poinsettias...

Hello!  I have a couple of cards to share featuring one of my favorite plants... the poinsettia!  I just love them and have been known to keep my poinsettias around way past Christmas.   One time I was able to keep one going for over a year!  Anyway my first card features my most favorite poinsettia stamp ever... Christmas Star from Penny Black.  This stamp is a wood mounted stamp from 2010.  To me it is the perfect blend of a modern stylized poinsettia and what one actually looks like in real life.  Because it is wood mount and I have not decided to remove it from it's wood block you have to make sure you ink it up really well because you only have one chance at getting it right!   It is even harder when you are stamping on watercolor paper!   I stamped the image using Antique Linen distress ink on Canson watercolor paper and then colored the image with Festive Berries, Scattered Straw and Gathered Twigs distress inks.  I added in the veins on all the leaves with a Candied Apple distress maker and the centers of the flowers (they are the little dots in the center!) with a Scattered Straw distress marker.   When the image was fully dry I carefully added a wash of Scattered Straw.  You can't really see it in the photo, but it looks really pretty in real life.   The sentiment (from an Ellen Hutson stamp set) was stamped in VersaMark watermark ink and then heat embossed with Ranger gold embossing powder.  I trimmed it down on each long side and then adhered it to a card base that had strips of red glitter cardstock adhered to it on each side.   I think I will add this one to the current Time Out challenge as it works perfectly with the colors in the inspiration photo as well as the holiday theme.  Compensated affiliate links used where possible at no cost to you.

The second card is for the current Altenew inspiration challenge.  I also watercolored this image using distress ink.  When I saw the inspiration photo and the color palette I knew that I wanted to try coloring a poinsettia with a variegated color of cream and pink.  I stamped the image from the Altenew Festive Poinsettia stamp set with Antique Linen ink on watercolor paper and then covered each of variegated leaves with a wash of Scattered Straw.  As each leaf began to dry somewhat I can in with Worn Lipstick distress ink to get the variation in color.   It was tough when I got to the smaller leaves trying to keep the separation of the leaves, but overall I like how the image turned out.  I colored bottom leaves with Forest Moss distress ink.  Once it was totally dry I splattered on some additional Forest Moss and die cut it with the matching die.  I created a background by wetting some watercolor paper and then adding a wash of Scattered Straw and then dabbing on some Worn Lipstick.  When the piece was fully dry I splattered on some Forest Moss.   The piece was die cut with a Spellbinders classic square die and some patterned paper from a Tim Holtz 8x8 Christmas paper pad with a smaller Spellbinders classic square die.  Off white cardstock was die cut with an AJVD rectangle die and then I adhered the squares and determined where the sentiments would go.  They were stamped with VersaFine Clair Nocturne and then I adhered the poinsettia with foam dimensionals.  Compensated affiliate links used where possible at no cost to you.