Merry Christmas Poinsettia

 Hello Crafters!

How are you? I'm fabulous. 

I  had a night off. It was wonderful! I got to make dinner for my boys. After I laid on the couch with my husband and snuggled with my little bucket. I miss them so much when I have a long stretch of work! The clear highlight of the night was Nathan (aka bucket) using his toy wrench to try and "tighten" or "loosen" Molly's (the dog) paws. Whenever, she would pull away he would grab her paw, look at her like "hey, you're paw is going fall off if you don't let me tighten it back up. Really, I'm helping you." and continue turning his play wrench around her paw. Fortunately, Molly has the best temperament ever and humors him quite often.    

The only wrinkle in my night. It snowed. I can no longer deny the winter. I know I live in Northeast Ohio. I know it snows every single winter. I don't have to like it. Thankfully, I also had my snow tires put on yesterday so at least that's done. 

Since I had snow on my mind when I saw the current Fusion Card Challenge I couldn't help but channel the inspiration photo into winter. I'm also entering it into Hero Art's Monthly Challenge: Anything Goes Holiday Today is the last day!!

Plus it gave me another excuse to use my Hero Art's Peace Poinsettias. I really do love that stamp set. 

Things got out of hand with this card. I wanted to cut a window with the poinsettia over hanging the window. Didn't happen. Then I wanted to make it a one layer card. The stenciling went bad and that didn't happen. Ultimately, I was left with a huge flat square and not a single clue as to what to do with it. Awesome. 

I was too invested at this point to let it go. I told myself I would make it work. I WOULD MAKE IT WORK!! 

So let's briefly discuss the making of said enormous square. I stamped the flower and leaves in light inks and then masked them. I rubbed on distress inks. I colored the flower white. I jumped up and down that I managed to color a white flower. After the celebration I realized the distress ink background wasn't bold enough. I went in with copics. Much better. I masked the flowers and leaves again. I laid down Basic Grey/Hero Art's Leaf and Flourish to mimic the design on the cake and added Ranger's Texture paste. I didn't feather the paste enough an it was too thick so there was no gradation to the rest of the card. Boo. I decided to trim it into a square. I cursed myself for trimming it into a square. I finally decided to try cutting the flower out with my exacto knife and popping it up with dimensional adhesive. It was still  a ginormous square but at least now it didn't look so flat. I added some stardust stickles in dots to the background and the flower center. The sentiment is from Hero Art's Christmas Tree Stamp & Cut die. 

All and all it was a rough ride but I got there :) 

If you interested in anything I used just click the links. It will take you to the A2ZScrapbooking store where everything is in stock. You can use the code KellyL15 to save 15% off your $25.00 purchase. Got to save those pennies where ever you can!!

Thanks for visiting!!

XoXo