Penguin Christmas

I made this fun, and slightly silly, Christmas card last night. It’s inspired by the current sketch from CAS(E) This Sketch, as well as Inkspirational‘s challenge to use only neutral colours. I’m also entering it into Simon Says Stamp Wednesday‘s anything goes challenge.

I’ll be honest, when I started thinking about what to do for a neutral-only card I really was stumped. Just like how I was stumped with how to approach this layout! Then I thought of the little penguin from the Pink & Main Snow Globe stamp set and everything just came together!

I figured I would start with the sentiment as that was the most straight forward part. Given that I knew the card would be a whole ton of black and white I didn’t want the sentiment in black too. I settled on heat embossing in silver, as that would add a bit of different colour to the card without leaving the neutral realm. It also added some texture and shine. The sentiment I used comes from Lawn Fawn’s Merry Messages.

Then it was just a case of adding the penguins. This actually wasn’t too difficult to do, but did take quite a while. I strongly recommend the use of a MISTI or similar stamp positioner for doing this. After a while I got in to a routine – I would line up the first penguin of the row (the one on the right hand side) and stamp it, then shift the card 1 inch to the right and stamp the next one, shift another inch and stamp again. Once I reached the end of the row I just had to move the card back to the starting position, work out the position for the first penguin of the new row, and return to the stamping and shifting routine. I double stamped the penguins to get them nice and dark.

I’m very pleased with how this turned out. I think it is really sweet! Although I did joke to husband that it was an army of zombie penguins coming to get his brains… Ha! If I were to change something it would be to have the sentiment positioned slightly higher in its space so it would be more evenly. Also if I wasn’t limited to neutrals only I would have given one penguin orange feet.

Whilst I remember… I’m thinking of doing a “best of 2016” post at the weekend, where I will pick my favourite cards in a few different categories. I will also do a reader’s choice award. So, if you’re reading this and would like to vote on/chose your favourite card that I’ve made this year, either leave a comment here or on the card you chose. I think I’ve left this a bit late to sort, really, but I may as well ask!

Love,

Lady Joyful