Pixie's Snippets Playground - Week 234

This is all of the Sunday Snippets post in one go, despite my earlier warnings - yay!

Yesterday we were out at the local village carnival - from early morning, setting up and helping out with 'have a go' archery as well as wandering round the many stalls when given a little break! The weather wasn't too unkind, chilly at times but it stayed dry at least - and I must have been busy as the camera never made an appearance!

The atmosphere was just as expected at a traditional English village event, even the local vicar was sketching charcoal faces to raise funds for the church and of course the village WI were out in force - selling cakes and jam. There were loads of rides and the usual fairground sideshows, as well as too much icecream, Cornish pasties from the village bakery and candy floss!

Although very tired at the end of a long day, we both had loads of fun and a lot of laughs. There must have been a cider stall (as usual) but we never found it although, when I drove us home at the end after clearing up, there was a very 'wibbly wobbly' old biddy in shorts with various veined leggies (?!) and sporting blonde curls weebling along, totally oblivious to traffic behind her, on the narrow lane past one of the thatched cottages on our route :) Bet she'll sleep well tonight!

Long live English traditions - and hangovers :)

Here's my snippets make, it actually has no connection with the prize for this week, but I did use snippets of course. Yesterday was the 50th Birthday of a sweet blogging friend and this is the card I made to send to her:

I used:

- 6" x 6" square white card blank

- snippet of white card, onto which I stamped a Penny Black image using a pre-loved stamp called 'Coop Party!', using a Ranger 'Jet Black' Archival ink pad

- coloured the image using Ranger Distress Markers and a water brush before fussy cutting right round it

- then found a free image of chicken wire on the internet, resized it to suit and printed it onto a piece of A4 white card, right in the centre so I could trim around it to my heart's content later on

- I had just the one snippet of the right shade of green Core'dinations card stock (to match the stems and leaves of the little bouquet of flowers) to play with so the next part took a bit of planning out

- first I trimmed the green card to slightly smaller than the card front so I could use it as a border around the chicken wire layer

- next I die cut a square from the centre of the piece of green card (effectively 'gutting' it) and adhered the remaining outer part onto the card front

- something in me is a bit against gutting as I know there's a piece of card with a chunk cut out of it, albeit hidden by the next layer! So, I die cut another white square the same size using a snippet of white card and stuck that in place so that the surface was level again :)

- next I backed the die cut square of green card with Stick-It adhesive sheet and die cut the sentiment using the Joanna Sheen 'Retro Happy Birthday' die and then the 50th using Memory Box 'Classic Numbers' and Tattered Lace 'Alphabet' dies

- worked out how I wanted the end result to look and first of all trimmed the printed chicken wire layer into a square then stuck it in place on top of the green layer of card, using Collall All Purpose glue 

- then just stuck the cute row of chooks, greeting and 50th in place

I bet most of you will guess who this card was made for - hope you had a fabulous day hun!!

Time for this week's 'peek at the picks':

I know that Jules is often a weekly pick, but I just had to show you this brilliant idea for using up snippet strips! Clever or what? Jules is blogging much more regularly now (goodness knows where she finds the time!) so there are loads of lovely cards appearing on her blog to inspire you.

We have had pop up box cards in the Playground fairly regularly - I picked this one by Megan as I adore the little reindeer with the skyline buildings behind. Also, Megan has a really easy to follow tutorial on the blog post - well worth a read!

I picked this fun card, made by April, as it made me giggle. Such a cute card and next thing I knew Parsnip was all geared up in his stetson ready for a ride - but I vetoed the spurs he wanted to wear! Visions of him careering off into the sunset never to be seen again - grimly hanging onto the Llama :)

Here's another fun card - shared with us by Cornelia. Plus, even better, there's a great tutorial showing how she made this - hop over to Cornelia's and follow the link. I know that Livi, Len's youngest grand daughter in Germany, would absolutely adore a card like this!

We had two new Playmates this week:

Nancy sauntered in with this gorgeous scene to share. It reminds me so much of the sun setting over the hills and rock formations on an evening drive we did in New Mexico a while back - and how clever to add the sentiment on a snippet of the same background!

Then Majda arrived, with this beautiful package to show us.There's no translation gizmo on Majda's blog but I'm guessing there might just be some chocolate hidden inside? And isn't the heart made up of buttons so cute?!

Now for the prize draw, for the Lawn Fawn 'Float My Boat' and Memory Box 'Breezy Waves' stamps and dies I used last week. Plus the extra set of Memory Box dies called 'School of Fish', kindly donated by Mary Anne. And the winner is:

Pat

Well done Pat! Each week Pat comes to play nicely - and I'm delighted for her! Plus, Pat always lets us in on her secrets on how she achieves such lovely end results - happy dance here for you Pat. I have your address from a previous win, which is well over six months ago so will post your prize off to you as soon as possible this coming week :) Do let me know quickly if you've moved house since your last win :)

This coming week's prize is also a bit of a bumper one and there's a little tale behind it. I quite often order stuff from Tara's shop called 'Seven Hills Crafts'. What I really love about about the shop is that, not only am I supporting Tara's business, but also she is one of the few UK sources of tons of USA produced goodies - notably dies and stamps, which would cost such a lot to order direct from the USA.

Tara used to play here before life became too busy (which is a good thing as it means the shop is doing OK!) and she queried a recent order of mine which was for more than one of an item. Of course I'd factored in a prize for the Playground but was grateful that Tara queried it anyhow. And then, she offered some goodies for the Playground as prizes! I was super thrilled when a lovely parcel arrived here with, amongst other items, these three Paper Smooches stamp sets:

The sets from left to right are 'Apologies', 'Smooches' and 'Graffiti'.

I'm offering all three as one prize - although you can of course just opt for one or two of the sets. There will be more lovely prizes (including more Paper Smooches stamps!) from the parcel in the near future. I'm delighted to be able to offer you these items and would love it if you would perhaps pop over to Tara's to see what she has in her wonderful shop:

 
The Snippets Challenge will run for one week (we're back to normal for the time being, yay!) and the Playground gates will close at 11am UK time on Saturday 25th June. The gates will open again at midnight UK time on the same day.

A maximum of ONE entry and please say in a comment if you wish to play and be a possible winner of the prize. If you only want to play for one or two of the stamp sets, just say so in your comment and if you win then I'll do a further draw for the other item(s). Please also link back to the Playground in your blog post to be eligible for the draw.

Mr Linky is below - please let me know if you have any problems linking, it's easy for me to sort out so don't struggle on alone :) 

Di and, of course, Parsnip
x