STAMPlorations December Challege

Hello!  After taking off for several days battling a terrible bug (the internal kind, no giant, radiation ridden bugs running around this house lol!), I'm back to making cards.  I made this one for the STAMPloration December Challenge.  I really do love the challenges over at STAMPlorations but I never seem to have enough time to play along with everything I'd like too.  I guess there are worse problems to have, right?  But I loved the sketch this month and immediately had an idea for a card using it.

I knew I wanted to use the tree stamps from STAMPlorations Oh, Christmas Tree stamp set on my card.  I bought these stamps a long time ago but hadn't inked them up yet.  Then as I was thinking about what to use as a background for the trees my mail came, along with a new stamp from Concord & 9th, the Tree Ring background stamp, and it was one of those great, serendipitous moments, hee hee.  The line of stars down the side are from the very versatile Star Scribbles from PTI.  The sentiment is also from Oh, Christmas Tree.  I used Brushed Corduroy distress ink to stamp the tree ring, and Pine Needles for the trees and sentiment.  I embossed the stars in gold first, but they didn't stand out enough for my taste so I stamped them again, slightly offset, in white.  The white on the trees is also embossing, there's a teeny tiny little speckle stamp in the Star Scribbles set and I used that.  Really great for getting spots right where you want them!  I also did some random ink splattering with white and gold paint. 

I really enjoyed playing along with this challenge and hope to be able to do so more often in the future!