Hello! I’m excited to join Michelle Lupton in her Challenge Me a Christmas Card series! You can find more about the series over at her blog but the general gist is that she asked people to suggest Christmas card themes for her creations and this year she’s asked friends to join her! Today’s theme is penguins and I’ve got a whole waddle of them! 😉 (Yes I did have to look up the name for a grouping of penguins…apparently on land they’re called a waddle and in the water they’re called a raft. You learn something new everyday!)
Arctic Penguins was my very first Mama Elephant stamp set and it’s still one of my absolute favorites for holiday cards! Recently Mama Elephant has been releasing adorable stamps of cats, dogs, and snowmen en masse so I decided to create a similar card using a lot of masking and those fabulous penguins! A. LOT. OF. MASKING.
But it wasn’t too tricky. I started by stamping the penguins on to post-it notes. I took four post-it notes at a time, stamped the image, and then fussy cut all four layers of post-it notes at the same time. This is a quick way to create multiple masks quickly! Then it was simply a matter of adding penguins, one row at a time. I mixed up the order and size of the penguins I stamped but just kept building them up along the bottom of the card panel. I was inspired by a recent card of Kristina’s to make an oversize card panel so I stamped my penguins on a 3.75″ by 8″ panel of white cardstock. Once I was done stamping the penguins I left the masks on the cardstock and blended the sky with distress oxide inks in Broken China, Faded Jeans, Seedless Preserves, and Black Soot. I splattered it with water and copic opaque white to create the look of a snowy sky and then let it dry.
And then it was time for the fun details! Once the distress oxides were totally dry I stamped the sentiment from Mama Elephant and heat-embossed it with silver embossing powder. Then I colored the penguins with copic markers and cleaned up any mis-stampings with a copic multiliner. I stamped some of the little accessories on a scrap piece of white cardstock, colored them with copics, and fussy cut them. Then I adhered them to the scene with foam mounting tape. I also added a little spectrum noir clear sparkle to the accessories and the cheeks of each penguin. Finally I added a little snow marker to the white parts of the hats and heated it with my heat gun until it puffed up!
I had a lot of fun adding little extra touches to my penguin scene. If you look carefully you can find a Rudolph penguin, two penguins in love “helped” along by a Santa penguin, two gift-giving penguins, and a coffee-loving penguin! 😉 This certainly wasn’t a quick card to create but I love how it turned out!
Head over to see what Michelle created and make sure to check out the rest of her series this month! 🙂 Thanks so much for visiting and have a fabulous day!
Interested in the products I used? To make them easy for you to find, I have listed them below. (Affiliate disclosure can be found here). Your purchases help keep my blog running at no expense to you and I thank you for the support!!
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What a cute ‘group shot!’ Darling card, Jessica!
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This is awesome! I love all those extra details- I hadn’t noticed the Rudolph penguin until you mentioned him! Thanks so much for taking up this challenge wth me 😄
Wow! Great job masking!!
Love your awesome waddle of penguins ! So cute& a you make all that masking sound so easy!! Great job!
Awww, that’s such a sweet card. I love the little kissing penguins and Santa Penguin holding the mistletoe. Thanks for the penguin trivia – I never knew what groups of them were called, and now I do!
What a lot of work! But so worth it. All those little extra vignettes..this would only go to someone I knew would appreciate all that work. You are so creative. You inspire me every day.
This is amazing Jess!
Fantastic penguin card, they look like they are really having fun together, so much masking involved but you did an amazing job, thanks for sharing x
I LOVE this, just fabulous!
This is such an adorable card! And I love your night sky 🙂
So cute! Those penguins are adorable!
I can see this took a lot of effort, but boy ‘o boy was it worth it! This is over-the-TOP adorable! I love every element!!
Oh my goodness !! That’s an incredible card !! So gorgeous !! margessw@icloud.com
love this card!!
This is so fun and adorable!
This one makes me smile. I love it! You did such a wonderful job with all that masking, and the details just frost the cake. Thank you for sharing the details.