Here's the 3rd prize in the 'Snippets Playground Christmas Draw':
It's a Poppy Stamps 'Love Note' set of stamps, kindly donated by Darnell. It's so cute and, like all of the prizes, is unused.It would also make a lovely Valentine's Day card using the bear, hearts and either sentiment.
Just leave a comment on this post you're currently looking at, if you would like the chance to win today's prize.
Here's the 2nd prize in the 'Snippets Playground Celebration' prize draw:
I used:
- 5.5" x 4.25" white card blank, side opening
- snippet of champagne gold pearlescent card, trimmed to just a tad smaller than the card front, then glued onto the card itself
- piece of Whimsy lilac 'Snow Flurry' paper (gold and any shade of mauve/purple are always great partners IMHO). The paper was trimmed to just smaller than the gold layer,) then glued in place
- another snippet of champagne gold pearlescent card, die cut using a Lawn Fawn sentiment die called 'Giant Merry Christmas'
- glued the sentiment onto the card front, using a glue pen
- finally, added a few sequins from Lucy's Cards 'Little Things' shaker mix - called 'Champagne'
Funny things cameras - the champagne card is more twinkly in real life and and the sequins are much less so in real life! So it all meets in the middle and looks fine - in real life! And of course today's prize is this:
It's a Lawn Fawn 'Giant Merry Christmas' die from me and it's the same as the one I used. I adore this die! Given more time, it has loads of possibilities, my card was super-fast to make (20 minutes tops, and I work slow!) but the same sentiment die looks lovely with umpteen different 'themes'. The addition of some sweet little images is cute - and then at the other end of the spectrum, a single poinsettia is really dramatic. And it cuts beautifully - bonus!
Just leave a comment on this post you're currently looking at if you would like the chance to win today's prize.
If I make some silly mistakes with dates and timings or anything else then please drop me an email
(NOT embedded in a comment as I will possibly not notice).
A lot of this is copy and paste and I'm doing my best, in between getting us ready for another 'semi-locked down' Christmas. Thankfully we have all our grocery deliveries lined up, it certainly pays to take out a 'delivery pass subscription' with both Ocado and Sainsbury's as it gives you priority slots weeks ahead for delivery dates and times, as well as paying for itself in no time.
Gifts between we three are bought and hidden, all Christmas cards are posted, wrapping paraphernalia and such is all poised, the outside decorations are lovely - courtesy of Len with Dudley supervising (ie. sticking his nose into everything!) - and I plan to put up the Christmas tree at the very least this week! Perhaps a few other bits as well ☺. It's all go and in between times there's still work to do on this 'ere Grand Draw. Wish me luck!
Hi there and a very warm welcome to the Christmas/New Year Snippets Playground - which is starting extra early this year and will run for FOUR weeks, right over Christmas and New Year.
Warning - this is a really horrendously looooooooooong post as it sets out how the draw will work, in a lot of detail and also repetitively in places to be sure to get the points home!
There are several reasons for such a long challenge. First of all we have absolutely loads of Christmas themed prizes in the Toy Box - some are from me and a good few have very kindly been donated (huge thanks to Darnell, Jackie T, Val and Zoe!). As some of the donated prizes were sent to me with Ruby's challenge in mind, I will be making a double donation to the rescue centre who saved Ruby and her siblings - before she then found her forever home with Lynne and Greg. £40 with £10 Gift Aid from the taxman makes it £50. I hope that sits well with those of you who might see a Christmas themed prize pop up that you donated with Ruby in mind. Lynne is happy with this by the way.
Some prizes may have 'samples', but by no means all of them will. Running over four weeks keeps us nicely in step with fortnightly challenges and results. I would really love the Grand Draw to go out on a 'high', this really will be the very last Grand Draw spanning several weeks with lots of prizes.
Plus - it gives you time to follow the theme! Did you get that? The theme is actually very simple - it's snippets as usual but this time I'd like your entry to be made following the theme of Christmas and/or New Year. And please, not just something you think qualifies - I do like clever and thoughtful use of snippets. In fact, I might even exclude anyone who is rather cavalier with their entry!
So - it's time to celebrate both the Christmas and New Year Holiday - plus, it's now almost ten whole years on January 2nd since I took the Snippets Playground over from the lovely Jules! And there are exciting times ahead for our new decade as well, that I totally promise you. Just watch this space.
By the way, the prizes all vary in value and their letter in the alphabet is purely for reference purposes.
Here's my snippets card for today (it's been shown on here previously) and just the embossing folder is the hint:
So, here we have Prize A of the Christmas/New Year giveaway - as I said, the above card is just a partial hint!
It's a set of five approx. 5" x 7" embossing folders by Sheena Douglass. They aren't in their original packaging as I bought them pre-loved - but never used. Not my photo and I bought all five folders purely for the 'Christmas Greetings' folder! Someone was desperate to own it, having seen it on my blog ages ago apparently. She then followed a lead that I sent her in the USA where she lives and hit lucky. But these popped up on Facebook over here at almost the same time! So we ended up with her finding one in the USA and me at the same time with a batch of five folders.☺
For the Grand Draw this year, the Playground Mr Linky which is below will run for four weeks and closing time will be 11am on Saturday 8th January 2022 and this post you are looking at right now is also where to add any entries - with a maximum of just one entry - over the four week period.
NB - I repeat - your entry must be Christmas and/or New Year themed. If you link something not themed then you won't be in the draw.
One, and only one, entry into Mr Linky means you're in the draw - and the more prizes you say you'd like to win in the comments in each 'additional prize' post does increase your winning chances. You have four weeks to play but you can only win one prize during the draw at the end, to give others a fair chance.
At the
same time as the chance to enter your themed snippets make into Mr Linky
closes, I plan to also close all commenting on all prizes on offer, and may even close some of the prizes as we go along - so
be on your toes.
If you see a prize you'd like to be in the 'pot' for then please leave a 'Yes please' (or similar) comment in the same post where I show you the prize.
AND, don't be shy about wanting each prize as it appears - that way
you'll have more chances of winning something.
So for today's prize, leave a comment below. Please don't leave it right until the end and nip through all the prize posts adding 'Yes please' to each in one fell swoop. Remember, they will show up serially on my dashboard in the comments section and if you do that I certainly will notice and wouldn't feel that it's in the true spirit of the Playground so you do risk not being in the draw at all. So, if you want to play then do pop in over the festivities to see what's on offer :)
As I already said, there will only be the one Mr Linky for all entries - which is at the end of this post of course. I'll remind you where to go to link each time I post a new prize on the blog if you haven't already added your one card.
I hope I've explained how the coming four weeks will work in the
Playground? Please just say if it's left you confused and I hope it
doesn't seem too draconian. My main priority is for everyone to play
fair and hopefully be in with a chance of winning something they would
like.
There will be a new Mr Linky on
Sunday 9th January 2022. The picks and also the results of the
multiple raffle/prize draw will appear as soon as I can manage, hopefully on Sunday 16th
January - but I'm making no promises!
Please also remember to link
back to the
Playground in your
blog post to
be
eligible for the draw, as well as saying what snippets you used on your entry. I'm going to toughen up a bit on this requirement.
Please
let me know if you have any problems linking, it's always fairly easy for me to sort out so don't struggle on alone.
Sorry this is so wordy and I've repeated a few points but I didn't want
to leave any issue not covered - even more than once! Do please ask if
anything isn't clear.
Dudley continues to be a smart little chap here. His breeder told us he was an intelligent boy and on that score she was so right - but it comes with the price of him cottoning onto things so fast that we often look at one another and say 'Can he speaka the lingo?'. We spell things out (T. R. E. A. T), and even use a smattering of Thai, Spanish and German but he soon learns - probably from intonation. Clever little monkey!
He had a bath/shower earlier today (Saturday) and as I type he's lying flat out on his back, fast asleep, on our bed - all nicely dried and brushed. And of course he ran off and hid, the moment he spotted his big fluffy bath towels being gathered along with his shampoo! Len and I are still drying off - I think it would be easier to just pop on swimsuits before tackling the bathing session! And possibly masks and snorkels too ☺.
Love from Dudley and yours truly, do come and play and get into the festive spirit. Speaking of which - Dudley has a nose like a little bloodhound and will 'snitch' if he finds a certain Head Prefect doling out mulled wine and sausage rolls - without including me for the wine, and Dudley for a sausage roll!
And here we go:
Oh wow, I adore this card - made by Bunny. The light bulbs are so realistic - die cut from snippets of Brusho coloured paper or card. Don't they look just like glass, fabulous!
Makes me want to have a little play with my own Brushos again. I got dis-hearted when, due to being overly enthusiastic/heavy handed, I often ended up with very muddy looking results. Bit like a child painting really - sigh.
I know, I picked Carol L for two challenges running ☺ But this really elegant card totally jumped out at me - brilliant use of monochrome snippets and the pops of red and silver.
I truly do try hard to spread the picks around, but it would be unfair of me to bypass a card like Carol's.
And my final pick this time is such a sweet card, made by Helen F. House Meece images are a huge favourite of mine and this card is cute as can be. I adore the addition of the curls and snippets of 'wrapping paper and ribbon'! Such a great touch.
I've stayed with three picks again - life is a bit busy right now. Thankfully the pre-Christmas panic I got myself into a few days ago has abated - mostly just through slogging away at things and ticking stuff off a long list of things to do.
We had two new Playmates this time - both of whom I sort of 'poached' from the brilliant Christmas Kickstart Challenge which ended on 30th November. A new Christmas Kickstart challenge begins on Tuesday morning folks, over HERE! | |
| I really do urge you to hop over to Bobby's blog HERE - plenty of wonderful ideas using snippets strips in the same post! |
And Prudence joined us via Instagram as well - go HERE to see her great Christmas tree card!
Do come back and play again soon ladies!
I know that some of you do prefer not to link in from a blog, but use other social media such as SCS, IG, FB and Flickr. Whilst I may choose you as a pick - sadly I can't always spend what often is quite a bit of time fiddling around trying to get your images onto Blogger. Often I have to save images, if I'm even allowed to do so, to my own hard drive, resize, save again and then pick them up from there. In future I will give links but no image in those cases - sorry! You'll still be in the prize draw of course. Some folk merrily predicted that Blogging would come to an end a couple or so years ago - I have yet to see proof though.
That's the picks from Challenge #416 in the Playground and we had 40 entries, including two new Playmates. Now for the prize draw which is a Pink Ink set of stamps and matching dies, from me. And the winner is:
Congratulations Lesley - a little while since your last win so this one is certainly due! I think you'll love your prize - enjoy!
Please send me your address, even if you know that I know it already, with your full name at the top as well so it can be can be copied and pasted for speed and ease. It's also confirmation that you still would like the prize of course. Please put Playground Winner or similar in the subject line of your email in case it drops into my junk mail. Email address is on RH sidebar as always.
Remember folks, there's still almost one more week to run on the current Ruby's Memory Challenge #417 which you can find HERE. There are two lovely prize bundles to choose between - kindly donated by two of our Playmates.
Breaking news: Next Sunday, 12th December, is the start of the Grand Christmas/New Year Draw in the Snippets Playground, with lots of prizes to be played for on many of the days during the four weeks it will run. I'll publish all the rules as usual next Sunday - but basically it will run along the same lines as previously. You must clearly use snippets remember!
Last Sunday's Ocado delivery was a total repeat of the other week when Dudley ran and got 'Honka Duck' to show to the delivery person - a young lady this time. Dudley adores most ladies, she almost melted on the spot, and of course he then did several of his tricks (dancing on his hind legs, few spins and plenty of cute smiling looks) - flirty little show-off that he is ☺.
I said at the beginning we had about an inch of snow last weekend. Here's Dudley doing zoomies around a far corner of the back garden clipped from CCTV footage. He uses the 'plug' for the rotary washing line socket as the marker for one end of his chosen circuit. The netting fence is to keep him off a huge patch of bare soil left after we had gardeners in to remove some massive shrubbery not long ago, about four times the length shown, in readiness for a project next Spring. He would love to get in there and have a good dig for sure!
I love the top 'action' shot. Although Dudley has seen and been out in snow in previous years, it was still a huge novelty and his absolute joy was a delight to behold!
He blends in well here doesn't he - good job he's got those lovely dark eyes and button nose!
Lots of love from Dudley Dog and of course me,
Hello
again - thanks for calling by! It's time for another snippets challenge
dedicated to sweet Ruby's Memory, in aid of the centre who originally
rescued
her, and this is our eighth one.
The prizes for this challenge have kindly been donated by two different Playmates! So there are two chances to win a prize as we'll be celebrating having donated £200 to the rescue centre once this challenge closes. Also the Playground toy box is overflowing with prizes here right now and I can't get the lid on properly! That should be a hint that we'll have a Grand Christmas/New Year Draw again this year ☺
From Linby we have Prize A:
Creative Expressions 'For you' edger die, Apple Blossom 'Flourish Clover' die and a set of Crafters Companion stamps called 'Craft Words'
And from a playmate who wishes to remain anonymous we have Prize B:
I'm afraid that I won't split or mix around the bundles. It might be that you already have something that's included in a bundle but please don't let that put you off playing. I'm sure that the donors will be just the same as me when I say feel free to pass anything onto a crafting friend - at your end.
Remember to always say if you're playing for the prize on offer - and this time please also say 'Prize A', 'Prize B' or 'Either'.
As always, the Snippets Challenge will run for two weeks and the Playground gates will close at 11am UK time on Saturday 11th December. The gates will open again at midnight UK time on the same day - and the Grand Christmas Draw will begin!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.
Dudley gave us a good few 'moments' this past week. On Thursday, he took a real dislike to the British Gas engineer who came to do the annual boiler service. In the end we had to 'gate' him in the craft room with me. To be honest, the guy was rather weird and never even asked if he could go upstairs to check the radiators - he just did it ... which set Dudley off again in protest! Only once the guy had gone did we realise what the issue had been. He was working in the garage where our boiler is housed and Dudley's store of food, treats and a little army of as yet unused toys are also housed in there! Once freed, he shot down into the garage to do a full inspection and audit!
Maureen's husband Al is thankfully making good progress after heart surgery and the November Rudolph Days Challenge is now up and running HERE. The best news of course is that Al is so much improved.
I made my card for the challenge about a week ago - it's a slimline one (DL size) using more from the Whimsy scenic paper pack:
I used:
- UK size white DL card stock - 8.25" x 4" - tent style
-
a sheet of paper from the Whimsy Stamps Slimline 'Frozen' scenic designer paper pack. It's just a snowy slope with sky and mountains in the background - but a perfect foil for what I did next (IMHO)
- cut a piece of silver pearlescent card to 8" x 3.75" and then cut the background Whimsy paper to 7.75" wide and left the height at 3.5" so that it was even all round
- had already chosen the stamps to use and they're from the MFT 'Ready, set, snow' set of stamps - love this set!
- stamped the three really cute snow boarding 'critters' plus a couple of trees onto white card using a Memento 'Tuxedo Black' ink pad
-
coloured them all using Faber-Castell Polychromos pencils
- then die cut them, using the co-ordinating set of MFT dies
- at that point I knew how the scene would fit together, and also that it was safe to stamp directly onto the background (from making a couple of cards using the same scenic background pad back in May) so I added the sentiment directly onto the background, using Memento 'Tuxedo Black' ink
- then positioned the 'still not stuck down' snowboarding trio plus two trees and worked out where some ''flipped back snow swirls' would go - using the Misti of course
- stamped the snow swirls, using Memento 'Tuxedo Black' again
- then glued the pearlescent silver panel on to the card blank
- followed that with the Whimsy back ground panel
- added the trees using a glue pen and the snowboarding critters using thin sticky pads
The colours are actually brighter, but still quite pastel, the best I could get as it was so dull here this afternoon when I took the photo. And the little shadows you can see around the images and their snowboards were just picked up by the camera due to the light (I'm not clever enough to have added them deliberately), yet as they're slightly raised, you do get that effect when you look at the cards in real life.
I'm a big fan of 'Ultratape' sticky pads and have used them for many years. They come in a sheet of 40 pads at approx. half an inch by one inch each in size. As they're lovely and thin, no worries about going into 'Large letter' postal rates - they're quick and easy to use, not messy and also snip into the tiniest pieces.
It made sense to make two cards exactly the same whilst everything was on my desk, particularly as the background papers come in twos. I totally love the Whimsy 'Frozen' scenic background papers - and already have plans for more pairs of cards.
As the set of stamps and dies is having its first outing, I'm linking this into Darnell's NBUS Challenge #32 HERE.
Still no real sign of Winter just yet (vests and Liberty bodices spring to mind!) but Christmas is certainly peeking over the horizon so, perhaps once December arrives, Jack Frost will also put in an appearance.
First of all, the picks - and we have two cards as one pick first:
 |
| Melanie H |
 |
| Karen C |
What a lot of fabulous inspiration from everyone, both new and existing Playmates - thank you all so much.
That's my picks from Challenge 415 in the Playground and I've stuck to the three picks limit, plus our new Playmates, very tough choosing - as always! We had 51 entries in total, it's so good to see the number of entries looking so healthy.
Now for the prize draw which is a Penny Black slapstick/cling stamp called 'full of glee', kindly donated by Darnell - and here's the winner:
Had a quiet smile here, Darnell's name popped out first - the giver of the prize in the first place ☺
As soon as I have your address Lynn, I'll pop your prize in the post the next time I'm out giving the car some exercise.
Remember folks, there's still almost one more week to run on the current Challenge #416 which you can find HERE. The prize is already proving to be very popular - it's a Pink Ink set of stamps and matching dies called 'Pigs Might Fly'.
Also, the Christmas Kickstart Challenge (Christmas Snippets), where I'm currently Jo's guest 'elf', is still running until the end of November.
At the moment, I don't know if Scrappy Mo will be running her Rudolph Days challenge this month (usually from the 25th) as her husband is recovering from a quadruple bypass. I suggest you keep an eye on Mo's blog HERE. My card is all ready and waiting but Al's health as well as Mo's own well-being must come first.
We had a Sainsbury's delivery during the week and the delivery man heard Dudley 'singing' to him from the top of the stairs and called up 'Where's your honking duck today little fella?'. He'd remembered that Dudders brought his duck down to show to him. Dudley's 'singing' is preferable to him barking when folk are at the open front door here - it's a cross between yodelling and varying notes of a sort of doggie song.
I was finishing off writing this post yesterday afternoon (Saturday) and Len reminded me it was time for Dudley's quarterly worming tablet. Something he hates and we dread as it's such a struggle - we've tried all disguises for the wretched pill and sadly even stinky blue cheese, which he loves, doesn't fool him. Len went to a high level drawer in the bedroom where 'special treat time' doggie choccie drops are kept hidden - Dudley was sitting on our bed being nosy as usual of course. As I moved onto the landing to go and help Len with the 'administering' I was almost bowled over. Dudley literally flew through the air off the bed, charged right past me, scampered down the stairs and belted into the lounge to hide. We both stood open mouthed thinking - 'what just happened?'. All we can think is that he associates choccie drops with medicine - right from three months ago - and he was having none of it. I almost cried laughing - it's about the fastest I've ever seen Dudley move! So far we haven't made any move at all to try again.
Only 15 minutes earlier Len had had to wake him up and carry him down to the garden for the toilet (ie. poo time) before rain arrived - and I took this photo. He was so sleepy and just dangling like a limp dishcloth and that's Len's hand you can see under his chest/tummy to carry him:
 |
| I do NOT need to go to the toilet - let me sleep! I was all warm and cosy, sigh. |
Right now though, the little guy is 100% wide awake and on high alert! No worming tablets today, thank you very much!
Edit - Len caught Dudley almost unawares just before bedtime, popped the pill in and gulp, down it went without a battle, for once - hooray!
Last week I posted about assembling 20 little Simon Says Stamp gnomes HERE. The little lady gnomes were kindly die cut and sent to me by Karen L all the way from the USA, along with some spare card so I could use my little 'gnome chap' die to make companions for them. Using my Altenew mini die cutting machine I ended up with a little army of 20 gnomes - eight lady and chap pairs and four lone ladies. And here's a peek at some of the finished cards:
- white card blanks - four @ 5.5" x 4.25" and eight @ 4" x 4"
- die cutting the chaps then assembling the gnomes took forever, Karen must have the patience of a saint. The little chaps aren't too bad but the ladies are more painstaking to assemble. I cut the chaps from the spare snippets of card Karen had sent - so that the pairs would co-ordinate yet not have the same outfits (just by swopping the hats and lower body colours)
- all the gnomes were assembled using a glue pen and the little noses were all coloured with a Dusky Pink Pro marker - and the beards were flicked with a Warm Grey Pro marker
- quite rightly, Karen hadn't included any teeny bows for the little ladies' braids - so I rummaged through my own dies and found a bow from Marianne Creatables LR0467 set of 'ballet' dies which suited perfectly. Some of the snippets were too tiny even for that so a further rummage turned up a teeny bow shaped die from an Impression Obsessions set of dies called 'Kite' - result!
- backgrounds were trimmed down from three different scenes in the KanBan 'Christmas Wobblers' pack of pre-printed backgrounds - so that I could make 12 cards, four of each using each scene background, just wearing different colour combinations
- glued the backgrounds to the card fronts
- added the gnomes using thin sticky pads
- finally, added Craftwork Cards pre-printed and die cut sentiments to eight of the cards - the backgrounds are made using glossy card (as shown in some relection from my daylight lamp - sorry!) so I had to avoid stamping the sentiments
- finished!
I did love making these cards - they certainly took me quite a while in several sessions, just as and when I felt the inclination. A massive thank you to Karen - you're a star my friend!
I'm entering the current Allsorts Challenge #650 - where the current theme is 'Christmas'. Hooray, for once I made the deadline - I miss entering this challenge so often as I'm quite a slow thinker/crafter
Speaking of challenges, a little reminder folks that the Christmas Snippets challenge is still running over at Christmas Kickstart, where it's my turn to be 'Jo's Christmas Elf' for the month. Why not join in? So far a lot of you already have played - Jo is kinder than me though and you can actually play up to three times, with a maximum of seven other challenge entries each time you enter a Christmas snippets make. This is now another one of my favourite challenges.
Welcome to a new Snippets Playground Challenge.The Winter is dithering a bit here, some days are relatively warm for the time of year and, as yet, we haven't seen our first frost. Having said that - time is certainly galloping towards Christmas. Len even started playing Christmas music on his guitar and is already asking me to decide what outdoor/indoor lights we'll have this year. No idea was the response - too soon for me.
And for this challenge we have another lovely Guest Designer. This time it's Amanda of 'Panda's Paper Playtime'!
As always, the Snippets Challenge will run for two weeks
and the Playground gates will close at 11am UK time on Saturday 27th November.
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.
