Hello!  Happy Saturday!  I hope your weekend has gotten off to a good start.  Here in the United States it’s Labor Day weekend.  Locally, it’s the start of the high school and college football seasons, as well as the start of marching band season!  Although I don’t talk about my personal life much on this blog, my readers who know me well know that I enjoy a good football game, and that I’m very proud of my two sons who are active in their high school’s marching band.  I’m happy to report that our team won their season opener last night, and our marching band was featured as the “Band of the Week” on our local TV station’s football highlights show.  Woo-hoo!!!  🙂

Since it’s the fifth Saturday of August, the 52 {Christmas} Card Throwdown challenge this week is “Pick a Previous”!  This time it’s a double challenge.  Our challenge participants will need to pick a previous sketch and a previous color combination from the 52{C}CT archives and use both together for their challenge card.

For my card I wanted to use some of the challenges I hadn’t participated in, so I chose sketch #1 from January 2012 and color combo #7 from July 2012.   I couldn’t help but pick these colors because they are a nod to our high school’s colors (officially blue and white, but the various sports teams and the marching band have a lot of black on their uniforms).  I used my snowflake embossing folder to add some interest to the narrow vertical strip.  I chose the cute penguin image because it was easy to leave black and white, with a few touches of blue on his hat.

In retrospect I guess technically this is more of a winter card than a Christmas card.  I had “winter” in the back of my mind for adding to my Operation Write Home stockpile.  It’s close enough, you think?  😉  At any rate, it does qualify for the “no flowers” challenge going on at ‘ABC’ Challenges.

Thanks for stopping by today!  Go check out what the other design team members have created and give them a little blog love, too.  Then join us in our challenge!  You can link your work at the 52{C}CT website until 1:00 pm eastern time Friday, September 6.  We’d love to see what you make!

Supplies:
Stamps: Christmas Characters (Inkadinkado); Critters in the Snow (Lawn Fawn)
Cardstock: Basic Black, Whisper White, Brilliant Blue (Stampin’ Up)
Ink: Onyx Black (VersaFine)
Other: Snowflakes embossing folder (Sizzix); marker (Copic); standard circle and petite scalloped circle Nestabilities dies (Spellbinders); dimensionals (SU)