Missing in action!

I do have a card to share today but wanted to make my apologies for being missing in action for a couple of days. On Sunday a lovely friend arrived unannounced bearing a card and gifts - it was such a delight to spend time catching up and putting the World to rights, and it kept me away from the laptop. Then yesterday was my Birthday and I have to first of all say a HUGE thank you for all the cards, gifts and many, many Facebook wishes.

I will get back to each and every one of you I promise - I was quite humbled by the numbers, and glad I'd dusted the lounge and made space (albeit unwittingly) for an avalanche of beautiful cards. Len took me out for lunch yesterday (Monday) and after that he insisted that I should just play for a while and then cosy up in front of the TV - so I obeyed him for once!

That means I haven't been commenting on the Snippets Playground since the gates opened this week - but I'll be back down to Earth shortly and normal service will be resumed. xx

Another one of our little neighbours recently celebrated his third Birthday. He's called Charlies and is Max's little brother and those kids spend hours and hours playing together in the back garden, digging in a spare piece of border soil that's been left for them as a 'construction site'. Moving the soil from A to B in lorries and dumper trucks features large in their activities :) I've never known two children so happy in their own little world and it's a real delight to hear their little voices chattering about the logistics of soil and grass clippings transportation :)

The other day Len was pottering in the garden sorting out the nightly chaos those messy hedgehogs leave behind, a little someone over the tall fence could obviously hear the occasional clatter too. Then this little voice piped up 'Hello Len' :) I heard it indoors and had to laugh at Max and Len having a little conversation - totally invisible to one another! 

Charlie's card had to reflect what he likes and gets up to of course - this is what I came up with - playing in dirt:

I used: 

- 300 gsm white card stock, die cut using my Presscut 'Step Card Cutting' die set, then the embossed lines were scored again with a scoring tool and the card folded into shape

- the image (so like little Charlie playing!) is a free Clipart one from the Internet (details at the end of this post) which was already coloured so I just went over the whole background with some light blue chalk and added a white die cut cloud (used MFT's 'Cloud Trio' die set) before setting it aside

- the Polaroid frame was pretty easy - first I printed the right sized sentiment onto white card and then used a Lil' Inker 'Instant Camera' die to cut around it (easiest way to do this as it's a solid die is to first cut a template and use the aperture to find the right position before inserting the die into the aperture, taping it lightly in place and then die cutting)

- trimmed the image and glued it behind the aperture

- the spotted background pieces were cut from one piece of 6" x 6" Dovecraft Back to Basics 'Bright Spark' paper, using another sheet I cut a matching liner for the inside of the card - then they were glued in place

- glued the image and frame to the card front

- added the number 3 - die cut from a little snippet of deep burgundy card using a Memory Box 'Classic Numbers' die - finally added a plain white panel inside on top of the spotty paper liner - die cut using a Lil'Inkers 'Stitched Rectangles' die

Here's the link to My Cute Graphics where I found the image. There are tons of images there and I do recommend a visit!