Penguin Christmas Tree

Hi Peeps! I had to do a purple Christmas card - it's a tradition in our house, because we have one daughter who LOVES purple, and I mean LOVES.  I had so much fun making the lights on this image glow! I coloured Penguin Christmas Tree (rubber image with Whimsy) with the following Copic markers: 

Beak and feet: YR30, YR12, 21, 28, E04  (I usually make them more bright orange, but for this card I wanted it to be a bit more neutral looking because of the strong purple and blue - otherwise they would have been too distracting in bright orange!)

Whites of penguin: YR30, E40, E71, BV20, B0000

Purples: Bv0000, 000, 00, 02, 03, 13, V25

Ground: BG90, 93, 0 blender

Blacks: C0, 1, 2, 3, 5 7, 9

Also used a digital sentiment from Whimsy, from the set Christmas Long And Lean

I used the lightest colours around each of the lights to create the effect of the glow. It helped a whole lot to leave the areas around the lights as light as possible - so, that's where I used the C0 and C1, so that the colour of the glow would show up. I also used a bit of coloured pencil overtop the whole thing, and especially to smooth out some of my black areas, because my C's need cleaning, and they were leaving some messy areas with the pigment coming out unevenly.  It's a pain to clean each marker tip and so I usually put it off... about ten minutes per marker - a lot of time, but it is worth it because then the marker acts like it did when it was new. 

When daughter got the card, she said, "oh wow, I don't even care what it says inside, I just want to see the front!"  Made me feel really good (although I did write a sweet sentiment too, on the inside!). 

I joined in the Splitcoaststamper challenge , "Colour Me Christmas"today, to use two different colouring mediums on a card.  I actually used three, because besides the Copic markers and coloured pencils, I also used some Distress Oxide inks on the designer paper, the largest layer, to make it more purple, as well as on the sentiment panel. Thank you for looking!