Pixie's Snippets Playground - Week 273 and 274 - results

Again, we're halfway through the fortnightly challenge in the Snippets Playground and it's time for our Guest Designer, some 'picks' of the fortnight and of course the prize draw.

Hedgie update - we know for sure that at least two hedgies are feeding each night, they move around so fast it can be hard when checking out CCTV footage but a few times we've spotted two of them feeding together. Aw, so cute :)

Let's begin with our Guest Designer for this fortnight, and it's Helen of 'Helen's Craft Haven', who made this lovely Easter gift bag - it's absolutely delightful and the sweet image is just so perfectly echoed in the sentiment of 'Have a cracking day this Easter time':

Isn't it fabulous?! Such a great idea, wonderful use of snippets and I totally love the image plus super sentiment! I also love how the faux stitching almost convinces you that the bag is made from fabric pieces!

This is what Helen said:

My snippets project is a decorated Easter treat bag (plain bag from Hobbycraft). I raided my My Mind’s Eye ‘Now & Then’ paper pad for snippets...and found lots of thin-ish strips (the kind you get when you trim  a full sheet down), so used those to make my background...distressing the edges & adding some faux stitching. I coloured the bunny image (‘Spring Chick’ by Penny Black) using watercolour pencils, then cut it out using a Nestie die...I cut the scalloped mat for the image from the pink card behind the paper strips. I also used a tiny snippet of patterned paper to paper piece the egg shell...adding a little shading with a pencil. I stamped my sentiment on to a snippet of white card and matted that with a snippet too, then added a couple of co-ordinating paper flowers.

And, here's a photo of our lovely Helen - I detect a mischievous twinkle in her eyes!

Looking back through Helen's blog, there's some fabulous work to be seen - and Helen has been a 'pick' several times in the Playground needless to say.

She started her blog way back in 2008 and way back then Helen's work was already stunning - started off with amazing cards right from the word go. Helen is a real lover of Penny Black stamps and it's such fun to just do a search on 'Penny Black' and see how beautifully she uses their products. Here's one example which might make Helen raise her eyebrows:

I did a little bit of detective work and discovered that Helen was a runner-up in the Penny Black category of the 2011 'Card Maker of the Year' competition with the above
card - yay for Helen! No wonder she's on a few top design teams, with a following of over 500+.

Whilst I was 'furtling around' on the internet (I love that expression Sarn/Sarah!!) I came across something else - which cracked me up! Anyone remember the 'ALS Ice Bucket challenge' a while back? Just go to this link if you want to see Helen being soaked! She'll probably kill me for publishing it - but it does show just what a few searches will turn up on social media and such!

One lovely tradition Helen has is to make a few calendars each year, for close family I think. For UK gals who might want to do the same, the blanks come from Papermill Direct HERE (they only seem to have 2017 calendar blanks at a reduced price at the moment) - it's something I would love to do for 2018 so will be keeping watch on the website.

Thank you Helen for making such a stunning snippets project as our Guest Designer this fortnight! And for emailing to and fro when you were struggling with internet problems as well - what a star!

Remember girls, you can always let me know if you would like to be a Guest Designer - I have a list and would be delighted to add your name.

So, let's move onto my picks from this past fortnight - gold star alert!

 

Now this is a tricky one - Heather already has one gold star in the short time they've been featured here) but this card absolutely leapt out at me as being such a brilliant way to use up snippets! Check out Heather's blog and there are some really good step by step instructions how to do this yourself. Very well deserved second gold star Heather! There's a badge on the RH sidebar if you wish to take it for your blog - no offence if you don't though.

Loads of you know our Kathleen (Kath for short, but as we have two Kath's it's generally Kathleen) - and this card above just made my jaw drop. It's stunning but the next bit will stun you even more - Kath inlaid every single one of those little pink 'fallout' pieces! I read her blog post several times but sure enough - that's what she did 'cos here's the other piece as proof that Kath used to make a second card (without any inlaying I think):

I still stare at the first card shaking my head slightly and thinking what an incredibly determined lot you all are!

I absolutely adore the soft peach tones of this fabulous card, made by Glennis. It really is so elegant, beautifully made and of course used up some white snippets for those lovely flowers!

That's my three picks and once again I focused very much on some interesting ways to use snippets - which hopefully will inspire you.

We had 71 Playmates joining in this past fortnight - one of whom is new to us:

Iona - aka Gail or ionabunny (you choose!)

Welcome 'Little Miss Lotsanames' - who I think we'll call Iona as we do have another Bunny following the blog and she may well come to play soon! Hope you come back and play with us again - looking at the prize draw result I sure hope so!

Prize draw time now and our winner of the the two Inkylicious stamps (A), the Lavinia 'Flower Fairy' stamp (B and the cricket stamp (C) is:

Iona!! (aka Gail or ionabunny)

This stunned me - it's only happened once or twice at most that a new Playmate wins straight away on their first visit! Having said that, I guess the odds will be similar whether it's a first visit or not - depending on the number of entries....... it's all the luck of the draw. Well done Iona - can you please drop me an email with your address in and I'll post your prize off as soon as possible! My email address is on the right hand side bar.

And here's a little 'heads up' as published by our lovely Linby on her blog. Carole Matthews is an author who I really like, and she has a new paperback book out called 'Paper Hearts and Summer Kisses'. It's also available on Kindle and I just finished reading it. It's a novel but also based on the real life story of Christine Emberson, a well known UK crafter - and I truly recommend it!

Anyway, keep those snippets entries coming girls, you still have a week left to play HERE remember! Next week is Easter Sunday so I expect you all to be wearing brand new clothes, shoes, white socks, a little hat and white lace gloves. I know that was the tradition when I was a child at least :) Talk about dipping into the past!

Love from the little white peril - and of course from me too