Celebrate Sunflowers

Don't you just love sunflowers?!!  When I lived in Washington state, I had sunflowers in my garden and loved them.  Here are some interesting facts about them that perhaps you didn't know.

• Each sunflower is actually thousands of teeny flowers.  The yellow petals and fuzzy brown centers are actually individual flowers themselves.  As many as 2,000 can make up the classic sunflower bloom.
• You should harvest sunflowers in the morning, not the afternoon.  They may wilt if you clip them in the afternoon.
• Sunflowers are native to the Americas and were domesticated around 1000 B.C.  In 2014, 1.7 million acres were planted in the US.  The majority of those were found in North Dakota.
• A dried sunflower makes a unique, natural bird feeder.  Our feathered friends love to snack on sunflower seeds just like we do.
• Each sunflower can contain as many as 1,000 to 2,000 seeds (lots for the birds to munch on!)
• There are about 70 species of sunflowers.
• The French word for sunflower is "tournesol," which means "turns with the sun."
• The tallest sunflower on record was over 30 feet tall!
• Sunflowers have been planted to help soak up nuclear radiation.

In the new Annual Catalog, the Celebrate Sunflowers bundle can be found on page 13.  It is in the Flowers For Every Season suite.  Here is one of the cards I made with this set.

I stamped the base sunflower with Memento Black Ink and used my So Saffron SU Blends to color the petals.   The sunflower outline and detail center piece is die cut with Copper foil paper.  The very center is die cut from Early Espresso cardstock.  I die cut the leaves in Mossy Meadow.  I found the little circle embellishments in my stash and decided to use them for an accent.  The base card is So Saffron.

Close up of the sunflower.