Pixie's Snippets Playground - Week 291 and 292 - results

What a week! Rain, rain and more rain! I had to drive over to my dentist for a routine six-monthly check-up on Thursday - and on Wednesday afternoon was convinced it would be a canoe trip! Thankfully the weather did clear up so I used the day to do quite a few errands as well while the going was good!

Last week I really thought we'd have Parsnip posing in his shorts instead of a Guest Designer! However, more than one of you lovely ladies jumped straight in to say you would love to help out - for which I am so very grateful. I already have some of you lined up for particular dates and will find time to sit and draw up a proper schedule ASAP - watch your emails!

The first person to respond was our lovely Liz of 'Crafty Sunflower', probably within minutes of my blog post appearing - and here she is:

Liz has been a GD for the Playground before, see HERE, and is a regular player, very supportive and also I'm glad to call her a very sweet friend as well. Do hop over to Liz's blog if you aren't already a follower - and also if you have time then try to read the previous post I wrote about her last appearance in the Playground, see 'HERE' above. Suffice it to say that Liz makes gorgeous cards and is often the driving force behind me rushing off to buy a particular die :) We prefer to call it 'enabling' one another!

Liz's GD card(s) are perfect examples of how to use up snippets - one with a patchwork die and one by making your very own snippets patchwork - so clever!

This is what Liz sent me:

"I was delighted to be asked to be a Guest Designer again in Pixie's Snippets Playground.  I'm sure I'll never run out of snippets, but I usually forget to use some of my growing pile of patterned paper snippets.  

The die is a Die-namics 'Diagonal Quilt Square Cover-Up' die.  I used two punches to make the flower. The patterned paper and red card were all cut from snippets. When I was making the card, I was reminded of the time many, many years go when I went to patchwork classes, stitching the blocks by hand.  There are so many fabulous patchwork designs, I thought I'd try to make a notelet, with a simple patchwork block design, using just snippets, a guillotine, scissors, a pencil and a ruler.

I started with snippet of card 4" square and I drew a pencil line across the middle vertically and horizontally.  This can be any colour as it's covered up. The red and floral patterned papers were cut into 1" x 2" strips.  Then I cut off the corners, as shown in red on the diagram to get the shape I needed for the red patterned paper.

For the floral patterned paper I need to reverse the corners I cut off, like this. 

The cross in the middle of the 4" square made it easy to line up the pieces of patterned paper.  I found it easiest to cut the blue squares and triangles slightly bigger than I needed, then trim any excess off after they had been stuck down in the spaces left. When the patchwork was complete, I layered it on a piece of yellow card slightly bigger than the 4" square and attached to a 5" square card blank."

I left Liz's words just as they were as I couldn't have explained it nearly so well. And what a clever way to use up snippets to make your own patchwork cards - even if you don't have any suitable dies!

Thank you so much for being our Guest Designer for this fortnight Liz, especially as I was in a bit of a spin. Plus, Parsnip is eternally grateful as well!

A little tale - when I lived 'oop North', the largest City close to us was Newcastle Upon Tyne. Not sure if many of you UK girls will know of Fenwicks of Bond Street in London - quite a renowned department store, with quite a few other branches around the UK. Well, the Fenwick family were from the North East and in fact their first and main Fenwicks store was (and still is) on Northumberland Street in the centre of Newcastle. 

A typically Northern expression was trotted out by some folks when they thought something was so wildly untrue or unlikely to happen that they'd almost stake their life savings on it. The expression was 'Way aye, an' if THAT ever happens - ah'll bare me bum in Fenwicks shop winderr'. They tell it as it is up there for sure :) Oh I do miss lots of things about the beautiful North of England - the scenery, the people, wonderful fish and chips and all the lovely local foods, apart from black pudding (shudder). Why can't we get stottie cakes down here for example?! All this came back to me when I was thinking about poor Parsnip being threatened with having to pose in his shorts!

Now for my picks from this past fortnight - as always, picking just three was nigh on impossible and I sat here for ages wondering how to possibly bring the number of picks down so they were manageable. So, once again I chose a sort of 'theme' I'd noticed running through some of the entries - and it's 'using waste/negatives from die cutting'. I confess that my waste generally is lobbed straight into the paper bin under my desk without so much as a second thought.

See what you make of these picks girls and they might just make you look at you die cutting waste in a new light! I think I will for sure:

This was the first 'waste from die cuts' make that caught my eye - cleverly made by Maxine. Love the black against the gold - a perfect card for a chap!

Then Darnell arrived, hot on the heels of Maxine. This card is her entry and the first one she made - now hop over to her blog to see what she did with the waste she had left after die cutting the snowflake out of that blue background! Brilliant.

And blow me, in quick succession -  in popped Barb - with this amazing Wedding Anniversary card - also made use the negative waste technique! Great stuff Barb, love the 'splatted' background and the torn edge is a lovely contrast!

And as I spotted four cards using up die cutting waste I extended the picks to four this week - so, last but not least:

Janis brought this beautiful card along to share with us - again using die cut negative waste. I love the colour combination and the fact that Janis popped a few negative scraps back in the holes as well.

I hope I covered all entries which used waste in this way - if not, blame Parsnip - the little perisher has been hyper-active this week when the rain stopped him from going out to play!

66 of you played along last fortnight and we had one new playmate joining in with us as well:

Lovely Linda

Welcome to the Snippets Playground Linda, and I do hope you return to play again soon.

Prize draw time now and our winner of the MFT 'Stitched Cover-Up Companion - Diagonal die plus the Clearly Besotted 'Aloha' stamps set is:

Carole J (Craftylicious Creations)

Well done Carole! Can you please drop me an email with your address and I'll post your prize off as soon as possible. My email address is on the right hand side bar.

Keep those snippets entries coming girls, you still have a week left to play HERE remember! The prize is a Polkadoodles 'Ribbon Gift Frame' set of dies and an Altenew 'Carousel' set of stamps. I will split the prize if you only want to play for part of it.

Love from the little white peril - and of course from me too