Winter Foliage

With each release, Gina K Designs has a "One Free with Three" set. This month, the free set is "Winter Foliage." The illustrations in this set are just so lifelike and detailed. Really fun to work with, and in particular, I think this set is great for masculine cards. 

I really did my best to channel Kurtis with this set... I wanted something clean, and cozy feeling.  I selected my color palette based off of this scrap of ribbon from Making Memories.  The ribbon was a near perfect match to Kiwi Kiss and I used Close to Cocoa and Chocolate Chip for my main panel. 

I stamped the pinecone in both versamark and close to cocoa and then heat set it with embossing powder.  The sprigs of pine were colored with my Stampin Up Markers - I used Always Artichoke and Close to Cocoa markers for the job.

For me, it was hard to fight the urge to not add some designer paper, do some dry embossing or **something** to that layer of cocoa.  But once I committed to just maintaining that clean look, I was really glad I did.  I do sort of still want to go back and add snow to the pinecone, but if I mess it up, and then I'll be so annoyed.  So I'm just going to let it be..... or should I give it a try?