Christmas is Coming

One of my goals for October is to complete five Christmas cards a week. Although making multiples of one design is certainly the most efficient way to meet the goal, today I have two cards that were created for specific challenges. First off is a pink poinsettia for the Christmas Kickstart Challenge whose current theme is PINK!

For several years, I’ve owned a Hero Arts set, “Color Layering Poinsettia.” The first two words of the title tell me exactly why I’ve never used it. For some reason, color layering is something I always struggle with. One of my good friends who is also a stamper loves layering and hates coloring. I’m the reverse. But I was determined to make this work, and it wasn’t quite as frustrating as I anticipated.

In fact, stamping and die cutting the poinsettias went pretty well. It was figuring out a design for the card that took some time. I finally decided on a stenciled background and used Altenew’s “Beach Towel Stripe.” It may be a summery name, but it worked out well. The inks and papers are all from Concord & 9th.

It’s almost impossible to see, but the die cut “merry” from W+9’s “Hand Lettered Holiday” is coated with glitter as are the petals of the poinsettias. I added a few pale pink pearls from AMuse which have been in my stash for years.

I’ll be adding this card to Darnell’s NBUS Challenge since I’ve never used the Hero Arts set before.

The next card was created specifically for two challenges. First the CAS Colour and Sketch Challenge:

And also for The Flower Challenge where the current challenge is to use a circle.

I had already stamped and embossed this poinsettia cluster from Waffle Flower’s “Poinsettia,” so it was just a matter of coloring it with Copics and assembling the card according to the sketch.

Metallics are so hard to photograph! The gold circle and thin border are a beautiful gold shimmer paper, and the sentiment is also embossed in gold. It’s a little easier to see here:

It’s not often that a sketch inspires me, but I loved this one.