A Gift from the Netherlands

It is Cec here and I have a very simple card to show you today that comes with a special story.

I noticed on the news a little while ago that tulip growers in the Netherlands had cultivated a special tulip in honour of Canada's Sesquicentennial (150 years) this year.  Since I am Canadian and live near Toronto this news caught my interest.  Here is a photo of the tulip:

You might wonder why they would do this for Canada.  Well Canada and the Netherlands have a special relationship resulting from actions during World War II when Canadian forces led the liberation of the Netherlands and hosted the Dutch Royal Family in exile.

Following German Occupation of the Netherlands, the Dutch royal family took refuge in Canada. Princess Margriet was born in exile while her family lived in Ottawa, which is the capital of Canada. The maternity ward of Ottawa Civic Hospital in which Princess Margriet was born was temporarily declared to be extraterritorial by the Canadian government, thereby allowing her citizenship to be solely influenced by her mother's Dutch citizenship. To commemorate the birth, the Canadian Parliament flew the Dutch flag over Peace Tower. This is the only time a foreign flag has flown over the Canadian Parliament Building.

I have the Tulip stamp from the Nottingham Lace set and thought that I would see if I could paint it to resemble this special tulip and make it into a simple card.

Here is how I made this card:

I stamped the tulip on watercolour card with some Archival Ink (I used Wendy Vecchi's Watering Can).

Next I added some water to the English Cottage Paints and using a fine brush painted the tulip.  The head of the tulip was painted from the bottom up with Lemon Meringue and Postbox Red, blending between the two colours.  The stem and leaves were painted with a mixture of Lime Marmalade and Hunter Green.  I painted the rest of the tulip with Gee-Sso White Gesso because I wanted a really bright white.

When the watercolour card dried I noticed a bit of rippling so I used some Super Thick Slap it On to mount the tulip panel on a thick piece of card cut just slightly smaller.  This smoothed it out and gave the tulip panel a bit of dimension.  The panel was then adhered to a piece of red card stock and then added to the card blank.

I created the sentiment on the computer and mounted it on some red card stock before adding it to the card.  You could also stamp the sentiment if you have something in your stash that would work for the occasion.

Happy Birthday Canada and thank you to the Netherlands for the pretty gift!