Hello crafty friends – yes it’s another Christmas card today! I’m using Julie Hickey’s ‘poinsettia’ stamp & die set for the first time this year (hopefully not the last!) It struck me as perfect for the theme of ‘bright and bold’ at this week’s Inspire.Create challenge, as well as Addicted to CAS‘s request for cards that are colourful.

I started by stamping the poinsettia onto a square of white card, with a second one on a spare piece. I coloured the images using a waterbrush and ‘festive berries’ Distress Oxide (I added a little ‘hickory smoke’ to the red ink for the areas I wanted to be a bit darker to give the effect of shading). I then cut the inner bracts (not petals!) on the second piece using the matching die.

Now at this point it all looks nice and tidy – what you can’t see are the other pieces where I managed to get smudges of red ink on the card topper! Never one to give up, I fussy cut those out and made them into additional cards – result! Back to the main one – I attached the card topper to a 6×6 card blank and then glued the die cut bracts onto it.

I finished by adding some yellow resin dots from my stash into the centre of the poinsettia and above it, with a couple of Claritystamp’s word stickers as the final touch.

Now in case you’re wondering what I’m on about with ‘bracts’, longer term followers of my bloggy ramblings might recall I did a bit of research on poinsettias last year. That’s when I discovered that what everyone thinks are the red petals are actually leaves and are called bracts. The flowers are very small and are grouped within the yellow structures found in the centre of each leaf bunch. So now you know!