A bouquet of Poinsettias for Polka Doodles and Crafty Emma

Hi peeps!   I finally made a start on some Christmas cards having been inspired by two fabulous play days - one with best matey Julie on Friday and then Julie and I went to the lovely Alex's for more fun crafting on Saturday.  What a fabulous time we had!
Previously I had made only one card and with so many to make, I really needed to come up with a simple design with which I could make multiple cards.  I think I finally cracked it after hours of trying all sorts of different things.
I used a new Marianne Design punch and embossing folder for the cream background.  It's fabulous!  It embosses and die cuts at the same time.  I added a Marianne Design poinsettia flower (the centre of which is actually a separate punch because I always struggle to get the Marianne stamens out of the die) and an SU sentiment "Merry" cut with an SU tiny tag punch. I'm not sure of the make of the "Christmas" sentiment but I made one with an SU lable punch and one with a Nestie lable punch and used the SU word window punch for both.  On one card I used a piece of pre-printed ribbon. 

These cards are not exactly quick to make because they each take several runs through my Big Shot - one for the cream background which also needs to be cut down to size afterwards, one to cut the flowers, one to cut the leaves and another two for the embossing and then the sentiment framing needed cutting and the flowers needed curving and the Merry needed punching but they are simple in design and I can make them and watch TV at the same time!  Something I can't do if I'm colouring.   I'm planning on doing snowflakes and mistletoe too so watch this space...

I am entering my cards into the challenge at Polka Doodles - who want "handmade flowers" and at CES where the theme is "seeing red".