Jingle Belles - Not A Creature Was Stirring

Traditionally, the end of October has meant the Jingle Belles would like to see cards with "creatures" on them.  I certainly have enough Christmas creatures to choose from but this time I went for something that I found on my work table recently - these little fish dies.  And I just happened to have a stamp set from Polka Doodles that had the perfect image and sentiment to go along with it.

Yes, that's a gnome fishing with his friendly creature friend the penguin.  And they've caught so many fish that they could decorate the tree with them.  Those fish are individual die cuts and I used silver cardstock for them.  I arranged them in a Christmas tree shape trying to keep it compact enough to fit on a card.  When I got them in order, I laid a piece of Press and Seal over them to keep them in place.  I then cut a piece of the dotted dsp and flipped it over to the back so I could lay the fish down sticky side up letting me then draw a tree around them.  I fussy cut the tree, turned the tree over and laid the fish on it sticky side down.  I peeled back the fish and the Press and Seal a few at a time so I could add glue to the back of the fish and pressed them onto the tree.  I did that a few times until all the fish were glued and then I removed the Press and Seal altogether.  

The gnome and penguin image was colored with General's Watercolor pencils with some shading with a light gray alcohol marker.  I fussy cut around that and added that over the strip of white ice on the bottom of the card.  Just because those jewels happened to be on my work desk, I decided to use a few on the sentiment piece.  

I have another set of fishes to make another tree and I'm just now thinking that I should have traced that tree before I added it to this card to save that step. 

I'll be heading over to the Jingle Belles to see all the other lovely creatures that showed up for the party this week.  You can join me by clicking here.