Hello there. A new challenge has begun at The Holly and Ivy Christmas Challenge. The theme is – anything goes as long as it’s Christmas. Here is my card for this challenge:

Whilst I was sorting my stuff out after the decorator had left, I came across a bunch of Tattered Lace magazines I have never even opened or looked at – from the first ever magazine they produced up to and including a Christmas Special which had this cute fishing penguin as a free die on the cover.

I may have put these to one side so I didn’t spoil the magazine by taking the dies off, or cutting into the papers in the middle of the magazine – but as they’ve been sitting there for years (I think this was from a 2016 Christmas Magazine) I thought I’d use them. No point hoarding – well, not for that long, anyway!

I die-cut the penguin out of a cream card stock – I didn’t want him to be too bright – and coloured his individual parts with Copics, adding some glitter to the hat brim and pom-pom. I also added a small piece of glitter card behind the swirls on his belly – but it’s not showing up very well, I’m afraid.

I was going to do some Distress Oxide blending for the background, but every Tattered Lace Magazine has some papers on the inside, so I used one of those paper scenes and cut to size, adding a stitched frame around it. I don’t use patterned papers very often – I seem to struggle putting them together and matching shapes, layers and hues – but with a scene paper like this – it seemed to work well.

The penguin is standing outside of the frame, and fishing into the bucket on the inside. The bucket is from MFT ‘Pet Perches‘ die set, and is supposed to be the bed for the pet – but I saw it as a bucket, especially when the die actually cuts into to ‘bed’ itself so I could slot the fish into it.

I hope you have time to join us for this challenge, and I look forward to seeing what you create. 🙂 🙂