Hello friends and welcome to December! It’s Advent Sunday today, so it really does feel like time to turn our eyes towards Christmas during this season of waiting. Barbara is back on Clarity Social TV with a fab new set of hand drawn stamps based on The Nutcracker ballet, which is often performed at Christmas. My card today features three of the main characters – the Nutcracker, the Mouse King and the Sugar Plum Fairy, picking up the prompts of red, gold and bauble from Festive Friday‘s list.

I started by stamping the outlines of the main images onto a square of stencil card (cut to fit on a 7×7 card blank). I could then use the infill stamps to add colour to them – ‘black soot’ & festive berries’ for the Nutcracker, ‘black soot’ & ‘pumice stone’ for the Mouse King amd ‘kitsch flamingo’ for the Sugar Plum Fairy.

I decided to add the bauble & bough below the sentiment, colouring them with Pergaliner pencils, then used a gold Posca pen to add highlights to the images.

I cut a mount of gold card using the ‘film strip’ nested dood frame-it panel dies, then added a layer of black card and attached it to the card blank.

So come and join Barbara for some festive inspiration – and the annual Advent Hunt has started today on the Clarity Crafts website, this year featuring the Nutcracker and friends. One clue a day until Christmas Evev – find them all and you could win a £200 Clarity hamper!