Pixie's Snippets Playground - Challenge #370 - results

 

This week's post is likely to be a quick one for the Playground results - Storm Dennis is here. And 'Storm Dudley' is in full flow, racing around upstairs - and  also leaping on and off our bed, using it as a trampoline and generally having a whale of a time. It's taken a week but it's so lovely to have him causing chaos again!

Let's move straight into this fortnight's picks:

Brenda L brought these two fabulous cards to share!  So clever, and made without any templates. Most certainly one to CASE - just perfect for a chap!

What a stunning Christmas card, using tons of snippets (aka scraps), made by Jenny L I love all the different detail.

I do so love this adorable cat card, made by Glennis. Loads of snippets used and such a clever idea to ink in the balloon strings and attach them to the 'puddy tat's tail'! 

We had four new Playmates this time:

Raga - girls,  DO please go and check the link, this is such a fabulous card and there's a video as well!

Linda (of Snail's Pace) - someone we've probably seen around Blogland, now playing with us! Adorable card!

Lucy E - CAS at its best!

Nicole G. Unfortunately all that's linked is this photo of her card, no words, no nothing. I'm letting it go this time but under our rules it wouldn't count in future as there's nothing else there to support the photo as a snippets entry - but it's very cute! I can see from the URL that it's using a Germany based photo facility, the word Wilkommen is of course Welcome, it's for a baby, and it uses some snippets by the looks of it. Do please email me Nicole if you want any advice about joining in with the Playground - we'd love to have you play!

So, that's my picks and I do hope they've given you some inspiration for ways in which you can use up some of those snippets.

We had 55 entries this time round - and of course we had four new Playmates.

Time now for the prize draw, which is for a Clearly Besotted 'Simply Succulent' set of stamps with matching dies. And the winner is:

Emma T

Well done Emma. I think your last fortnightly win was in November 2018 - so this is well overdue! Please send me your address, with your full name at the top as well so I can copy and paste or just write straight from the email onto the envelope - for speed and ease. It's also confirmation that you still would like the prize of course and I'll post your prize once I hear from you. 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 another week to run on Challenge #371 - you can find it HERE. The prize is a Lil Inker 'Boxed Up Thanks' die.

Parcels and packages are still arriving at Mary's - she's having to buy new roller carts to store all the goodies :) Thank you so much girls for pitching in to help.

Love from Parsnip, a happy wave from Dudley (in between his leaps and bounds) - and of course hugs as always from me,

Boy's Birthday card - out of this world

I made this card for Luke, a neighbour son who will be eight years old next week. Am posting it on here, mostly for my own records as it's just made from a kit:

I used:

- 7" x 5" white card blank, short side opening

- backing card and toppers by Hunkydory, in a 'free' kit given out at a show up in Coventry a few years ago

- selected the piece of the backing card I wanted to use, trimmed it and glued it in place

- popped out the pre-cut 'toppers', snipped of the little white bits at the edges and then glued them in place 

Has to be the fastest card ever!

It wasn't until Tuesday evening that we saw signs of Dudley's old spirit returning - five whole days after his experience at the so-called 'groomer's' - he played a game of 'zoomies' around the lounge and it was a delight to see his eyes sparkling once again. He's still very wary about having his collar put on, which he needs as well as his harness when he goes out so it can't be avoided. Time and patience with a load of love should help - we hope. Our next step is for me to take him out for a car ride in his doggie booster box for a little excursion - the last time he was in that, he returned home curled up into a very sad and shaking little ball. Perhaps I'll take his beloved 'Stinky Monkey' Mark 4 along for the ride to keep him company :)

Thank you all for your support - the Playground Pup sends woofs!

Pixie's Snippets Playground - Challenge #371

What a week and a half this has been! More of that later.

But, wisely, I grabbed some time on Wednesday to make my snippets card for this fortnight:

I used:

- 5.25" x 4.25"" white card blank, side opening

- a snippet of daisy patterned paper from the back pocket in an 11 year old Daisy and Dandelion 'Picnic Patch' paper pad, backed with a snippet of SU's 'Perfect Plum' card stock, not even enough to make a full frame so I opted to just have borders at the top and bottom. Adhered them together

-  then a different snippet from the same paper pad, backed with slightly wider 'Perfect Plum' and adhered to the panel - got the pattern centred across the card as well! Trimmed both ends from the back, as usual

- glued the front panel to the card blank

- backed another snippet of 'Perfect Plum' with Stick-it adhesive sheet and die cut the message panel - using a Lil-Inkers die called 'Boxed Up Thanks' and the Altenew Mini Blossom die cutting machine. LOVE that little machine, it's so quick and easy for smaller dies - and so far is working perfectly

- used a lemon coloured lightly patterned snippet of paper from the same 'Picnic Patch' paper pad, backed it with plain white card and trimmed it to a tiny whisker smaller than the die cut message before popping it onto the back of the message square using a small tape runner

- adhered the message square to the card front on top of the band using thin sticky pads - it's very slightly skewed, my trademark these days!

- final touch, a couple of sequins, added to the message square, using Glossy Accents

Once again, the camera picked up a weird thing - both sequins are the same mauve, albeit iridescent.

I mentioned on my Rudolph Days post the other day that Lil'Inkers is closing down. Naturally I had a tootle over to see if I could find any goodies for the Playground Toy Box. Almost fainted when the postage for a handful of very lightweight and heavily discounted items was going to be $29.99 so I left it.

However, Seven Hills Crafts here in the UK (run by Tara and Rick) have a fair amount of Lil'Inkers stuff in stock - not reduced (yet) though. I did buy a few small items for the Toy Box and the die I used today is one of those. I really love it, and it has the Lil'Inkers signature stitched effect on that outer border, just not showing up well in the photo.

And here's the prize for this fortnight:

A Lil'inkers die called 'Boxed Up Thanks' die. My card was made pretty quickly, I bet you can come up with much better designs though. I especially like that it's ideal for making card for chaps as well as the ladies. Unfortunately, even Seven Hills are out of a lot of designs - as a Birthday Wishes one in this style would be really so useful! I've just done another search of Seven Hills and the items I did manage to buy are now out of stock - word has gotten around that Lil'Inkers are closing it seems.

As always, the Snippets Challenge will run for two weeks and the Playground gates will close at 11am UK time on Saturday 22nd February. 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.

This is quite long but very important - changes to the rules. Please read. 

Up until now I've been very relaxed about our 'rules in the Snippets Challenge. However, some boundaries are being pushed too far by a small minority so I'm clarifying and tightening up a few things.

In future I will delete all 'back linked' entries from Mr Linky, regardless, and they are very easy to spot. You make a card, you post it and you link before posting anything else on your blog and preferably on the day your post goes live - otherwise it's a 'back link' and will be deleted.

From now on you may only enter this challenge plus another nine challenges with your entry - making a total of 10 challenges. That's pretty generous, any more than 10 and your entry will be deleted from Mr Linky.

I also will be looking to see that you have said in your blog post what you've used, as one or more snippets, to qualify you to join in with the Playground. I don't need reams of detail but in the past I often had to give the benefit of the doubt but from now onwards, if it isn't written there for me to see easily, your entry will be deleted from Mr Linky.

Also, I won't take up more of my own time to leave you a comment to explain why an entry has been deleted, I do this on my own and the 'rools' are still few, as well as very clear, so that's the way forward.

So very many of you always play really fairly - and lot of it was down to my relaxed attitude as I wanted the Playground to be as easy going as possible until it suddenly hit me that I needed to rein things in.

Naturally I still love the Playground but I don't want it to be abused, and we were heading that way. If we lose some players then so be it. It's not a huge change - really just making sure that people play nicely as well as fairly!

Our news here:

I didn't manage to finish off my sorting out of my own parcel for Mary as planned. Spent Tuesday afternoon in our local hospital's eye clinic with an emergency appointment, which meant I was at the tail end of a very long list of appointments. The old HSV Keratitis flared up in my left eye after a four year respite - and it's one of those things you can't ignore, much less treat without having to trot off to hospital. Ha, ha - I did say I wanted to get out and about in the car more but didn't bank on that being one of the first destinations. Much less as the car park was overflowing and folk were literally driving round for 20 or more minutes looking for parking spaces. I finally tottered back into the house at almost 6pm.

Thursday afternoon was a bit of a nightmare too. Long story cut short - we discovered that the groomer we had trusted on Dudley's previous visit is more interested in rattling through as many dogs as possible and it seems had given Dudley a very hard time. He'd been caged as well as tethered with a neck loop and was traumatised when we collected him. Basically, she was trying to juggle three dogs at once - on her own. We heard his anguished squeals and also spotted the noose when we arrived back before she expected us. Poor little chap was up in the early hours of Friday morning being sick - purely due to being so stressed. Thankfully he's slowly coming round to being his old self again but isn't venturing too far from one or other of us.

Sadly UK dog groomers aren't regulated, otherwise we'd certainly take it further. All we have been able to do is give her a stinking review (and as a result she set her local coven of groomers on us like a pack of rabid wolves), and we'll find a better groomer, without purely £ signs in their eyes. My firm view now is never to trust a one person 'business' - in future we'll go back to the big boys who may not act as if they know it all but who have more than one person handling things and are not afraid to work in an area where they can be viewed by customers outside a glass walled salon - or even on CCTV, which I found today when looking for other dog groomers. Who knew? It's obviously a known problem if some groomers are making their actions open and clear to owners.

Edit: And just to add to the fun - one of the self appointed 'Head Honchos' of the 'groomers coven', found this blog and had a dig around - in our Playground. So I've had to turn on comment moderation - sorry girls, it's actually very quick and easy for me to check and publish so it matters not here.
 
For now, Dudley is still clearly affected by the experience, very clingy and sleeping in a tightly coiled ball as if trying to protect himself. Poor little scrap. We do joke that in an emergency we'd both make a grab for Dudley and leave the other one to get out!

Have a lovely week - we have high winds forecast for today, Sunday, so we don't plan on venturing further than Dudley's toilet trips!

I hope that the vast majority of you agree with me spelling out the 'rools' above - I'm trying to keep this place so fair for everyone. It isn't meant to be draconian - in fact it's just the way many challenges already run. And of course, not many challenges have such a free theme as ours, which is 'just use one or more snippets'. I've written it in red text, not to shout but purely as I expect many of you skim through a lot of what I chunter on about :) Story of my life really, sigh.

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

Pixie's Snippets Playground - Challenge #369 - results

 

I realised a couple of weeks ago that today's date is quite special. It's a Palindrome Date - ie. 02-02-2020 reads the same both forwards and backwards. There are just 38 such dates this century, and only 12 of them are eight digits (I confess to looking that bit up).

And on the subject of all things special - huge thanks to so many of you who have sent, and are in the process of sending, goodies to Mary in Illinois to help to build up her craft supplies, lost in the fire that consumed her home in California. She's quite overwhelmed by it all and will be getting in touch with you lovely girls individually. But meanwhile this is just to let you know that packages, parcels and cards are flowing in - to the extent that some super organising of it all will be keeping Mary occupied - along with making thank you cards - for a little while!

Let's move straight into this fortnight's picks:

 

This is only a tiny part of what Adry made - lots of exploding boxes with these adorable little prams in for a Christening - absolute works of art! i can't urge you strongly enough to hop over to her blog HERE - and see it all for yourselves. Well worthy of being my *Gold Star* pick! Please take the little 'Gold Star Award' button from my right hand side bar Adry - your blog name of 'Scrapbooking Engineer' is so very apt! Wonderful work.

April brought this brilliant card to share, using up lots of little paper and card snippets. Love the colours and it's such a pretty card! I'm beginning to like shades of mauve and purple just as much as pink these days!

What a great card this is. I just love the wry expression on the penguin's face - really so cute! Carol G made it - and how cleverly she used the plaid snippets for the balloon and bow tie. The balloon almost look like a clear bubble, magnifying the plaid background!

I picked this  wonderful card, made by Janice, as a reminder that you can create great effects by mixing and matching several papers to make a Sunburst card. I love the additional touch of drawing a line using a black Pro marker where the papers join - a very neat finish!

We had no new Playmates this time.

So, that's my picks and I do hope they've given you some inspiration for ways in which you can use up some of those snippets.

We had 57 entries this time round - still going strong!

Time now for the prize draw, which is for a Crafters Companion 'Three Baubles' set of dies plus a Tonic Studios 'Large Merry Christmas' die.  And the winner is:

Janis in ID

Well done Janis. Please send me your address, with your full name at the top as well so I can copy and paste or just write straight from the email onto the envelope - for speed and ease. It's also confirmation that you still would like the prize of course and I'll post your prize once I hear from you. 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 another week to run on Challenge #370 - you can find it HERE. The prize is a Clearly Besotted 'Simply Succulent' set of stamps with matching dies.

I collected my car on Wednesday and am delighted with it - although there's as many controls as you get in the cockpit of an aeroplane (gulp) and it's a lot to get to know/take in! Our first 'family' run out in it will be to take Dudley to the Groomer's on Thursday. He's really ready for a trim now that his operation scar has totally healed up. He's gonna just love that outing, not. Here comes the yodeling Havanese :)

He now knows how to get onto to our (rather high) bed for a cuddle. We've placed a low footstool at the bottom of the bed and it didn't take him long (aided with treats until we sussed he really knew what to do and was milking the situation for the treats!) to pick up what to do, two hops and he's up. The idea is to stop him from waking Len up, asking to be lifted up. We're not quite there yet, he now pads round to Len, gets on his hind legs and politely pats him until he wakes up - basically asking permission to hop up onto the bed!

Psst, after scheduling this I decided to change the inks in my printer. Ooopsie, not a good look at all here. They fought back at me, three of them - one after the other, the little perishers! So I now have one ruined top (it owes me nothing but am still quite cross) Plus fingers which are an interesting mixture of black, magenta - and a LOT of cyan blue! Thank goodness Dudley was tucked right under my desk at the time else he would have had his very own 'Technicolour Dreamcoat'. Luckily none of the ink went much further than me, but in future I'll be opening up those twisty clip things - with the ink refill tucked inside a big poly bag and latex gloves on my hands! 

Love from Parsnip, a happy wave from Dudley (ha, don't mention this coming Thursday to him!) - and of course hugs as always from me,
  

Rudolph Days - January 2020

I came so close to missing entering January's Rudolph Days challenge over at ScrappyMo's. Am squeaking in at the last minute with this card I made yesterday afternoon:

I used:

- 5.5" x 4.25" white card blank, side opening

- piece of white card, die cut using Lil'Inker's 'Stitched Rectangle' set of dies

- Memory Box 'Snowflake Marquee' die, to die cut the centre of the stitched panel

- snippet of gloriously glittery (non-shed) silver card just over slightly larger than the white panel, onto which I glued the die cut white panel with two edges (top and one side) the width I wanted the end result to be

- then trimmed the other two edges (bottom and the other side) to match. The reason I did this proved to be a right decision. I was unsure how much 'wiggling' I'd be able to do when gluing together plain card and a rougher glittered card - answer proved to be zero. So at least I had two edges exactly lined up as I wanted them to be and the additional trimming worked a treat

- at this point I'd intended to heat emboss a silver sentiment - but a little rummage turned up some small silver Merry Christmas peel offs so used those instead, mostly for speed

- then glued the whole panel onto the front of the card and left it at that - clean, and hopefully elegant

I bought this die long before Christmas but this is its first outing. You can also use the 'waste' pieces from the die cut to make a design, also with a gap for the sentiment. Most images of cards I've subsequently looked at on the internet seem to favour this - but I'm more than happy with this way of using the die by cutting into a panel of card and backing it with a contrast. Largely as at least the design is placed totally evenly and level! And our Darnell did the same with a similar card recently so if it's good enough for her then it's good enough for me :)

Given a little bit of time, this would be great for 'batch baking' a few cards all the same but let's be thankful I even managed to make the one!

On the subject of Lil'Inkers - sad to say that Laura is closing the business down. She's had a huge sale running, but stocks are so low it's probably too late to grab a bargain. Many thanks to a sweet friend who gave me the heads up though.

OK - so who gave Mrs Grumpy some Happy Pills?!

Just to let you know that my trip to the Post Office went off without a hitch today! I picked a quiet time and trotted in with my bag full of Grand Draw Prize packages. Then, to my horror, realised there was only one person manning the Post Office counter - and it was my friend ...... Mrs Grumpy. Gulp.

To my utter delight and everlasting joy, she was all sweetness and light - ploughing through all the packages, adding the postage to them and also giving me proof of posting for each one. At one point I said I was concerned when I was pulling out ever more packages from my bag and said perhaps we could skip the proof of posting and she said 'No worries. That's what we're here for'. Stunned, smacked with a wet kipper and so on - I came home a very happy bunny! Perhaps the long queue that had built up behind me might not have been so happy though. Can't win 'em all! Ha, was that a dagger that whistled past my ear as I exited the village shop?

So, if you won a prize - the UK ones are coming by 1st Class post and all overseas ones are Airmail of course.

I'd really appreciate it if you could quickly drop me an email when your prize arrives - purely so I can tick things off and eventually dispose of all the paperwork. No need to write anything more than - 'Prize arrived' or similar.

Pixie's Snippets Playground - Challenge #370

We came close to me not being able to set the new Snippets Challenge as there's so much going on. However, here it is - phew!

First, here's my snippets card, which is much more vibrant in real life:

I used:

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

- a snippet of white card - trimmed to a quarter of an inch smaller than the card front, meaning it's an eighth of an inch smaller on each edge of course

- chose a snippet of paper from the Carta Bella 'Beach Day' paper pad, with a matching strip in lime green from the same pad

- next stamped three pots and three cacti/succulents using Memento 'Tuxedo Black ink and stamps from the (now discontinued) Clearly Besotted 'Simply Succulents' stamp set and coloured them using Faber-Castell Polychromos pencils. Matched them to the backing zig zag paper but the camera thought otherwise of course!

- then die cut the pots and plants, before adhering them together on the back with little strips of ordinary sellotape so that the plant was slightly tucked underneath the pot

- now I knew the heights of the pots with their plants in I could slightly trim the patterned snippet, back it with the lime green strip, trimmed so that just a smidgen shows at the top of the strip, stuck them together with a tape line runner and then added the completed strip to the bottom of the white card panel I cut earlier. Trimmed the strip from the back in line with each side of the panel

- glued the panel to the card front and then added the little pots using thin sticky pads for a bit of dimension

I didn't add a sentiment for the moment - I would use a Clarity message sticker just in one top corner if I decide to add one at a later stage. If I do this same design again I'll hand/fussy cut the pots. As it is, I trimmed the white border from the bottom of the pots but think it would have been better trimmed all round. Although, the dies really are so good for cutting the plants themselves of course! Do wish I'd stopped and tried to line up the zig-zag pattern centrally - but this card was lucky to get made at all! What is really extra sweet is that the stamp set has a teeny stamp of two eyes and a smiley mouth (and a little 'hair bow plus what looks like a little hat) to add character to the plants - if you feel so inclined. It's a fun set with lots of possibilities.

And of course, here's the prize for this fortnight:

A Clearly Besotted 'Simply Succulent' set of stamps with matching dies. See the eyes and mouth? Plus what I'm sure is a jaunty little hat (that's in the middle at the top of the set of stamps).

It's no good, I'm going to have to have a little play at creating a character! Besides which, Santa brought me a mini Misti (to complement my standard sized Mist) which I'm finding is great for quick access and stamping small items.

Sooooo, I bit the bullet and have treated myself to Altenew's Mini Blossom die cutting machine - it's also within easy reach for when I just need to cut a sentiment or even these little dies I used above. It only arrived today (Saturday) and I've had a very quick play - I love it! Much easier and quicker - as well as a help with this ongoing shoulder business (which is improving all the time, albeit slowly).

Have said previously - I make no apology for often having Clearly Besotted products as prizes, love their products and they don't break the bank if you're lucky enough to snap them up on clearance.

As always, the Snippets Challenge will run for two weeks and the Playground gates will close at 11am UK time on Saturday 8th February. 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.

HUGE thanks to so many of you who have either sent craft items to Mary in the USA, or to me for onward posting. She's in regular touch and already is bowled over by your kindness.

I plan to post off the Snippets Grand Draw prizes (minus one still - Gail of Crafty Nomad where are you?) this week. In between turning round a hairdressers appointment, shopping trip, change of car and various other things. Then I'll be free to go through my own stocks and sort out Mary's parcel. Can I please ask that if you do intend to sent anything to Mary via me that you really try to get it to me by the end of this coming week. I would like to post my parcel the week after this coming one if possible (which will be the week commencing 3rd February). Ha, providing I'm not banned from the Post Office if I've had a run in with Mrs Grumpy when posting off the Grand Draw prizes!

Having said that, how lovely it would if now and then in the future, as you see fit, you post Mary some Happy Mail. I aim to do that - until she shouts that the house is bursting at the seams :)

Dudley is full of mischief as usual here. He insists on trying to bring home twigs he finds on his walks - not that long ago he tried to haul a branch almost as big as he is back to the house!

Last, but not least! ScrappyMo is running her Rudolph Days Challenge once again this year - HERE. You have until the last day of January to enter!

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