violet

Gentian Roses

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Gentian for gentlemen at an upcoming function. 

 
Loved making this order up in this beautiful colour 🙂


Did you know? Interesting Gentian info from the Gentian Research Network a free, not-for-profit, web-based forum for worldwide research on the natural history and evolution of the flowering plant family Gentianaceae (gentians).

  • Gentian violet is a water soluble dye used primarily in medicine to stain bacteria, but also in other histological procedures.  It is not derived from gentians, but got its name since it is pink-violet like some gentians in the genera of Centaurium, Gentiana, and Gentianella.
  • The gentian family contains 87 genera and over 1600 species in the newest classification. It is closely related to other plant families that include coffee, periwinkle, milkweed, madder, and dogbanes
  • Gentians have been used by humans since ancient times as herbal remedies, and taste very bitter. 
  •  Their flowers are often colorful (blue, pink, red, yellow), and the true blue gentians (Gentiana) are often grown in rock gardens.

Gentle Gentian

Freshly Found Art, boutonnieres, buttonholes, Craft, Decor, Flower, Gentian, Hand, indie, Lilac, made, Origami, Paper, proteasw, violet, Wedding Leave a comment

Today we are going to be making up a large batch of paper boutonnieres or buttonholes.  It reminded me of some we made a while ago.  We had 2 weddings with a similar colour theme, and used gentian violet to dye the paper.  

Gentian violet has a few medical and scientific applications, but did you know that it can be used in solving crimes too? More about that later…  

It’s always fun and a privilege to be part of the excitement of a wedding. We made up the musical origami lilies for the men at delightful Barbara’s wedding.  And then we had a batch of proteas for Jan’s wedding too. We’re looking forward to the pics from both.  [We so appreciate the brides who send us pics.] 

It was so rewarding to work with a solution of lovely gentian to dye the different papers.  In my search to see how others have used this liquid lavender, I was intrigued to find that it can be used to pick up latent finger prints.  So if you are a forensic investigator at heart, have a look here to see how it can be done!