Hello everyone and welcome to a very wet and windy Friday here in the UK! Not a great day for the birds trying to fly around, but I’ve got a very cute robin to share with you from the new Christmas Animals collection thanks to our new theme challenge of ‘feathers’ starting today at As You See It.

This is a one layer card, so I started with a 5×5 card blank and used a square embedder to emboss a frame onto it. These are such a clever but simple idea to make your cards look that bit more expensive, like the ones in the high-end shops! All you need to do is attached the plastic embedder to the front of your card (I use doubled over low tack tape), then flip to the inside and emboss against it around the edges. I usually start with a bone folder to locate the edges and start the crease, then sharpen it up with a small (#2) ball tool.

Having done that, I stamped the festive bough from the set across the lower part with black Archival. I wanted to nestle the robin into the wreath, so masked off his legs with low tack tape before inking and then added him.

I then simply shaded everything with my Polychromo pencils (I used both the Winter and Christmas sets), using a blending nib to smooth out the colours on my robin. All it needed was one of the Christmas Animals Sentiments to finish.

These little fellas are just so cute and. as one of Clarity’s Products of the Month, they attract double loyalty points when added to your shopping basket! And we hope you’ll come on over to As You See It and shake your tail feathers (or any others you have to hand!) with us for the next fortnight – can’t wait to see you in our gallery!

Meanwhile, this little chap is fluttering over to join in the challenges at Holly & Ivy and Christmas Crafts All Year (T is for Tweetings!)