Pine and Poinsettias- Quick and Easy

The SCS Color Challenge on Tuesday was to use red, chocolate brown and artichoke green.  I thought this was the perfect opportunity to pull out my sets with poinsettias, pinecones, and pine sprigs and make a quick and easy old-fashioned Christmas card. Well the truth is the poinsettia image is not a poinsettia at all and can be used in many ways.  It is from a retired SU set called Paint Prints and one I will never part with. 

I started by stamping the flower image five or six times around the top part of the paper and then stamped the pine image several times over top of the flower. I cut a quick flower mask and masked one of the center flower images and then then stamped the pinecone with chocolate craft ink.  I repeated this two more times as I wanted the pine cones to look like they were coming out from under the poinsettia petals.  I then stamped full pinecone images a few more times over top of the flower images around the outer border and then embossed with clear embossing powder. I stamped the individual leaf image several times with artichoke, stamped the flower center and sentiment with craft ink and them embossed with gold embossing powder.  My happy mistake is that the green ink wasn’t totally dry and a faint whisper of gold powder stuck to them as well giving a nice rich feeling to the arrangement. The pinecones and leaves looked so pretty and shiny but made the red flower petals look dead in comparison so I decided to lightly pat my versa pad over the whole arrangement and emboss with clear embossing powder. This made the whole card pop to life.  I added the twill across the top corner and attached to the card base.  This sounds like lots of work but the whole project only took about fifteen minutes which is really fast for me compared to my scene cards. This card could be easily mass produced to send for holiday greetings.

Stamps:  SU Paint Prints, Peaceful Wishes, Seasons Greetings-all retired, Rubbernecker Pine Set-Winter Holiday Collection   Paper:  Artichoke, Red, White    Ink:  Fired Brick, Artichoke, Chocolate Chip Craft    Accessories:  Gold and Clear Embossing Powder, Versa, Twill