challenge

This month's challenge from the StitchedTextiledesign group was to do something on the theme of 'faded roses' and I needed to make two pages for the MixedMediaatc group. I thought I might be able to combine both challenge and swap. Some time ago we visited Wharlton Hall in Northumerland to see their gardens. The visit followed the high winds and heavy rain storms and naturally their gardens were destroyed. The roses which had been magnificent were very much the worse for wear, faded and at the time I took this photo of one of the better ones.

As you can see they were still beautiful if a bit ragged round the edges.
I also took this photo of one of the wrought iron gates on the estate, I liked the curls. I thought I'd have a go at using the gates as a displacement map and see if I could use the results.

I liked it but wasn't sure whether the person who would receive my flower page would appreciate what I was trying to do. As an experiment I used solorize and was surprised to see the colour change. Again I liked it but wasn't sure whether anyone else would so back to the drawing board for the pages but I've printed these two versions out onto tshirt transfer paper for use later.

I had been reading Sandra Hart & Gudny Campbell's quilt book "Piecing with Pixels" and was interested in the effect they had got using the 'cookie cutters' in Photoshop Elements. Now Idon't have elements but do have CS3 which I admit I haven't used all that much as I'm much more familiar with Paintshop Pro. If you use Photoshop CS3 they don't call it 'cookie cutters' its in the Shapes menu. It took me a couple of tries before I got the hang of using the cookies to make quilt tiles (and since I've discovered how to put pictures in the cookies rather than plain colour).

I used one of the cutters and matched the colour to a pink in the photo and placed it on top of the photo of the rose. I made a border of several of these quilt tiles and placed a larger tile in the centre. I printed it out onto fabric ready for the next step.
My final piece for the faded rose challenge was to quilt it.

I faded the rose tiles a bit and added a sequins and beads to the centre point of the tiles. This completes the first of two flower pages. I've decided to use the rose/gate displacement pieces for the second one and will blog later about it when its complete.