A Rose by the name of Poppy

Hi Crafty Friends

Here is a card I made ages ago, but decided not to use for the club because the lining up the stamping took too long. But that was before we had the MISTI.
Layered stamps were just coming in, and I was please to get some bargain poppies at a show. They were a bargain because they were proto-types and when I got them home I found the layer that made the lines was rather thick, and hard to align, so I drew my own lines in. I liked the look, so I stamped the poppy shapes twice in different colours to get a blend, then drew in the lines. Then I stamped the poppies again with Versamark and embossed them in clear ink.
Then I brushed on the background colour and stamped on random patterns.

And here's another version, not made into a card yet

Hurray for the MISTI. It made accurate repeated stamping a doddle. The only thing was, I only had two poppies and I needed three. Luckily I had an Altenew layering stamp set, free with a magazine. It was a rose, but as I was drawing on my own petals, it was pretty easy to turn it into a poppy. So you might have spotted the big poppy in the foreground of the club version, is the Altenew rose in disguise.

For my original card, I was lucky to find a scrap of paper which matched my colour scheme. The only paper I had for the club was a bit plainer, so folks stamped over it to add more interest to the background (unlike the one you can see here).

It was fun and good to see all the variations. The only thing was towards the end we ran out of embossing powder so I started a new pot - which didn't work properly at all!! Does anyone know if embossing powder goes off? Does it have shelf life, or should it be stored in a particular way?
I need to know - I have a lot of embossing powder which may be rotting away as I type.

Happy Crafting
Jan x