Poinsettia Card Tutorial

It occurred to me yesterday that I could show how I do the poinsettia flowers and the card itself for anyone who would like to have the step by step.  The only thing I dislike about paper crafting magazines is that they never give you the measurements of card pieces.  They say, "Cut two pieces of cardstock, one smaller.  Adhere the smaller piece to the larger piece..."  This is entirely unhelpful.  I don't want to use up my precious time trying to figure out the measurements if I want to get the look of a certain card.  I can't be the only one who thinks that way about these things, so I'm going to list my measurements here.

I'm using the Build a Blossom punch from Stampin' Up to make my poinsettias.  I'm actually out of red cardstock, so I decided to make a white poinsettia for this card.  I really love the way it turned out!

Here's how to do the poinsettia:

Using some kind of silicon thingie, you can very easily build your Build a Blossom flowers.  Stampin' Up sells a silicon craft mat, but you can pick up a silicon baking sheet, or use a silicon baking cup like I do here... I had bought these and found them completely worthless for making cupcakes, but they're great for little snack containers for the kids, or to divide fruit and such in bento boxes. This particular cup is torn slightly on one edge, so I appropriated it for this technique and I love it!

Punch your cardstock with the Build a Blossom punch six times for each poinsettia.  Separate out the different petal shapes.  You'll be using the long, thin pieces, large and small.

Put a dime sized dollop of hot glue on the top of your silicon thingie.  Stick the six larger petals into the dollop, letting each point go only half way into the pile of glue, as shown.

You can see that you'll have plenty of glue sticking out to put another layer, so go ahead and do it.  Using the smaller petals, and going in between the petals of your first layer, stick the second layer in.  Your first layer will shift all around, but don't worry too much about it.  Just adjust as you go and get everything looking as even as possible.

Now, stick some kind of center onto the middle of the flower.  I was using brads before, but this time I decided to use one of the paper flowers I made two days ago as my center.  I actually picked one that was too big and had to dump the jar on my desk to find a slightly smaller one that would work.  I'm saying all of this to let you know that you really do have quite a while to work before you can't stick anything else into/on the glue, so you don't have to worry about being too fast.  The dollop is rather large and takes a while to completely set.

Once the hot glue is set, pop the flower off of the silicon surface and curl the petals.  I use a colored pencil to roll the inner petals up.

I use a glue pen to roll the outer petals up.  A marker or something similar would work--you just want something with a slightly larger diameter for this part.

The thing I dislike about a lot of flower tutorials on the web, too, is that each flower takes forever.  I don't have 20 minutes to sit and make one flower for one project, so I'm happy to say that this entire process, from punching my cardstock to looking at a pretty, curly petaled flower, took me 9 minutes, including all of the time I took to take photos and dump my jar out to search for a new center and all of that.  So it would probably work out to closer to 5 minutes for the entire flower.

Now, the cool thing about this, especially for Christmas stuff, is that if you had two silicon cups, you could finish the assembly on one flower, and by the time you did your second flower, your first would be ready to pop off, and you could really get an assembly line going.  Don't curl the petals until later, when you're sitting in front of the TV, or when you're completely finished with the process.  I love these flowers SO much because they really are extremely impressive, but you spend virtually no money on them, and really very little time.





Now, here's the process for the card:

You'll need to cut your 8 1/2" x 5 1/2" piece, and score it down the middle to form your 4 1/4" x 5 1/2" card piece.  Mine is the Kraft color by Stampin' Up... I completely forget the color itself, but it's in the Neutrals collection.  It might be Crumb Cake.

The other papers are just a plain black cardstock and two pieces from a cardstock pack of fancy black and white prints that I picked up at Michael's.  The paper pieces are as follows:

1. Cut one 4" x 5 1/4" piece (the black)
2. Cut one 3 7/8" x 5 1/8" piece (the stripes)
3. Cut one 3 7/8" x 3" piece (the lacy patterned paper)
4. Cut two 3 7/8" x 1/4" strips

First, glue the black piece down.

Next, glue the striped piece on top of that.  (The 1/8" size difference creates a lovely little 1/16" border all around.)

Glue the lacy patterned piece as close to the center of your card as you can.

Rather than trying to manipulate tiny strips with glue on the back, go ahead and draw two thin strips of glue above and below the center piece.

Lay the strips on top of the glue, at the top and bottom edges of the lacy piece.  This completes your card front.  (I LOVE the way this looks, too... I'm going to be using this same design for a long time, I know it.)

Glue your completed flower or other embellishments wherever you would like them to go.  (I attach my poinsettia with more hot glue.)

Finish embellishing as desired.  So cute!  ^_^

You know, as much as I love stamping, I also really love not stamping.  This card design doesn't use any stamping or inking at all, and it makes the entire process feel much faster.

Now I'm off to do more gift toppers.  I will be posting those shortly.  I'm also getting several gift bags ready for this Christmas from cardstock boxes I'd made in previous years as storage.  I think some of these flowers will look really good on those things, too.

I LOVE being crafty at this time of year!  It makes Christmas last so much longer, I think, to be making thing months in advance.  It's lovely to be in such a giving, joyful mood for this long.  ^_^  I can't wait to get our tree up!