Pixie's Snippets Playground - Week 217

What a total Godsend it was having Sarn so kindly looking after you last week! The aftermath of the gout session left me with back issues from using the crutches, then walking stick and then limping for weeks. Now that the trotter is more or less fine, the back flared up big time - meaning that time spent at the laptop and desk had to be dramatically curtailed. I can't express how grateful I am to Sarn for her help - even though neither of us expected me to go into Hunchback of Notre Dame mode!

And, what a terrific job Sarn did as well - a huge gold star for sure! AND, bless her little cotton socks, she's volunteered to continue for this coming week to give me a fighting chance of recovering. Thank you so much Sarn, I owe you - BIG TIME! Please go HERE to see Sarn's really darling snippets card - Parsnip has fallen in love :)

This is my snippets card, which I made in little bursts during the week - literally 20 minutes tops at the desk at a time:

I used:

- 5" x 7" white card blank - short edge opening

- a piece of the same card stock, embossed using the Couture Creations 'Bon Jour' folder then trimmed to just slightly smaller than the card front and glued into place

- next I stamped the 'friend' sentiment using Memento 'Tuxedo Black' ink and a stamp from the fabulous Paper Smooches set called 'Sentiment Sampler'. I LOVE this stamp set - great variety of sentiments in quite funky fonts

- then used a little handful of plain card snippets (green, blue and black), all backed with Stick-It adhesive sheet to die cut the poppy using  a Memory Box die called 'Perky Poppy' and fixed it in place on the embossed layer. I made the poppy blue for a challenge - and also as I quite like the change from red

- tickled the poppy petals with Clear Wink of of Stella

- added one little butterfly, die cut using SU's 'Beautiful Wings' embosslit and a little scrap of blue pearlescent card - topped with a small white pearl

I can't remember if I've said this before, these days I don't buy ready cut 5" x 7" card blanks - but I do love the size (which you can't cut from a 12" sheet of card of course). I now buy ready made 7" x 7" square ones and then chop them down to long edge opening, tent style or short edge opening as required. The offcuts are always handy, I can get three different styles of opening and for me it's the most economical way to work - 5" x 7" envelopes can always be bought online or in local craft shops.

Let's take a 'peek at the picks', as chosen by Sarn of course - and she's picked practically the same entries as I would have chosen! I have been peeking each morning on my tablet in bed whilst having the early morning cuppa - always the best tasting one of the day to me! Here we go:

Sarn said: I chose it because I just love the pretty mix of embroidery and stamping.

Isn't it pretty, made by Elly and I'd have picked this card too! Sarn and I generally sing from the same song sheet :)

 Jenny H brought this beauty of a card and Sarn said: This card makes such a lovely Mother's Day card with the lovely die cutting and addition of lace.

Another lovely pick Sarn!

Would you believe that for the next two picks Sarn chose two of our new Playmates - again, choices that I totally agree with too!

Sarn said: This is such a lovely project and I find all the colourful mixed media, embellishments and ribbons really appealing.

This was made by Meena and it really is so pretty!

And finally, this is Sarn's fourth pick of the week. And she said: Loved this fantastic accordion album and tag book. So much detail and very colourful.

Do hop over to Sharada's blog for a peek - the photos inside are just so joyful!

If I'm right, we had five new Playmates this week - if I missed anyone new do email me and I'll showcase you next week (my email addy is on the sidebar). Sarn had already picked out Meena and Sharada as part of her choice this week - so that leaves us with a further three new Playmates to welcome:

Such a pretty card, made by Renata. I love the combination of turquoise and green and such a great design too.

A lovely Birthday card was brought to us by Stefi - great design and such a fun image too. Mia and Livi would love this card as they both ride during the warmer months (right now it's skiing and ice skating, one of the benefits of living in Germany where the seasons are more predictable!).

And finally we had this lovely card from Charlotte (Lady Joyful). I love the bokeh effect and the butterflies are a beautiful addition to such a soft and pretty background.

Out of interest, Charlotte emailed me to say she'd been trying unsuccessfully to comment on last week's post - using Wordpress. If anyone here can help do please hop over to Charlotte's blog - she was trying to use the Wordpress option for commenting but kept being rejected, sigh :(

Hope you all come back to play again really soon!

On the news front, both Sarn and I had independently picked up that Andrea (KandA) is now a proud grandma to the prettiest little baby girl:

Isn't she just adorable? Congratulations from all of us Andrea! And this is the card Andrea made to welcome the new baby, those buttons are from when her daughter (the new Mum) was a baby herself - aw:

Time for the prize draw here now. We had the Woodware 'Wedding Hearts' stamps set - kindly donated by Nina who is the owner of Creativity Cards and Crafts, which is Sarn's local craft shop. And also the Creative Expressions 'Gemini-Cygnus' dies donated by Sarn!

And our winner is:

Val (Aquarius)

Well done Val! According to my little book, apart from a small win in the bumper Christmas draw,  Val has only won once before ( in October 2014) - so it was about time too.

I do have your address Val and your prize will be on its way to you as soon as possible.

The Playground prize this coming week is:

Linked to today's snippets card - it's your own Memory Box 'Perky Poppy' die and a Paper Smooches 'Sentiments Sampler' stamp set. Sorry about the light bouncing back, you can see a clearer picture of the stamp set here.

The Snippets Challenge will run for one week and the Playground gates will close at 11am UK time on Saturday 27th February. The gates will open again at midnight UK time on the same day.

I'm trying something new this week! I did some adding up and discovered that out of the 108 entries we had last week - 33 were additional entries within the allowed upper limit of three. So that's almost a third as many again entries to look at and comment on.

As Sarn is being so helpful with the commenting and also due to the recent real upsurge in entries, can I please ask that you only add ONE entry this week. It's wonderful to see so many of you playing along and I don't want to put you off the Playground, but this might just make you stop and ponder over which of your snippets makes you'd like to link in? So many of our cards do contain snippets in one form or another that I can see why entries have risen so dramatically - plus we have a lot more people playing along.

We'll see how that idea goes - it certainly levels the playing field and gives everyone an equal chance if they hope to win the weekly prize. If you don't like the idea, don't just run away - let me know, and perhaps offer suggestions as to how the load can be eased. I really don't want to go down the road of a DT if I can help it (a friend who is very experienced in running challenges with DTs likened that to 'trying to herd cats') but something has to give in terms of the time it's taking to keep the Playground going - on top of this weekly post of course. And I want to keep this as a weekly challenge for now.............you have no idea how many prizes are lined up , can't get the lid on the toy box right now!

So, a maximum of ONE entry this week and please say in a comment if you wish to play and be a possible winner of the prize. If you only want to play for either the die or the set of sentiment stamps then just say so in a comment - if your number comes up then I'll do a further draw for the remaining part of the prize. But, both items are up as one complete prize if you so wish of course. Please also link back to the Playground in your blog post to be eligible for the draw.

Mr Linky is below - please let me know if you have any problems linking, it's easy for me to sort out so don't struggle on alone :)

Enjoy your week - remember it's Rudolph Day over at ScrappyMo's starting on Thursday to the end of the month. It's a shorter month this time round so best to start planning now :)

Who knows, there's a very good chance my snippets card next Sunday will be a Christmas one for Mo's challenge!
 
Di and, of course, Parsnip!
x