Merry Christmas Poinsettia

The current challenge at Christmas Card Throwdown is to use white, blue, & brown on a holiday card. I got my inspiration from a lesson on die cut inlay by Jennifer McGuire in Online Card Classes' "Holiday Card Workshop 2013."

I cut a piece of cherry wood veneer paper to 4x5.25". I laid my dies (Simon Says Stamp's "Merry Christmas" & Poppystamps "Blooming Poinsettia") on it to gauge placement. To make sure the greeting was positioned straight & in the right position, I die cut it first from a scrap of vellum. I laid that on my panel, beside the smaller poinsettia die, and taped it in place. I removed the flower die, & snugged the greeting die into the negative space on the vellum. Then I ran that through my die cutting machine. To make sure I didn't lose any pieces, I pressed a piece of yellow Frog tape to the back of my panel, over the die cut area. Then I carefully poked out all the greeting pieces--positive & negative--so they stuck onto the tape. I removed the tape from the panel, & set that aside.

Next I die cut my smaller poinsettia die from the panel. I then laid the larger die over the negative space, and die cut that. To color the pieces, I blended on Broken China & Peacock Feathers Distress Oxide inks. I also sponged on a little Tumbled Glass Distress Oxide ink to the edges of the smaller flower for highlighting. Then I put the smaller flower & the pieces left from die cutting the larger flower into a container for safe keeping.

I cut another 4x5.25" piece from white cardstock. I applied double-sided adhesive to one side, removed the release paper, and adhered my wood panel to that. I inlaid my poinsettia pieces, starting with the die cut pieces I'd cut last, then adding the smaller (inner) flower.

I colored the greeting by pressing it into my Lawn Fawn Yeti white pigment ink pad. I set that aside to dry. I think I might not have let it dry long enough, because when I tried to inlay it into place on the panel, it wouldn't stick to the exposed adhesive. No worries--liquid glue to the rescue! :) I squirted a small amount of glue where the greeting went, and pressed the die cut words into place. Finally, I added more glue into the spaces in the letters, & inlaid the die cut negative pieces. Thankfully, I didn't lose any pieces--not even the tittle! (Things don't always go that well with this technique.)

To finish the card, I went over the veins in the poinsettia with a white gel pen. I adhered my panel to a white A2 card base, flush with with the bottom & right sides. Finally, I added Simply White Nuvo Crystal Drops to the flower center, and in the upper left & lower right corners of the panel.

I'm also entering this card in 613 Avenue Create's Challenge #226: "Anything Goes." (not playing the twist)