Hello crafty friends. I was watching Barbara Gray on Clarity Social TV today with a new set of Christmas stamps featuring Bip the Bear and got inspired to get one of the previous sets out to play with. This little chap is one of the characters from Bip the Bear & Family and he’s feeling very festive in his party hat from a Christmas cracker!

This is a simple one layer card on a 5×5 card blank and I started by stamping little Bip in black Archival then added his party hat. I covered him up with the pre-cut masks that come with the stamps and the stamped the tree from Linda’s Home for Christmas set in ‘library green’. Removing all the masks, I coloured Bip and the tree with Faber Castell polychromo pencils, keeping it festive with traditional red & green (other than for Bip’s fur).

And then a few final touches. A white Posca pen lit the baubles on the tree and Bip got gold buttons on his cardigan. I added shading for the ground with grey polychromos and finished with part of the sentiment from Tina’s Christmas Rose stamps – I couldn’t use both lines of it as I hadn’t left enough room!

Bip’s looking ready for Christmas – how are your preparations going? I have to confess I’ve barely started yet, but hope to get myself into action at the end of this busy week. I’m off to share this festive bear with a few blog challenges. It’s Christmas Jumper day at Festive Friday and I took Christmas colours, sweater/jumper and warm wishes sentiment from their inspo list. Color Dare have got a Christmassy red & green for their current challenge and I also picked up the ‘Christmas tree’ theme from Make My Monday.