Poinsettias in bloom

The moment I saw the new Festive Poinsettia stamp, stencil, and die sets from Alex Syberia, I was in love. The Festive Poinsettia has to be the prettiest poinsettia stamp image I have seen to date and I had to have it! Once my order arrived I started thinking about how best to use everything. Though the accompanying stencil set is amazing and I have plans to use it soon, I am a colorer at heart and I knew I had to create my first card combining Copic coloring with paper piecing, which is my new favorite technique.

I started by stamping the poinsettia image twice on a 5″x7″ piece of Copic X-press It card stock. This is a large stamp and I knew I wanted to get more than one image so I went with the larger card size. I am learning to become more comfortable leaving the safety of the A2 world. I then stamped two poinsettia images on Gina K Masking Magic paper, fussy cut out the images, and then masked off both stamps so I could do a little ink blending. I knew from the beginning I wanted to keep this card pretty monochromatic so that the reds in the petals can really pop, s I softly ink blended the background in Catherine Pooler’s Pebble. Now it was time to color.

For the outer petals I went with a natural blend of dark red tones, R39, R37, and R35, and I used BV23 to under paint the red to show shadow. For the topmost leaves I went just a shade lighter using R37, R35, and R43 with BV20 as my under paint color. For the leaves, I really thought about going with greens, but I stuck to my guns and kept everything else grayscale using N5, N3, N1, and N0.

Now… paper piecing time. I went through my stash of pattern paper, and I found several sheets of candy cane striped paper from last years Stampin’ Up Christmas catalogue. I pulled out the red and white stripe, stamped a poinsettia image, and went about creating folds and shadows using N2, N1, and N0. Later, I went through and fussy cut six petals and glued them strategically throughout the flower’s circumference.

Last up, the sentiment. I actually tried several options including both the Merry Christmas in Script and Block print from the Festive Poinsettia Stamp Set. I also tried Seasons Greetings from the companion Christmas Sentiments set also just released by Alex Syberia. After trying out several combinations including white embossing powder on black card stock, and black ink on white… and asking a few girlfriends for their input… I settled on the scripted “Merry” in white embossing powder on black cardstock with a black ink block “Christmas” Copic-colored with R39. As decisive as I was with the direction of the card, sentiments are HARD!!! It took options and a village to get it right.

I decided to cut down the card to 5/8ths of an inch from both the bottom and right side (PAINFUL after all of the coloring), and I then matted it to a black mat measuring 4.5″x 6.5,” and then glued it to a white 5″ x 7″ card base. I finished everything off with some matte silver pearls from PinkFresh studios and my lovely card was complete.

I hope you like it. This card is a new favorite of mine.