Recipe for Summer

Tomorrow is the Summer Solstice in the northern hemisphere of the world: the longest day of the year. To help you celebrate, I have a gift for you that I hope you like as much as I do. Serendipitously, this lovely piece of ephemera is also perfect for my southern hemisphere friends. You'll see what I mean as the mystery unfolds!
I got this incredible piece from France, from a French postcard dealer, but the item itself is not French; no signs it was printed in France! It is a 3-layered fold-out card with a poem by an American author printed on the inside.
I am taken by the mix of colors and patterns. It reminds me of a page from a Martha Stewart magazine where you see a designer room with checks and stripes, five different kinds of wood furniture from three different eras and you ask yourself: how do they pull that off! Or more precisely, how do they pull it all together?!
Ironically, two of the images used to create this multi-faceted beauty are autumn and winter scenes, but the poem is an ode to summer!
On my original card, there was no author credited for this darling poem. A little Google sleuthing and I learned that an American poet named Mary Down Brine (1816-1913) wrote this. On one web site, it is titled A Recipe for Summer. Very little information is available about Ms. Brine. She is famous for another poem, Somebody's Mother and many of her writings were published in Harper's Magazine. You can still pull up copies of those online, bearing dates of 1873, 1877 ... . On the copy of the poem that I have made for you, I have added her name!
After finding out this information about Ms. Brine, coupled with the condition of the card (when you open the scan of the scalloped border, you'll see how wondrously cracked and aged the paper is!) you can see why I did a double take when I noted on the backside that Joy Cox received this card in February '97 and I realized we're talking 1897!

You will have to assemble your gift. No batteries needed, but some paper, scissors and glue are in order! The top two layers were attached with little tabs of folded paper, so when displayed, the layers could be pull out for a 3-D effect. I'm going to let you make your own tabs or you may just glue your layers flat. You might not even want to use these layers together. There's just so many options and I'll leave all that to you. But here's the pieces for you to play with:
The background The deer scene The top layer I would love to see this printed in red/pink to compliment the red in scallop border and the red in the flowers ... The poem Here is an example of something I created combining the summer border with a 'hug' postcard I have. Yes, the joy of digitals -- you can manipulate and resize that border to your heart's content:)
So, as you can see, the possibilities are limited only by your imagination!
Happy Summer! Happy Winter! Happy crafting!