Pixie's Snippets Playground - Challenge #366

It's drier, but noticeably colder down in the South of England - Winter is closing in for sure.

Once again, we have a slightly different format this week, in addition to my own card and prize(s) we also have Karen back with us as our November Guest Designer,  more further down this post.

First of all, here's my snippets card for today:

I used:

- 5.5" x 4.25" white card blank, tent style

- snippets of plain (ish) green and also striped paper card from Lawn Fawn's 'Really Rainbow' paper pack. I love how just a strip of left over paper from this vibrant pack adds so much 'oomph'

- hand cut the green paper to form a wavy 'hill' and glued it in place using a small tape runner, then trimmed off the sides from the back of the card

- did the same with the straight strip of paper, leaving it straight to form a border along the top of the card as if the wee girl had been trying out her huge paintbrush :)

- then stamped the images I wanted to use onto snippets of white card using stamps from the Neat and Tangled 'Paint Night' set of stamps and the Misti, plus Memento 'Tuxedo Black' ink and also stamped the sentiment onto the card front

- adding the little scene into the plain easel was easy using the Misti. To be on the safe side I did mask down each side of the easel using strips of Post-it notes, in case the little image wasn't lined up properly - knowing I could always carefully fill in any blank stripe down a side using a fine tipped permanent marker. Not needed though as it was lined up perfectly, a very precisely designed and made set of stamps and dies

- coloured the images using Faber-Castell Polychromos pencils and hopefully picking out the colours from the stiped strip of paper at the top of the card front

- die cut the images using dies from the matching set of dies and then glued them in place using a Zig glue pen

- final touch was to colour the letters in the word 'COLOR', again picking out colours from the striped strip of paper at the top of the card

I've had this lovely set of stamps and dies for over a year now, bought last September when I went to a Dies To Die For pop-up shop. For some reason I kept avoiding using it, probably fearful of the colouring aspect.

I would have liked to place the little girl and the easel closer together so that she is more obviously showing off her painting, but I'd added the easel image a tad too far to the right  and had to pop the little girl further to the left to balance the thing out (ain't hindsight wonderful). The set comes with a good few different options and three sentiments to choose from. There are also little (or in fact  quite big) paint droplets, complete with matching dies. I stopped short of using them for fear of overload, but on a bigger card they would be a fun touch. And, on this design of mine they would have probably looked quite cute almost dripping from some of the coloured strips on the top backing paper.

And here's the prize for this fortnight:

A Neat and Tangled 'Paint Night' set of stamps (14 in total so you really can ring the changes) - plus the matching set of nine dies. Obviously it's all one prize!

As always, the Snippets Challenge will run for two weeks and the Playground gates will close at 11am UK time on Saturday 7th December. The gates will open again at midnight UK time on the same day.

It's a maximum of ONE entry, please say in a comment if you wish to play and be a possible winner of the prize. Please also link back to the Playground in your blog post to be eligible for the draw.

Remember, if you link into the Playground and don't say clearly that you want to be in the draw in a comment on here, then you will be bypassed if your name comes out of Mr Linky. I'm sure you all know I ask for a positive 'yes' on the blog post itself - just in case you're only playing for fun - otherwise I don't add you to my little list.

And now onto our Guest Designer for November - who is Karen Letchworth, of 'My Cup Runneth Over'.

It was lovely to see how many of you already follow Karen, and I reckon at least 10 more of you added yourselves as followers. Wouldn't it be great if you could bump those numbers up a bit more - Karen only needs 29 more followers to reach the magic 1,000!

And here's what Karen made:  

Another fabulous card making such clever use of a variety of gorgeous snippets, similar colours and designs to last fortnight's papers used by Karen. I really think this is gorgeous, and I adore the beautiful bow as well!

Thank you SO much Karen for being Guest Designer again this fortnight and for your snippets inspiration. Please don't be a stranger - you have some wonderful ideas to share and it would be great to see you joining in with the other girls and entering the fortnightly challenge.

Do hop over to Karen's blog, the link is above and Karen also has another give-away of her own for this challenge.  How generous is that?

Latest Dudley news:

Dudley is as full of fun as ever, although on Thursday he's going into our vet's animal hospital for a little operation - nope, not THAT one! Whilst in Cornwall we'd felt a very dark mole on his side, hidden by his silky coat but enough to ask the vet about when he had his booster shots after we came home. She said to keep an eye on it - and back we went yesterday as it's grown, is standing more proud and doesn't look right.

She can't say exactly what it is, so he's booked in to have it removed and checked out. That's the only way to rule out anything sinister and it's best to do it in one go rather than a biopsy, which might then be followed by a further op.

Poor little scrap doesn't know what's coming. Needless to say I'm almost beside myself worrying over the anesthetic, the results etc. etc. Len is more pragmatic - although I think there's no doubt he's doing it to keep my spirits up as much as possible.
 
We'll then have to wait a further week for the pathology results - whilst nursing what may well turn out to be a very cross little dog! He doesn't like us leaving him anywhere for long (although if all goes to plan we'll leave him first thing in the morning and should be able to collect him later on that afternoon). And he'll probably be even more cross when he finds out he most likely has to wear a 'onesie' whilst the stitches heal :) The scar won't show once it's all healed up - and tomorrow I'm taking him to the Groomers for a bath and blow dry as well as a nail and pads trim as we won't be able to take him to be groomed for a little while after the op. of course.

We only just found out, after days on end of no activity, that the third little hedgehog is still around and not fully into hibernation mode as we thought might be the case. CCTV picked it up at around 7pm this evening (Saturday), having a little feed. We missed it and only realised when Dudley went out for his final wee of the evening and Len spotted that the food had been disturbed (he has a Heath Robinson system whereby hedgies can nose a little cover up to get at the food but local cats can't. It then cleverly drops back into place - he should patent it really). Checked the CCTV footage just now and 'shoo 'nuff' - there the sweet little critter was, tucking in! So, we're back on high alert here.

Not using Dudley as an excuse, but hope you understand that right now my head is all over the place and I know I've fallen behind on commenting on the Snippets challenge that closed on Saturday morning. Having said that, who knows - by the time you read this I just might have caught up!

Lots of love from us all - Parsnip, Dudley (woof, woof!) and of course me,