Painted Poinsettias

Happy Monday, friends! I just received my holiday orders last week, and I’m so excited to dig into the new products and papers! For today’s card, I used one of my new favorite stamps sets and of course my favorite Basis Cardstock to create a post-office-friendly holiday card.

I went a little backward with this one; the first thing I did was to die cut a rectangle (Double Stitched Rectangles, MFT Stamps) out of a piece of Basis Cardstock in Green. I usually leave this step until last to trim my edges. The reason I did this first is that I was having trouble with placement of the stamps, and having the rectangle already cut out made it a lot easier to find where my sentiment was supposed to go.

I stamped the poinsettia images (Merry Poinsettia, Studio Katia) and sentiment at the same time, using watermark ink (Nuvo ClearMark or Versamark work well), then added a few leaves with an acrylic block to fill in the gaps.

On an extra piece of green cardstock, I stamped a large poinsettia as well. Next, I heat embossed the design with gold embossing powder (Princess Gold, Ranger Industries).

To add color to the poinsettias, I broke out a gouache pan set (Pelikan brand) that I had in my stash. Gouache is very similar to watercolor, except that if you lay it on thick, it will dry opaque. That’s what I needed for this card since I was working on dark colored paper. Basis cardstock is not made for water-based paint, but it still accepts the color rather well, so I opted for a detail water brush to control the flow of water a little better while I was painting.

Using the water brush, I worked the paint pan until it was kind of thick, then carefully and quickly painted the design, adding a little more water here and there so the flowers and leaves wouldn't be a completely solid color. I tried not to go over my embossed lines because the gouache tends to stain the embossing powder. But, a little mess won’t hurt - you can clean up the lines with a damp paper towel after the paint dries. Just remember to dab gently, don’t wipe!

After everything was dry, I fussy cut out the extra poinsettia and added it to the lower left corner of my panel with a foam square. Then, I laid the whole piece into a small box and spritzed it with shimmer spritz, since the gouache dried very matte and needed a little sparkle.

To put it all together, I cut an A2 sized card base from Basis Cardstock in Red and adhered a die cut rectangle of Mirrisparkle Glitter Cardstock in Gold to the front. Then, I lined up my painted piece just below the top right corner of the glitter cardstock and attached that with foam squares also.

You can create several of these cards at once using a stamp positioner such as a MISTI. Use your favorite stamp set and pick up the Red and Green Basis cardstock in the store. It’s on sale this month along with all the white cardstocks!

As always, thanks for coming by!

❤️  Niki • cardstoq.com • @cardstoq (on Instagram, Pinterest & Twitter)