Hello there and welcome to my second post today, this time showcasing the delightful ‘Penguin letterbox’ & alphabet stamps that ClarityCrafts are releasing today. I am in love with these excited penguin chicks!

They were an obvious choice for my DT card for the new Christmas Bingo challenge. If you’ve not played along with us before, you choose one letter in the word BINGO on the grid and use at least three items in that column on your Christmas project. This is not your typical BINGO card where you go up and down, left and right and diagonally. To make this more fun, you can only go up and down using the columns! There is a FREE space in each column that you are welcome to utilize if you’d like!  I’ve gone with column G from our new board, taking masking, make your own background and the free option on this card. I’m also sharing it with Christmas Craft Creations as a third offering for their August CAS challenge.

So let’s start with the background. I used the ‘at the seaside’ set from Clarity’s ‘Build a Scene’ masks, starting by brushing ‘broken china’ Distress Oxide across the mountains to create the sky. I replaced it with the waterline mask and again brushed the ‘broken china’ across it, but without adding any more ink to my brish, so I just had a soft line.

I then stamped three of the penguins from the Letterbox set and covered them with the precut masks that come with the stamps (these are so useful!) I went back to the ‘by the seaside’ masks and brushed ‘salvaged patina across the waterline one to create the shoreline of the lake and added a little snow drifts as well.

I stamped ‘Christmas’ from the ‘penguin billboards’ set, added ‘joy’ into the chicks letterboxes with the individual Alphabet stamps and then coloured with the ‘salvaged patina’ and a waterbrush.

Now you all know I’m a big fan of CAS cards, but this one did need a little more adding to it, I felt. (My son suggested adding an orca in the lake lying in wait for the penguins, but I told him that was unhelfpul! He’s obviously been watching the wrong type of documentaries!!) Instead I remasked the right-hand penguin and stamped the large tree from the ‘deep in the forest’ set that was launched a couple of weeks ago. I have that light watercolour wash with the ‘salvaged patina’ and also added a little more shading below the tree and the penguins. Finally I added the doodled border from the ‘SHAC snowdrop’ stamp set.

I used the large square embedder on a black 7×7 card blank to create a frame for the topper and then fixed it in place.

Now I know there are no trees in the Antarctic, which explains why these chicks are so excited on finding a Christmas tree (go with me…!) How are you inspired by our new Bingo grid – my design teamies have shared more fab creations over on the Christmas Bingo blog to get you started.