City Crafters Challenge - I'm Guest Designer!

I'm so excited to be Guest Designing this week at City Crafters Challenge - week 237!  What an honor.  Thanks Kirsty!

The challenge this week is Christmas CAS - make a one-layer, clean and simple holiday card.
Here is the beautiful inspiration photo that Kirsty has provided.

 Love this photo.  Don't you?  I had a few ideas that might work.  But it took a day or so until I came up with something I really liked.  You know.  One of those "aha" ideas!

Here's what I created.

I used a light green card stock for my card so that I would have a richer background than a white or cream card stock could provide.  I didn't want a sharp contrast between my stamped pine needles and the background.

This stamp set is one that I bought recently and I've used it so many times already.  Love it!  I stamped the pine needles using 5 different shades of green and it turned out just as I had imagined.  So that the sentiment wouldn't get lost in that busy background, I heat embossed it with Early Espresso embossing powder.

Thanks so much for stopping in to take a look.  You can follow the link HERE or at the top of my post, to check the inspiration from the Design Team at the CCC blog and to play along.

Again, thank you Kirsty for the opportunity to Guest Design this week!

Supply list ~
card stock: pistachio pudding (Stampin' Up!)
ink: pear pizzazz, mellow moss, old olive, always artichoke, soft suede, baked brown sugar (SU), Versamark
stamps: ornamental pine (SU), wet paint holiday (PTI)
other: early espresso embossing powder (SU), heat tool