Pixie's Snippets Playground - Week 289 and 290

Time for a new fortnightly challenge in the Snippets Playground folks! As always, a huge thank you to everyone who came to play this past fortnight - loads of gorgeous entries.

I was 'missing in action' during some of the challenge - we hopped over to Southern Germany to visit Len's grand daughters and their Mama. Had a wonderful time - as always! Much laughter and a lot of fun was had for sure.

Now, this is my snippets card for the coming fortnight - made as a Birthday card for a very special friend - in real life it shines almost as brightly as she does:

I used:

- 6" x 6" square white card blank

- snippet of black card stock, trimmed to just slightly smaller than the card front and glued in place

- snippet of white card stock, trimmed to just slightly smaller than the black layer which then had a heart shape die cut from it using the fabulous Concord & 9th 'Heartstrings' die set (you can use this set to just cut the 'strings' portion of the heart if you separate the outer die from the inner one - I left them joined for a first play)

- then I backed the heart shaped aperture using a snippet of medium strength double sided adhesive sheet, covered the exposed sticky front with the waxed paper I'd saved when backing the aperture and set the card aside (tip: my next steps were to fiddle about with small die cut pieces of card to fill the aperture so it's always best to have the aperture all prepared just in case the little pieces from the next die cutting stage fall out of the die willy nilly)

- snippet of red card, die cut with the same heartstrings die and inlaid into the sticky aperture on the card front 

- snippet of gold card, again die cut using the same die and this time they were used to inlay in between the 'strings'

- snippet of the same red card to die cut the small heart, using a die from the same set, which was then glued in place

- then I got the Misti set up with a right old selection of words from the MFT 'Label Maker Sentiments' set, inked them using Memento 'Tuxedo Black' ink and stamped them. The stamps are very good but I did love my Misti all the more as restamping really gave such solid black background - so much like the old Dymo label maker I stupidly threw away about 20 years ago!

- then I just snipped the words into rectangles using smallish sharp scissors and played around for ages deciding which ones to use. So much choice I dithered for quite a while before eventually sticking the final selection in place

One finished card, all ready to post off to Darnell a couple of weeks ago! The Heartstrings die set did need a little bit of shimming to get the clean cut right through the quite thick red and gold card I used. It always seems that, the closer together the cuts are, the more pressure is needed for a clean cut on quite thick card.

I stuck to just two quite traditional colours for my heart but can imagine this would look fabulous in a variety of colours - or possibly 'ombre style' going through shades of one colour.

Once again, no need to really spell out what this fortnight's prize is made up of:

The prize is the Concord & 9th 'Heartstrings' die set and the MFT 'Label Maker Sentiments' set of stamps. Loads of words (31 in fact) to combine in this great set. I will split the die set and the stamps if you only wish to play for one or the other.

The Snippets Challenge will run for two weeks from now on and the Playground gates will close at 11am UK time on Saturday 22nd July. 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 Crafter Companion 'Baby Bamboo' stamp set, a set of 'Stitched Square' dies from The Works and a Bow Maker) plus my picks from the past two weeks - hopefully as well as another lovely guest designer too!

Love from Parsnip and of course from me,