Needles and more needles!

Happy Tuesday everyone! I'm back with a card I made for Heather's challenge to me this week. She's having computer issues so sent me an email with the challenge details; here's what she wrote:

"Your challenge for this week - "Needles". - You can interpret this any way you want e.g. pine needles, using needles to do sewing, piercing etc."

What a great theme and I have a lot of pine branches from which to choose!! Here's my card:

Supplies: Paper - Neenah Solar White, the Paper Studio Old World Winter (plaid) and Christmas glitter, Lawn Fawn Peace Joy Love (green plaid), Basic Grey Juniper Berry (red base for the bow's glittery filigree)

Stamps - Hero Arts CL889 Holiday Pine Branches (two styles of branches), CL343 Holiday Sayings (sentiment), 

CL474 Special Wishes (stamped background wreath)

Ink - Tim Holtz Distress Inks (Candied Apple, Cracked Pistachio, Iced Spruce, Evergreen Bough, Pine Needles)

Dies - Hero Arts DI147 Pine Branch Frame Cuts, Simon Says Stamp Bundle of Stitched Shapes (large stitched rectangle), My Favorite Things Blueprints 20 (smaller stitched rectangle) & 21 (banner), 

Creative Expressions craft dies CED1408 Classic  and CED 1211 Filigree 3D Itty Bitty Bows

I started out stamping a base wreath with Cracked Pistachio; this wreath is more leafy than piney but I added stamped pines all the way around using one of the small branches from the Holiday Pine Branches clear set. I used Iced Spruce ink for this step. I then die cut the panel into a stitched rectangle. A blob of misplaced ink toward the bottom made me die cut a partial stitched rectangle in the red/green plaid to cover it! Then I stamped and die cut fifteen of the four-pronged branch using Pine Needles, Evergreen Bough and Iced Spruce ink (5 of each). I curled them a bit before popping them onto the base wreath using glue dots. I die cut a classic bow with red paper and a filigree bow with red glitter paper. The filigree by itself looks beautiful but I didn't want to see through any gaps here. Assembled the bow and popped it with a glue dot onto the wreath. Layered the panel onto a larger stitched rectangle and adhered to a top fold A2 card. I die cut a pierced (is that bonus points, Heather?) banner and stamped with the sentiment. Added it to the card with foam tape. Done - another challenge met! Thanks to Heather for throwing it down this week, despite all her computer issues. 

Since this one has peace/joy/love on it (a past Merry Monday challenge), I'm adding it to Lori's Summer Link-up. Won't be long before Merry Monday will be back with new challenges - until then, I hope you've drawn inspiration from ones Heather and I have posted.

Thanks for stopping!