thankful for all...

 Hello!  Got some time to make a card today and of course I had to make a card using my two favorite challenges:  Color Throwdown and Freshly Made Sketches!  I have been seeing lots of beautiful cards make with poinsettia images and dies and that inspired me to get out one of my favorite poinsettia stamp sets to use for my card.  That stamp set is Festive Poinsettia from Altenew.  I love the realistic looking poinsettia in this stamp set.  I stamped the image on Canson watercolor paper with Vintage Photo distress ink.  I then carefully wet different bracts of the poinsettia with water and watercolored with the dark red color from my Kuretake Gansai Tambi watercolor set.  I made sure to color one bract and then color another that wasn't close to it.  This way I could make sure that the colors didn't bleed too much.  The Vintage Photo mixed with the dark red to give it a more burgundy color, as well.   Once one bract was mostly dry I would add an additional layer of color. The remaining bracts were just wet with water and then I pulled out the Vintage Photo to give the rest of the bracts a kraft/cream color.   The stems and the actual flowers of the image were colored in the same way.  Most people think that the red, white, pink or cream colored bracts are the flower, but they aren't.  The flowers in the poinsettia are actually really tiny and look like what might be the center of a flower.    Once the image was mostly dry I die cut it with the matching die.  I then die cut some red cardstock with a rectangle die and tore off the bottom.   I die cut a piece of the Canson watercolor paper with a large rectangle die and then stamped the sentiment from Festive Poinsettia with the Vintage Photo ink.  I splattered the large rectangle and the poinsettia with black watercolor and let them dry.  When they were fully dry I adhered the red cardstock piece and the poinsettia to the large rectangle and then adhered everything to a kraft cardstock base.   Also adding this to the Simon Says Stamp Wednesday challenge of fun with dies.

Thanks for stopping by and have a wonderful day!