PTI Sept 2017 Customer blog hop

Hello and welcome! Every month Papertrey Ink hosts a blog hop for its customers and usually posts an inspiration photo as a springboard for creativity. I made a few projects and started another but ran out of time/ideas. Thanks for looking and we'll begin.
First, here is the inspiration photo:

Next here is a tag I made where I riffed off of the brown bird, the floral sprays and the black background. I used the new holiday tags mini set Betsy introduced and some older dies and punches I own for the bird (Spellbinders) and the pine sprigs (no idea...Fiskars maybe?) I like this first project the best. You could easily use the die from the PTI set Christmas Faith to replicate the bird, I just don't own it (yet!).

Stamps: New Holiday Tags mini kit, Papertrey Ink; Ink: gold; Paper: PTI black, recollections sparkle red, patterned paper from stash, vellum; Other: Spellbinder dies for bird, Holiday tags kit, snowflake punch, pine branch punch, gold embossing powder, glitter, ribbon, jute twine

Next, I really like the stitched cover plate and I'm always playing with it. I wanted to see what it would look like as the black background, pulling in a lot of the red from the floral spray you see in the inspiration photo. I am very unsure about this card, to me, it is is a classic case of trying to do too much. I think I mixed too many techniques and should have stopped to keep it a bit more simple. Any suggestions on improvements are welcome, please let me know in the comments.

Stamps: Papertrey Ink Winter Hills; Ink: black, white and gold; Paper: PTI black, kraft, pure poppy patterned paper; Other: Finetec gold palette watercolor, gold embossing powder, stickles in red and clear, prismacolor pencils, Stitched Cover Plate (PTI)

As you can see one of my latest toys is the gold palette of Finetec watercolors. Yay! What do we do with a new toy? Overuse it! :) I tried three of the different shades in the palette to color in the leaves on the cover plate and I need suggestions for what to put in the center. I actually like this better than the card above with all of the red, but couldn't figure out what else to do in time for the hop. I think perhaps a verse or saying, but I cannot decide what color it should be.

Finally I just chose some of the colors from the inspiration photo to make this last card. The world is in great turmoil now like I haven't seen in my lifetime. My wish is for greater peace. You can't tell in the photo, but the word "peace" is cut out of white glitter paper I bought at Michael's, backed and offset just a bit to bring in the black from the inspiration photo, mounted on kraft brown to represent the bird in the inspiration photo.

Stamps: PTI Stitches & Swirls; Ink: vintage photo; Paper: PTI kraft, black, vellum, pure poppy and simply chartreuse patterned paper, white glitter paper; embellishments from Holiday Tags mini kit, scor-tape and Nuvo gold flakes

Now I can allow myself to look at the other things folks have created and I am sure with all the talent out there, I will be wishing I had more sets in my cart at PTI when I'm through!