Spellbinders Christmas Bird Poinsettia for Time Out Challenge #303

Happy Saturday.

Once again the talented design team across at Time Out Challenges have provided us with a fabulous inspiration photo to use to create a card. The great thing about these inspiration photos is that so many different things can inspire different people, so you end up with a wonderfully diverse group of creations. For my card I used the Christmas Bird Poinsettia dies from Spellbinders.

I was inspired by several things: The gorgeous yellows, saffrons, creams, coppers, greens, deep teal and plum colors of the gorgeous traditional clothing. Simply stunning. I was also drawn to the sparkle and shine. So, I knew multiple of those colors and elements would end up on my card!

I knew I wanted to make a Christmas card, so I had to add a pop of brighter red to my card. Here’s a sneak peek where you can see the saffron, cream, peacock, deep plum/burgundy, copper and green:

I just love that silly bird with his Santa hat :-). It just makes me smile. As does all the copper touches on him and on the leaves.

Here’s the fabulous challenge photo:

Absolutely gorgeous! Before I get to my card I wanted to talk about traditional Indian dress. I’ve been lucky to visit India several times in my life, and attend a couple of Indian weddings. I have always been amazed by the beautiful fabrics, the incredible colors and sheer beauty of traditional dress. I remember driving down the road of a village about a hundred miles from Mumbai and seeing a local villager walking down the middle of the road carrying water in a bucket. She was dressed in the most stunning green and gold saree and, even though she was doing something as mundane as carrying water, her beautiful saree, and flowing, shining hair made her look like a piece of beautiful art. I will never forget how beautiful she looked.

Anyway, back to my card!

I die-cut all the elements from green, teal, burgundy, saffron, copper, peacock and red cardstock. I then built the bird and topped him off with his Santa hat. I then built the poinsettia and clustered all the leaves around it and the candy cane.

I added a sentiment from my new favorite Christmas sentiment set, Elegant Christmas 2, from Waffle Flower and the whole thing was built onto a piece of Alabaster cardstock from Spellbinders.

Here’s my card:

And here’s a closeup of the focal image:

Such gorgeous detail on these dies! I cut three layers for the Poinsettia and used two shades of green and a peacock for the leaves. I used Copper for my touches of shimmer and shine as I thought it fit the color scheme better than gold would have done.

I know the design team across at Time Out would love it if you played along!

I’ll be back tomorrow with another card. In the meantime, warm hugs and prayers for those of you who need a little lift tonight.

Card recipe:

• Dies: Christmas Bird Poinsettia – Spellbinders
• Sentiment: Elegant Christmas 2 – Waffle Flower

Hugs