Perfect Poinsettias

Last post of the month is the Mission Christmas and this month’s offerings are made using Spellbinders Holiday Blooms dies.  They’re not quick makes but if you’re in the mood for cutting, colouring and assembling, making them is a very relaxing, mindful activity.

To begin, I dry embossed the panels using the Holiday Floral Swag embossing folder.  For the green one, I dabbed the green ink pad on the inside of the top before embossing it to give a tone-on-tone look.  

I die-cut lots of the foliage and flowers from coloured card.  If you can’t be bothered to add colour, you can just use coloured card, but I like the additional interest a little variation in colour adds to the design.  For the gold elements, I didn’t want a mirror finish so I used Red Gold and Light Gold from the Gansai Tambi Starry Colours on a piece of card, applying 2 coats to get good colour.  After die-cutting and colouring, the elements were assembled.

After playing around until I was happy with the arrangements, I took a quick snap on my phone as a reminder, before attaching the pieces to the panel, some flat and others on thin foam tape pieces.  The panel was mounted on a dark green card base and finished with a gold heat-embossed sentiment.

The first two cards are similar - I think it’s almost impossible to create two exactly the same anyway!  The second card is rather fuller.

For the green panel, I used a white card base and rubbed my gold ink pad along the edges of the front.  The sentiment, from Taylored Expressions Modern Holiday Greetings, was gold heat-embossed and cut out using a stitched rectangular die-cut.

These were enjoyable to make and make my Christmas card total up to 5!