Pretty Paper Poinsettias are a Pain in the Patootie!

But, they sure are beautiful when you make 'em!
I officially LOVE this card! But, I wouldn't want to make 20 of them - LOL! Read to the end to see why....

Welcome to Wednesday - I hope you are having a great week in stampingland. I've been spending lots of time in the studio getting ready for my craft show on Saturday morning. Hey, if you are in the area, come out and see me at the Manassas Volunteer Fire Department in Old Town Manassas. It goes from 8 am - 1 pm and it's a mix of crafters and vendors. I've been making cards, note card packages, gift tags and ornaments to sell and I'll have a few other special things with me as well. You just have to come see!

Now, on to the card story....
At WOW Christmas Card class Friday, Carol made the comment that the Petals A Plenty textured background would look great if we had a poinsettia stamp to coordinate with it. Well....SU! does have a gorgeous poinsettia stamp in the Christ is Born stamp set, which I just happen to own! (I know, insert surprised face here!) I've rarely used it though, yep, another surprised face, and on Monday I decided to get my creative mojo going by coming up with a card using those two elements.
And I really, really LOVE it!

To create this beauty, I ran a piece of Very Vanilla cardstock through the Big Shot with the Petals A Plenty texture folder. Then I sponged on some Champagne Mist Shimmer paint to make it glow. This layer was mounted on a piece of Bravo Burgundy which was adhered to a folded Soft Suede card base.
The greeting was inked first with Gold Encore ink for the top portion, then I used a Bravo Burgundy Stampin' Write Marker for the bottom verse. I used my Heat Tool and Gold Embossing Powder to finish this part of the card. It was then mounted on a piece of Bravo Burgundy cardstock and popped up on Stampin' Dimensionals above the texture background.

I then took the poinsettia stamp and inked it first with Pretty in Pink ink then used a Sponge Dauber to add a bit of Bravo Burgundy ink to the edges. I love the look of variegated poinsettias, especially the pink and white ones. We decorated the church with them when we were married almost 18 years ago. It was beautiful, but I digress....
The center of the stamp was inked with Gold Encore ink and then I used my Heat Tool to emboss it. What's really cool is that when I heated the flower, I didn't realize that some of the Gold Embossing Powder I'd used had stuck to the pink flower area. But serendipity happened and it turned out so cool! Look, can you see it in this picture?

Nah, probably not, but trust me, it is way cool in real life!
So, I made two of the flowers and used my Bone Folder to curl the petals AFTER I cut them out with my Paper Snips (this is why I would not want to make 20 of them! I hate to hand cut anything!) Once the petals were curled, I used some SNAIL to adhere them together and they were mounted on the card front with two stacked Stampin' Dimensionals.

And, since the outside was so pretty, I HAD to decorate the inside too, so I took the poinsettia stamp and huffed on it, reactivating the remaining ink from earlier. I then stamped it twice in the lower left corner. The greeting was inked with Bravo Burgundy and stamped perfectly straight using my Stamp-A-Ma-Jig! (Patti, are you listening? :) )

I really hope you like this one - I'm just grinning at how it turned out and I have Carol to thank for the great idea! Keep 'em coming stampers!

See you back here tomorrow with another project idea....
~~Robin