Jingle Belles - Mele Kalikimaka

If you knew that was Hawaiian for Merry Christmas bonus points for you!  But what's that got to do with this challenge?  Well, you know in Hawaii, summer or winter, there are flowers.  And lot's of us like to bring flowers into the house at the holidays.  So the JB's asked us to make cards with flowers. 

I am guilty of reading, or I should say not reading their post thoroughly.  I saw the word "traditional" and assumed that that meant they wanted traditional Christmas flowers and traditional Christmas colors. Well you know what happens when you assume - you spend 2 nights working on a card with the wrong criteria in mind.  

I am somewhat happy with the way this turned out.  Shortly after I skimmed their post I found myself in AC Moore shopping for something outside the stamping realm and I happened upon the flower stickers like the one on the card.  The AC Moore in Manahawkin is an outlet store now which means that everything in the store is at least 40% off (and they say they get new inventory all the time).  So after I found what I was originally looking for, I didn't mind a quick turn about the store and of course, some things jumped into my basket screaming "Buy me!  I'm 40% off!"  These stickers screamed very loud.  They whispered in my ear that they would be perfect for the JB challenge this week and a lightbulb went off in my head (or maybe it was a flash of sanity after hearing voices). But anyway...........I pictured the background stamp that I had at home with the poinsettia's on it and thought I could pair them up with that.  

Of course when I took another look at the background stamp I was stymied as to how I would stamp it.  I wanted the flowers red and the leaves green and not necessarily all outlined in black or gold. There was another flash of light (and not from the eye with the recently diagnosed retina problem thankfully) and I remembered that I had some green embossing powder that might just work.  And I think it did work after I got the value that I wanted in the watercoloring.  

I hadn't used my Colorburst powders in a while so I decided to take them out.  Two shade of red and two shade of green. I started with the lighter shades and attempted to add some highlights with the darker ones but the green embossing on the leaves was getting lost in the light green watercolor.  So I went back with the darker red over the flowers several more times to try to get them closer to the sticker.  And I did several more coats of the darker green which made the embossing more visible.

The centers were quickly done with some lemon powder and then I used a VersaMark pen on the edges to be able to add the gold highlights to that red flocked paper.  I even ran my gold WOS pen around the very edge of the stamped panel.  

The last touch was adding the gold twine under the sticker.  

So now that I've reread the challenge I am definitely going to put another card together using a stamp that came in the mail today.  It was such a depressing day, but getting new toys in the mail has helped.

Why don't you click here to see all the other wonderful floral creations.