Penguins seem to be all the rage at the moment: they are just so cute and adorable that I can't resist them! I have been fortunate enough to see Emperor penguins from the Antarctic in real life and they weren't small like I expected - they are actually very tall and truly amazing creatures. When I was a kid, I REALLY wanted a pet penguin that I could play in the bath with LOL :-) The penguins on my card plus the mistletoe, floating ice, Santa hat and Winter hat are all from the Mama Elephant set ARCTIC Penguins stamp and die set. Someone told me the other day that there are NO penguins in the Arctic but hey, I don't think that matters.
To do the background, I used a Lifestyle Nesting Circle die to diecut the My Mind's Eye Winter Wonderland snowflake designer paper and Ranger watercolour cardstock - then used one of my WPlus9 Landscape border dies (which comes in a set of 3) to cut the designer paper where I wanted the edge of the horizon to be then adhered the designer paper to the watercolour cardstock circle. I scribbled Evergreen Bough and Peacock Feathers Distress Markers on an acrylic block, added some water and painted the watercolour paper to look like the sea.
I stamped all the images using Ranger Archival Jet Black ink onto watercolour cardstock and coloured them with various Distress Markers and Tombow Pens, then diecut each piece.
I used a Red Wink of Stella glitter pen on the red Santa hat, skates and berries on the mistletoe and Clear Wink of Stella on the floating pieces of ice, leaves on the mistletoe and the green hat. I added Stampendous Cotton White Fun Flock mixed with Crystalina glitter to the pompom and cuff of both hats. I also added white dots to the green hat with a white gel pen and Glossy Accents to the nose on each penguin. I lightly chalked in the cheeks using pink I-Kandee Pearlescent chalk.
The floating pieces of ice were glued on using Tombow Mono Multi glue and the penguins and mistletoe were popped up on dimensionals.
The scalloped circle main image panel is a gorgeous die by Spellbinders from their Majestic Circles die set.
The snowflakes are dies from the Poppystamps Christmas Baubles die set. I glued down the centres then bent the arms up a little and added red and teal Fun Fair Glitter Colours Adhesive Enamel dots to the centres. You probably can't tell from the photo but these enamel dots are very glittery and are absolutely gorgeous!
I was so annoyed with myself because I had coloured the hats and added the Fun Flock and put them aside to dry. I had already attached the penguins and decided to glue on the diecut snowflakes totally forgetting about the hats. When I went to glue on the Santa hat, I realised that it was covering part of the snowflake so tried to remove the snowflake but of course, it was stuck fast. If I had my time over, I would have moved the snowflake down a little so it wasn't partly hidden - oh well - just one of those little irritating things......
The twine and designer paper on the card base are by My Mind's Eye Winter Wonderland which was released in 2012. The sentiment was also trimmed from one of the designer paper sheets; I layered it onto teal cardstock and trimmed it to 1/16" using my Perfect Layers Tools then popped it up on dimensionals.
The teal cardstock base and burgundy cardstock layers were trimmed to 1/8" and 1/16" respectively using my Perfect Layers Tools.
As always, I added Fray stop to the cut ends of the twine to stop them from fraying and unravelling.