Merry Christmas Penguin Card

The past several days, I've been participating in May Flaum's latest class, "Supplies on Hand." The idea is to use what you have to create your projects. Each day's lesson had a different theme. For this card, I was able to use some of my vast button & washi tape collections.

I found the following sketch on Pinterest, and used it as the basis for my card design:

The sketch was, in fact, my main inspiration for using the buttons.

I began by die cutting my focal panel, using one of Spellbinders' "Lacey Circles" dies. I sized and printed the penguin, from Sweet 'n Sassy Stamps, onto that, and colored him with colored pencils and Gamsol.

I created a 5.5x8.5" card base, by just scoring & folding a piece of letter-size cardstock in half. I cut a piece of a snowflake paper from my scrap stash and adhered it to the upper portion of the card base. I felt the focal panel got lost on the white card, so I die cut a piece of red metallic cardstock from American Crafts with the largest Spellbinders "Standard Circles LG" die. I glued the focal panel onto that. I laid down a piece of washi tape from Recollections below the patterned paper, and adhered my matted focal panel on top of that.

I used red pearl cotton embroidery floss to thread each button. (In retrospect, I probably should have chosen a different color of floss, because the green buttons with the red centers remind me of olives with pimentos now!) I cut the threads, leaving very short tails on the backside of each button. I glued four of the buttons on either side of the focal panel with Ranger Multi Medium Matte. I stamped the greeting (stamp set source unknown) using Hero Arts' Forever Green mid-tone shadow ink. Finally, I glued the remaining three buttons below the greeting.

I'm entering this card in Send a Smile 4 Kids' "Early Holiday Wishes 4 Kids" challenge.