Single Layer Petite Poinsettia Card with Video Tutorial by Yana Smakula

Hello, Sunny Studio fans! This is Yana Smakula and I am very excited to be a guest designer for the Sunny Studio Stamps blog and YouTube channel showing how to stamp a one layer mail friendly Holiday Card featuring a layered poinsettias on deep blue background. 

I have created a video Tutorial that you can watch in on YouTube HERE.

I started working on my project by stamping several poinsettias onto white cardstock panel cut to 4 ¼ x 5 ½”. I used beautiful images from the Petite Poinsettias stamp set and stamped them in 3 shades of red. This stamp set is not only well designed, but also well labeled. Each image is labeled with a number and a letter, there’s also a great layering chart available on the Sunny Studio website that will tell you how you need to position your images for perfect alignment, be sure to print it and store it with your stamp to always have it on hand.

I added leaves next each of my flower (stamped them in 2 shades of green) and stamped flower centers in yellow and brown. Poinsettias come in many different colors so it might be a good idea to stamp these in pink, or light gray to make them appear white, light blue or even green. Don’t limit yourself to just traditional red and green. 

If you look closely you'll notice that my flowers are not perfectly aligned and that's okay. Little imperfections make our project that much more special, don't stress if you can't get perfectly align your images, they will look beautiful no matter what.

After my stamping was done I moved onto coloring the background. The photo of my card shows that the card itself is done on black cardstock. The trick here is simple - I did my stamping on white (using dye ink), dye ink won't show up on black, so in order to get these vibrant colors I had to do stamping on white and use a coloring medium and color the background around the flowers black or deep blue. If you aren't a fan of a dark background like this you can either color it light gray or keep it white. I know not everybody likes black especially for the Holiday cards, so remember there are always options to go with another color.

There are many different coloring mediums that can be used to color the background. You can use markers, like a black Copic markers, but make sure the ink you used to stamp your images will not bleed from coming in contact with the alcohol marker. 

I've been enjoying coloring with colored pencils and if you follow my blog and YouTube channel you've probably seen several coloring videos using pencils. While I usually use my pencils to color the object and do my coloring on a dark background I took a different  approach for this card and colored the background.

I picked 2 pencils - Black and Dark Indigo. These are Polychromos pencils from Faber Castell, you can also use Prismacolor pencils for this kind of coloring. I first outlined images with a black pencil and next colored the white space using a dark blue. 

Finally, I heat embossed “Sending Season's' Greetings” sentiment from the Festive Greetings stamp set from Sunny Studio in white embossing powder onto bottom part of my panel and added a number of white snowflakes from the Christmas Home set in between the flowers to imitate snow. I adhered my stamped and colored panel onto an S2 side folding card base made out of white cards. 

I wanted to thank Sunny Studio and Mendi for inviting me to be a guest designer. It’s been tons of fun! I hope you feel inspired to create and will give this idea a try. I'd love for you to tag me and Sunny Studio on social media if you make something inspired by this tutorial.

Have fun stamping! 

Sunny Studio Supplies:

Christmas Home Stamps Shop at: Sunny Studio

Festive Greetings Stamps Shop at: Sunny Studio

Petite Poinsettias Stamps Shop at: Sunny Studio

Other Supplies:

• Neenah 110LB Solar White Cardstock
• Simon Says Stamp Ink in: Rose Apple, Lipstick Red, Merlot, Green Apple, Evergreen, Sunshine, Dark Chocolate. 
• Faber Castell Polychromos Pencils in Black & Dark Indigo
• Versamark Watermark Ink Pad
• Anti Static Powder Tool
• Hero Arts White Embossing Powder
• Heat Tool
• Adhesive