Pixie's Snippets Playground - Week 239

Well, we wanted Summer to finally arrive here in the UK! And it sure did last week, phew!  What an exciting week for so many of us, Darnell arrived in the UK and is currently on her 'Grand Tour'. I wrote about it HERE.

Having been away for almost three days in Southampton with Darnell and others, there's been very little time for crafting so today's snippets card today is a repeat showing of one I made back in the middle of June - but it does lead us nicely into this week's prize. It's a Christmas card .......... in sweltering July:

 

I used:

- 5" x 5" white card blank

- square of silver mirri card, slightly smaller than the card front, glued in place

- square of white card, slightly smaller than the silver layer, glued in place

- more of the silver mirri card, backed with Stick It adhesive sheet then the dove and sentiment were die cut using Sue Wilson's Creative Expressions 'Dove of Peace' set

- adhered the dove and sentiment in place on the card front - clean, crisp and simple

All the silver card came from the snippets folder BTW. I always have loads of little pieces of leftover gold and silver mirri card - always handy for sentiments as well as smallish die cuts such as corners.

Now for this week's peek at the picks:

A great way to use up snippets, shared with us by Val. I love this quite abstract SU die set that Val used. It can be used for male cards, pretty girlie cards in say pinks and mauves, gold/silver for Anniversaries and Weddings, the long wavy die could be used for snowdrift backgrounds - the list goes on! There now, I've fully justified adding the set to my 'wish list' :)

I know that loads and loads of you are playing with alcohol inks and Yupo paper right now - producing some wonderful work. This card, using the technique, brought to share by Cornelia, really made me sit up - what a stunner! I think it's just breathtaking - absolutely beautiful background and the vellum panel sentiment is perfect!

And here's another brilliant Yupo paper/alcohol ink creation! This time Aileen created lots of backgrounds to play with and the LOVE die cut came from one of them. So striking and I'm all fired up to take the plunge!! Sometimes, in fact a lot of the time, I fear for my pocket money when I see all the wonderful ideas in the Playground!

I picked this card, made by Sam ( Whisper) because I think it's really pretty, lots of snippets, it's pink, a lovely design ........... and it sums up the weather right now down in the Playground :) So, so sweet and made with such care - the adorable hedgie really made me smile here.

Here's a card to bring you up with a start - made by the very talented Donna. Again using vellum so effectively and a fabulous new Poppy Stamps die called 'Sticks Frame'. I absolutely love this card and, quite rightly, Donna has entered it into the brilliant challenge run by Loll and Bonnie (both of them are Playmates here).

I especially like Loll and Bonnie's really friendly monthly challenge, called 'CAS Mix Up' - link is HERE - as it's two elements for each challenge, then you choose the third element from a standard permanent list. For example, Donna used Stamping + Markers and then added in heat embossing, die cutting and punching. So, it's great fun to pick the third element (or more if you wish, I've entered using a card with two additional elements this past week) ) to go with the weekly theme. And you get to make a CAS card, along with mixing  elements/techniques - so cool!

So, here's a snippets card made by Loll - co-owner of the challenge I just wrote about. You really ought to hop over to see her method of making the background, very clever and I think her craft room might resemble a Chinese laundry at times :) Love the peachy toned background, topped with the black die cuts and then the black and white sentiment. Just so pleasing to the eye.

And, to keep us a bit focused on the 'CAS Mix Up' challenge I'm writing about, this is one of Bonnie's DT cards - which uses snippets of course plus stamping, markers, dry embossing and vellum. One neat trick to share is that Bonnie wrapped the layer of patterned vellum over the top of the card blank and then added some sticky underneath the pretty butterfly panel to further adhere it to the card front. I really love this sentiment and am sure I have a stamp with a very similar one on .......... somewhere in here!

Well, I set out to show just three picks of the week and ended up with seven - and could have kept going as well!

Anyone spot a couple of trends going on? Yup, this week it's Yupo with alcohol inks and also vellum. Len will often say to me that surely there comes a point when there won't be any new products/techniques to try. I just quietly smile and shake my head knowingly :)

We had one new Playmate this week:

I know - squeeal - isn't this just adorable, and a style I wish I could master! Trina P brought this wonderful Christmas card to share with us. She's only been blogging since April this year so it would be lovely if a few of you could hop over to say 'Hello'. I just love the glossy sentiment too, you need to see it for yourselves :) Trina doesn't appear to have a followers gadget on her blog so it's hard to tell how many folk do follow her :(

Welcome Trina, please come back again to play - your work is so lovely.

Now it's prize draw time, for the MFT Die-namics 'Hello There' sets of dies ('hello', 'hi' and 'there'), I had three of these waiting to be won - and the winners are:

Janice

 

Glennis 

 Karen P

 

Well done girls! As luck would have it, I have each of your snail mail addresses and will post the dies off to you ASAP this week :)

Here's this coming week's prize:

It's a Sue Wilson Creative Expressions 'Dove of Peace' two piece die set, the same as the set I used on my snippets card.

I know, it possibly seems mad to be offering Christmas prizes in July! It's partly as I didn't have time to make another snippets card so had to cheat and republish a card from June where I'd used my own die set the same as this one which was in the toy box as a future prize. Plus, sometimes it's nice to have new stuff well in advance as an incentive to get cracking on with making those Christmas cards!

The Snippets Challenge will run for one week and the Playground gates will close at 11am UK time on Saturday 30th July. 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. 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
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