Embroidered Book Cover - Front finished except for the Stranded Gold

Well - I've finished that final leaf. And she's a happy lookin' leaf - since I'm happy to have finished the front cover, except for the work in the DMC stranded gold, which is wending it's way towards me in the post. (Drat Christmas delays)

The leaf is in the same colours as the similiarly coloured leaf further down. The scan shows the colours better in the lower leaf (tho still not very well). The top one looks *really* dark, which it isn't.

In doing that leaf, I *had* to use colours I had already used.
I couldn't introduce a new colour at that stage. It would have been too many colours and started to look ....disjointed.
I couldn't use blue because there is already a lot of blue on that side (the right).
Couldn't use at light colour as an outer colour, because then there would have been 3 elements at the top with light coloured outlines (creating a 'group' where I didn't want one). Dial up speeds are driving me mad.
Yeah - and pink would have been too much with the orange poppy and the pink carnation.

So, in short, I didn't have any choice in using that dark red (and having it on the outside)

Of course, if I hadn't changed the design part way through, or had, and coloured it all in in pencil, I could have given myself more colour choices in the colour arrangements. I was lucky - I might have been stuck with using a colour I felt didn't work for the last few elements.

Once day I'll colour up a design before doing it. Promise