Pixie's Snippets Playground - Week 283 and 284

We're almost through May now - good grief! Once the year ramps up it really does seem to fly past.

During this coming fortnight I have a long weekend away booked, in Stratford Upon Avon - for my old boarding school reunion. Lovely hotel, right beside the river and little boat cruises from their own jetty. So watch the headlines over next weekend for reports of pensioners doing swimming competitions along the river! One of my besties from those days is unable to make it this time (Hi Moira!) but our other great friend/partner in crime, Angie, will be there helping me to stir up trouble when we can. And, we three do plan to have a girly weekend away before too long to make up for the disappointment.

Len and Parsnip will be at home but the Playground will be in your hands for a few days in the middle of the fortnight. I probably won't have a chance to comment on entries whilst partying. But, due to the new timings on picks and winners, I will be doing a scheduled post for the 'middle of the fortnight' as usual - on Sunday 4th June.

As always, a huge thank you to everyone who came to play this past fortnight - loads of gorgeous entries. I so love seeing what you've been up to and also to pick up loads of ideas along the way (too many in fact!).

This is my snippets card for the coming fortnight:

I used:

- 4.25" x 5.5" white card blank, tent style

- snippet of white card stock, onto the centre of which which I stamped a selection of stems, leaves, flower heads, twizzles and a sentiment from the W Plus 9 'Doodle Buds' stamp set - using Memento 'Tuxedo Black' ink and the ever useful Misti

- then stamped the leaves and flower heads onto a right old selection of snippets - too small to really identify properly (oddly enough though they did come from where I keep my Contemporary Christmas papers - so when you're hunting don't dismiss looking at those for 'everyday' scraps/snippets!)

- fussy cut and then glued all the little elements in place onto the image panel - gosh some were so fiddly! 

- meh, then had the beginnings of a card ...... hooray as it took ages!

- furtled around in my scraps of Core-dinations card and die cut two layers from the Avery Elle 'Postage Elle-ments' die set in turquoise, to pick out the turquoise seed head - and there was a frame

- glued the frames together. Used Stick-it sheet when die cutting the top one, then wiggled the two layers together as perfectly as possible before running the now double layered frame through the Cuttlebug with the two embossing plates AND an embossing folder - purely as padding, unopened. A tip I found this past week - and it worked beautifully!

- stuck the frame onto the image panel, which had been suitably trimmed down

- finally stuck the whole piece onto the card front

- in-house critic was asked his opinion about adding a few turquoise sequins - and he said 'Step off the podium lady!' - so I did and left it well alone from that point on

The 'Doodle Buds' are such a great set of stamps! Initially I wanted to stamp and heat emboss a few before colouring with Zig Watercolour brush markers as those have been sadly neglected. But, as it's a snippets card I felt bound to use those little snippets for the paper piecing. Took a lot longer and I had to stop and think about the ordering of the layers more than once - but it's another way to show how versatile this stamp set is. Each element is separate, bit daunting at first but good fun when you get going!

And the die set I used is also great fun and very versatile - I used it recently HERE.

Probably don't need to spell out what this fortnight's prize is made up of:

The prize is the W Plus 9 'Doodle Buds' stamps set and the Avery Elle 'Postage Elle-Ments' die set - same as I used on my snippets card of course. There are lots of ideas about using the stamp set to be found on line and with a bit of clever masking you could build up a lovely bunch of flowers all ready to colour in. The largest die is almost  4.25" x 5.5" by the way, so it's perfectly fine for a lot of card sizes. I do like the American 4.25" x 5.5" size of card rather than our UK 4" x 6" size - it somehow just seems more balanced to me.

I will split the prize if necessary, am mindful that not everyone would like both parts of the prize - although (as so often!) I do think they go together well. But, as always - both items are one complete prize if you wish to play for them as a pair.

The Snippets Challenge will run for two weeks from now on and the Playground gates will close at 11am UK time on Saturday 10th June. The gates will open again at midnight UK time on the same day.

It's still a maximum of ONE entry and please say in a comment if you wish to play and be a possible winner of the prize. The prize is both items together as a single prize, unless you really do only want to try for a 'split' - in which case I'd do a further draw for the other item. 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're wanting to be in the draw 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' just in case you're playing only for fun. Thanks!

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 :)

Be sure to call back next week to see the winner of last fortnight's prize (the Chevron edger dies and the Flora cat stamps) plus my picks from the past two weeks - as well as another lovely guest designer too!

Love from Parsnip and of course from me,