52 Christmas Card Throwdown - October theme challenge

Hello!  This week is theme week at 52 Christmas Card Throwdown, and this time we have a theme that I think will be fun for a lot of people:  Christmas Critters.  Any type of animal critter you’d like to use will be fine, so long as it ties in with the Christmas season.

I turned to one of my stamp sets that features animals that live in cold climates, and chose one of the penguin stamps from it.  My Santa hat stamp from another set fits this penguin pretty well.  I stamped both the penguin and the hat on scrap cardstock, colored them, and fussy cut them.  It’s not easy to see in the photo, but I added some Wink of Stella to the white trim on the hat.  In real life, it’s pretty shimmery.  Then I had to figure out a layout and a color scheme for my card.  The current sketch at Freshly Made Sketches looked like a good one.  I had a banner with a heat-embossed sentiment left over from another project, and it fit perfectly with the sketch.  A variety of designer papers makes up the background for my penguin.  I don’t often use black for card bases, but it was the half-sheet of cardstock left over from the card I shared yesterday, and it tied in with the penguin.  And now I have another card to add to the ones I’ll be sending to Send a Smile 4 Kids.

What kind of critter(s) will you choose for your card?  Be sure to share it at the 52CCT site before the challenge ends at 7:00 p.m. Eastern time on Friday, October 21.  Check out what the rest of the design team has made, too!  Thanks for stopping by today.

Supplies:
Stamps: Critters in the Snow, Hats Off to You, Happy Everything (Lawn Fawn)
Cardstock: Basic Black (Stampin’ Up); Pure Luxury White (Gina K. Designs); scraps from Aspen Frost 6″ x 6″ paper pad (Basic Grey)
Ink: Tuxedo Black (Memento); gold (ColorBox)
Other: markers (Copic); Wink of Stella pen (Zig); detail gold embossing powder (SU)