Pixie's Snippets Playground - Challenge #391

Wowser, extending Challenge #390 by a week and also allowing two entries certainly boosted numbers of entries into the Playground this past couple of weeks (109!) with many of you hoping to win the Lavinia 'Whimsical Hares' stamps, an Inkylicious 'Mountain & Valley Sun/Moon' Stencil & Masks template - plus a brand new set of 10 make up brushes for blending inks. As with the 'Hap-pea' stamps and dies the other week, I knew it would be a popular prize and you've certainly proved that! I'm slightly behind with commenting but am in the 80's (entries, not age!) so will get to you soon if you wonder where I am. ☺ The draw will be in a week's time - good luck!

I've been taking things more gently and, whilst not yet fully back to normal, my shoulder is loads better - huge thanks again for all your kind wishes. Who knew something like that would be so easy to do - one slight turn and wham!

Sarn, and some other lovely friends, have been really supportive offering to help in the Playground - Sarn even asked me on Thursday if I wanted her to step in with this post. So sweet - thank you all, especially Sarn of course. I soldiered on, having been out for a drive mid-week and did make a snippets card for this challenge - hooray! I struggled a bit using the Cuttlebug for the main die cut but thankfully the little Altenew mini die cutting machine was perfect for a lot of the card 'bits and bobs'. 

And this is the result:

I used:

- 4" x 6" white card blank, cut down from a 5 x 7" one

- piece of white card - approx 5" x 7" to allow room to trim it down later (I used half a card blank the same as the main one, purely to keep the whites exactly the same shade)

- then die cut the long edge of the piece of white card using a NBUS Gemini Edge'ables 'Balloon Bouquet' die 

- trimmed a snippet of black card down to 4" x 6"

- trimmed the white 'balloon edged' panel down to 4" x 6" and glued it to the black panel using Zig glue pens (it's worth doing it that way round so that any slight deviation in alignment can be carefully snipped off before it's actually on the card front, if that makes sense!

- then glued the whole front panel onto the card front using Collall All Purpose glue

- trimmed a snippet of rainbow paper left from a card I made recently, from Whimsy's 'Rainbows' paper pack (sitting on my desk as a reminder to send some sheets to a sweet friend for her to play with - I haven't forgotten J, just been a bit out of action!)

- then added that rainbow snippet to the left hand side of the card front, again using Collall Glue always my favourite to use wherever possible as it's so manoeuvrable, with the rainbow colours deliberately in reverse to what i planned next 

- die cut a full rainbow 'Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain' selection of balloons using little snippets, the same balloon die and my little Altenew die cutting machine 

- glued those in place using a Zig glue pen  then added a touch of white Gel pen as suggested on the die packaging image - ugh, too bold! What to do? Out came the Mono Sand Eraser and a little bit of gentle rubbing later made it seem much better - phew - I love my sand eraser!

- as I was more or less following the design on the die packaging, I hunted right through my sentiment dies and eventually die cut, using a black snippet backed with Stick It plus a Britannia Dies 'Happy Birthday' word set, the sentiment. A die set I've used so much over the years and it never disappoints, despite so many new designs on the market these days 

- popped the sentiment in place using a Zig glue pen, put my Teflon 'bone folder' on top of it, rubbed firmly and it was done - as Len says, also suitable for a boy - which is great news as I always struggle with cards for boys!

And here are the snippets I pulled out of my 'plain coloured card snippets concertina folder' plus a snippet from the Whimsy 'Rainbow' paper pack:

This is exactly as I pulled them out and popped them onto the desk. I know, my OCD means I just can't store snippets without trimming them into squares, strips or rectangles! Unless they're a die cut oval or such, in which case they're spared a quick hair cut! I used the rainbow paper to find the best match I could for the balloons - used them all with enough plain rainbow coloured snippets left for at least one more card the same, although I did colour one balloon with a Pro marker to make it look more like indigo.

Let's move onto the prize for this fortnight's challenge (yup, back to two weeks and only one entry - fingers crossed!):

My 'sample' card is very similar I agree, although I do like the rainbow panel that I added from my current favourite paper pack. The first part of the prize is a Gemini Edge'ables 'Balloon Bouquet' die very, kindly donated to the Toybox by our lovely Viv. To make a snippets sample card I bought the same die although I needed NO persuading as it's such a fun die and you can use it in many more ways than I've chosen. The card on the packaging image opens up with a black background behind but I couldn't really fathom out how to back what would then be the back of die cut balloons in the time I had to play, plus, the die measures 6.2" in length meaning it won't go through the Cuttlebug sideways to die cut the long edge of an open card, although it's only 2" or so wide. I tried by just folding the card with first a metal plate in between (potential disaster darlings) and then folding it between the clear cutting plates, too much of a crease beside the fold lines to restore it to a decent card. I can see a Big Shot or perhaps a Gemini here at some point - anyone got any strong feelings about how good they are? I've also seen the card made with a backing of blue sky and fluffy clouds which looks great - and I bet it would look wonderful with gold/and/or silver balloons to celebrate those Anniversaries. As Len keeps saying to me - think outside the box. Pale pink and/or blue for a new baby? ... I'm thinkin', I'm thinkin'!!

Plus, as the prize was a lovely donation to the Toybox from Viv, I tracked down the set of Britannia 'Happy Birthday' sentiment dies I used for my card, which comes in two sizes, to add to the prize from me. The font is a bit like the peel offs most of us set out with but absolutely loads better to handle when cut in card and also timeless IMHO, and here they are:

Very recently ordered and they're currently in the post so I 'borrowed' this image from the seller's JJD's UK online shop website. Both items make up the one prize.

As always, the Snippets Challenge will run for two weeks and the Playground gates will close at 11am UK time on Saturday 5th 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.

 

Please also remember that I only allow a total of nine other challenges, which makes 10 in total, when you enter a snippets make into the Playground.

 

Dudley continues on his mission to entertain us here during the latest lock down - he's such a funny little dog! He's lost a snippet of weight overall but the extra long walks mean he's gained an appetite which he didn't have previously! He still hankers after Julie our post lady - I can see that a Christmas card from him (as well as us of course) is a real 'must'!

When Dudley returns from his midday walkies he still always has a treat and now stands on his hind legs as usual ........ with the addition of spinning round in anticipation. It's sweet but also quite sad to think that the Bichon breed learned to dance on their hind legs when they fell out of favour with the royal courts in the late 19th century and ended up living a rough life begging on the streets. Despite this, and their subsequent return to popularity, they never lost their gentle and loving nature right through the breeding lines which gave us dogs such as the original Bichon, Maltese, Bolognese, Coton du Tolear and of course Havanese! Darnell triggered this memory with a recent post showing some really cute photos HERE.

Finally, remember it's ScrappyMo's Rudolph Days challenge from the 25th to the end of the month! And of course, my card today is being entered into Darnell's November NBUS Challenge HERE!

Lots of love from us all - Parsnip, Dudley and of course me. Stay safe.