Half a dozen in one go

Despite the missing mojo, I've cracked on and made another six Christmas cards for the box - all the same. What got me going was a recent purchase of a delightful pre-loved Penny Black stamp from a sweet blogging friend - and this is the result:

I used:

- 4.25" x 5.5" white card blank, tent style
 
- a piece of white card stock, die cut using the MFT 'Stitched Cover-up Companion - Diagonal' die

- then I used the adorable (1999 design!) pre-loved Penny Black stamp called 'Thinking of you' to stamp the image onto white card stock using Memento 'Tuxedo Black' ink

- coloured the image using Faber-Castell Polychromos pencils and touches of Sansodor blending fluid where I wanted the colour to be more solid. Then added some clear Wink of Stella to the white fur and bobble on the little mouse's Santa hat

- fussy cut the mouse, leaving a narrow white border and popped him to one side

- I'd already chosen the holly patterned card (a very old but pretty Kanban design) to check the colour shades for the red and green so I die cut it using the same die as before, backed the white panels with double sided adhesive sheet (the medium strength stuff) and popped the patterned panels in place

- used the fussy cut mouse as a guide to position the sentiment in place, using the Misti of course (with six to make it was such a help!). The sentiment is from Uniko's 'Most Wonderful' stamp set, stamped using Memento 'London Fog' grey ink 

- peeled off the adhesive backing sheet on the back of the panel and added a layer of fun foam, cut just slightly smaller than the panel

- glued the foam backed panel onto the card front then added the little mouse, using Collall All Purpose glue in a Woodware ultra fine glue applicator

Am entering this into ScrappyMo's Rudolph Days Challenge for August - which runs until the end of the month so you'd best get your (ice) skates on if you haven't already entered!

I now have six patterned panels with the diagonal band across to work with. Any ideas folks?

Pixie's Snippets Playground - Week 293 and 294 - results

Well, the weather is still a bit mixed but generally it's been quite warm down here in the South of the UK. Certainly the plants are growing at a rate of knots!

Let's get straight on with our lovely Guest Designer for this fortnight - a lady you will all know well, it's Val of 'Aquarius Blog' - who came dashing to the rescue when I put out the plea for guest designers! I now have a bigger list than I had, so many thanks to all of you who have offered!

This is the card Val made, using up snippets:

Isn't it absolutely adorable?! I love the colours, cuteness and all the pretty die cuts - really great use of snippets Val!

Val was a GD for the Playground before, back in June - see HERE, and is a regular player, very supportive and is another person I'm glad to call a sweet friend.

This is what Val sent me:

This one came about really because I’d remembered that somewhere in the depths of my craft room I had a snowman die from way back and I found a box with some really old dies, many of them Cuttlebug ones which were solid metal, fairly thick with foam around the cutting edges and  some other miscellaneous bits and pieces which must be 10-12 years old at least.  The upshot of this is that I also came across this Cuddly Buddly die, not quite as thick as the aforementioned but still a metal plate with foam surrounding the cutting edges and decided I’d make an anniversary card cute style.  Apart from the base card everything else came from my snippets collection.  I don’t suppose this actual die is still available and if you’d prefer something using more current stash please let me know – at least I won’t be enabling anyone to go out and spend money!

I left Val's words almost as they were and did have a good giggle about the die being 'out of production so no-one would be tempted to go and buy one for themselves'! The very first dies I ever bought were very similar and incorporated foam in one way or another. 

In fact, it made me think that perhaps one fortnight we should make a real effort to dig out our oldest and long forgotten stamps/die for our snippets entries? I know there are some challenges which focus on 'an oldie but a goodie' but it could be a thought? Or, do you prefer that we always just have 'anything goes' - without exception?

Thank you so much for being our Guest Designer for this fortnight Val, and for being such a loyal Playmate as well.

Remember the tale I told about 'Fenwicks shop window' a couple of weeks ago? Well, leading on from that I remembered a tale from my own Father's childhood. He decided to go to the seaside for the day during the school Summer holidays, from the outskirts of Newcastle, on his own. Anyone knowing that aree would realise it was quite a feat for a little chap - following his nose toward the coastline.

I don't know if he hitched any lifts at all but he did get to the seaside and managed to share in a family's picnic as well as have a paddle in the sea. Then it was time to return home and by this time it was becoming dark and his little legs were very tired. It took a lot longer for the return journey than he thought it would and by then his parents had the police and half the neighbourhood out looking for him.  

Obviously there was huge relief when he arrived home, tired, hungry and very grubby - so he was popped straight into bed. However, retribution came the following morning. One of the main shopping roads near to where he lived had a department store and quite a few of the staff had been amongst those searching for Dad. They'd even put a huge sign in the main window with his description (probably no photos back in those days!). Dad's punishment was to spend the day after his adventure, standing in the same shop window - with a notice around his neck thanking everyone who had joined in the search!!

I heard this tale more than once so am inclined to believe it - on the other hand, this was the same chap who, as a Father, told his little girl that goldfish came back to life if you flushed them down the loo when they died! And guess what, I was 18 years old when I finally realised it was one big fib.

Now for my picks from this past fortnight: 

First of all we have a Gold Star Winner

 

And it's Karen P this time! I chose Karen's wonderful 'little house in the woods' because it's absolutely gorgeous of course, but also because of all the hard work Karen put into using up loads of little snippets for the flowers, trees and house. I adore all the little punched out crosses which make up the house - what a labour of love! Well done Karen and do please help yourself to the Gold Star Badge on my right hand side bar!

For the three other picks I've really dithered so much - I had a 'short list' of nine originally. In the end I decided to showcase three Playmate's work that I don't think have been in the final three picks lately - to spread the love a bit. And of course, there's something extra special about each one - they each use something that wasn't originally intended to end up as part of a card, some clever up cycling going on here:

Liv made this lovely window card - what a stunning background die to build on. Scenes and windows are so 'in' right now and I just love how Liv used pieces of doily from a local coffee house for the draped net curtains. I expect lots of you already know that Liv hails from Switzerland and (unlike the UK and the USA for instance) coffee houses on the Continent are taken very seriously with beautiful cakes, the aroma of freshly ground coffee and a doily between the cup and the saucer. I know we do have some lovely little teashops in the UK - Jane of Jane's Journal supplies an award winning one one near her (Dotty's) with her hand crafted cards for example.

Liv had a nasty piece of malware on her laptop recently which meant she ended up making a fresh blog so it would be great if you could pop over to say hello and maybe add yourself as a follower.

I love this card made by Sue T! What a pretty little scene and all the components to make the card came from Sue's 'scrap box' - including the wood effect backing, which originated as packaging! I happen to know a very dear friend who almost force feeds her hubby custard tarts so she can then use the packaging for crafting :)

And my third pick is this one:

And again, it's some clever 'up cycling' - made by Vinita. The little scene is so cute and the rainbow fence is made from the ends of ice cream spoons (the ones  we get with tubs in the cinema sort of thing). Loads of interesting detail over at Vinita's about how she made this card too.

I hope you like the picks I ended up with - it often takes me ages flicking to and fro between your blogs, checking out my 'first thoughts' and trying to decide on a final three! Ha, sometimes it would be almost as easy to pick ten of you anyhow! But, I like a challenge and also do try to tie the picks together a bit. I wonder, do you know that's in my mind already for the next set of picks?

59 of you played along last fortnight and we had one new playmate joining in with us as well:

This lovely card was made by a young lady called Remi - who is Shannon of SHartL's daughter - isn't it pretty?!

Welcome to the Snippets Playground Remi! I can see that you have a very good eye for card design :)

Prize draw time now and our winner of the Polkadoodles 'Ribbon Gift Frame' set of dies and Altenew 'Carousel' set of stamps is:

Liv (Swissie)

Well done Liv! That's two strikes in one Sunday Snippets blog post! Can you please drop me an email with your address for extra confirmation that you do want the prize and that your address is up to date and I'll post it off to you as soon as possible. My email address is on the right hand side bar.

Keep those snippets entries coming girls, you still have a week left to play HERE remember! The prize is a Memory Box die called 'Dragonfly stems - Left Corner' and Clearly Besotted's 'Say What?' set of assorted sentiments. I will split the prize if you only want to play for part of it.

And, remember it's Rudolph Days once again over at ScrappyMo's - you have until the end of the month to enter, as usual! 

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

A card for Jackie - Len's dentist

Bit by bit I think someone is making a takeover bid in the card making stakes here! As my mojo had gone walkabout I was free to lend a hand with a card Len came up with.

Over a period of months he's been back and forward to the dentist for some serious root canal treatment, which would probably have defeated a less determined dentist. Jackie, the lovely lady dentist, 'percy veered' and at long last all seems to be stabilised. Phew.

So, he came up with a card design to say thank you, which I then tweaked by printing a second card front. Then fussy cut and lifted the images (tooth, star and rosette) as a second layer with thin sticky pads to add dimension.

This is the result (RCT is jargon for Root Canal Treatment' I'm reliably informed!):

And how sweet is this, Jackie took the time and trouble to phone here to thank us both for the combined effort!

Pixie's Snippets Playground - Week 295 and 296

Gosh I struggled to make my snippets card for today. My crafting 'get up and go' seems to have 'got up and gone'! Sigh. Don't worry, the Playground will continue as always with me posting each Sunday but my other posts during the week might be even fewer than usual!  Anyhow, this is what I came up with this fortnight for my snippets card:

I used:

-  5" x 5" white card blank

- a snippet of 'rainbow card' which (in conjunction with the die I wanted to use) dictated the card size. NOTE, the card comes with the rainbow stripes so there was no inking etc. to be done to create the background - just in case anyone thinks I made it myself!

- a slightly larger snippet of black card stock which just needed a little bit of trimming to act as a border behind the rainbow card

- next I backed the middle of the piece of black card with a snippet of Stick-It adhesive sheet (never, ever throw away even the smallest piece of that stuff as you can just patchwork it together to cover the reverse of a piece of card)

- then used a Memory Box die called 'Dragonfly stems - Left Corner' to cut out the die shape from the centre of the piece of black card and put the 'waste' to one side for later

- popped dragonflies die cut onto the piece or rainbow card and ran it through the Cuttlebug using the embossing plates plus a larger embossing folder as a shim. Love the result as it almost looks as if the die cut has been inset

- then out came the Misti and Clearly Besotted's 'Say What?' set of assorted sentiments plus the Memento 'Tuxedo Black' ink pad to stamps 'Fabulous Friend' onto the rainbow card

- glued the rainbow layer to the piece of (deliberately created waste, ha!) black card

- stuck the whole card front panel to the card blank - finished!

Needless to say, the fabulous dragonfly die was bought by yours truly after seeing it in use by Bonnie - HERE. Bonnie's version was also a snippets make back at the end of July - well worth a peek!

And, I literally just quickly dipped into the snippets folder and whipped out the smallish pieces of rainbow and plain black card, without even having to dig around :) I keep some multi-coloured card snippets at the front of the folder and further back one of the pockets holds plain black and grey card snippets.

Of course, you can guess this week's prize:

It's your very own Memory Box die called 'Dragonfly stems - Left Corner' and Clearly Besotted's 'Say What?' set of assorted sentiments (so useful for so many occasions! My photo isn't very clear so go HERE for a better look to see the actual words used in the set).

The Snippets Challenge will run for two weeks and the Playground gates will close at 11am UK time on Saturday 2nd September. The gates will open again at midnight UK time on the same day.

It's 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 (a Polkadoodles 'Ribbon Gift Frame' set of dies and an Altenew 'Carousel' set of stamps), a Guest Designer and my picks from the past two weeks.

Love from Parsnip and of course from me,

Gold and silver for Christmas

I recently made some Christmas cards using alternating gold and silver trees on white and decided to use those 'colours' again yesterday. This time I made four identical cards - and at the same time used a Poppystamps die that had been faulty the first time round. Thanks to Donna's help I was eventually sent a replacement - which I'd never dared use until now - it works like a dream! Thanks again Donna and also Poppystamps.

Here's one of the cards - so hard to photograph gold and silver though:

I used:

- 4.25" x 5.5" white card blank

- a strip of gold metal effect adhesive sheet made by X-Cut down the spine edge of the card, cut wider than I wanted it to be so it would be tucked under the white layer I planned to add later. In fact, I added the metallic strip before I cut the folded card exactly to size - saved worrying about the strip not being quite the right length, then set the card blanks to one side

- piece of white card stock, trimmed to the same size as the card top to bottom measurement and then quarter of an inch narrower from side to side to allow the gold strip to show down the spine edge of the card

- then die cut the Poppystamps 'Snowflake Ribbon' die cut from silver X-cut adhesive sheet and popped it in place on the white panel

- die cut the Poppystamps 'Noel Snowflake' using gold metal effect sheet, snipping off the dangling snowflake, and pressed that onto the white panel

- ran it through the Cuttlebug, using the embossing plates and an embossing folder as a 'shim', which as I've said before gives an almost 'foiled look' to the die cuts 

- to add the panel to the card front I used a mixture of two adhesives. I suspected that the card might not stay stuck to the gold metallic strip but at the same time wanted some 'wiggle room' to make sure the front was lined up properly. This is how I did it - first stuck a strip of quarter inch wide red line tape down the reverse of the white panel, along the edge that was going to be stuck onto the metallic strip and left the red protective covering in place (when that tape sticks it won't let go!). Then filled in the rest of the back of the panel with Collall All Purpose Glue and wiggled the panel gently onto the card front. When happy it was perfectly lined up I then used fine, pointed, tweezers to ease the spine edge of the panel up and peel the protective covering from the red line tape before pressing it down. Worked a treat!

- then added a clear sparkly gem in the centre of the snowflake

- toddled through to my in-house critic to ask whether I should add a few sequins or not. The verdict was in line with my own thoughts, step away from the podium and leave it well alone!

So, have managed to reach my end of August target at least 😀 And, credit where it's due, I found the basis of the idea for this design on Pinterest - needless to say I can't find it again!

I'm struggling here, Mr Mojo seems to have gone on his holidays! So, my 'non-Snippets Playground' posts may be fewer than normal

Pixie's Snippets Playground - Week 291 and 292 - results

What a week! Rain, rain and more rain! I had to drive over to my dentist for a routine six-monthly check-up on Thursday - and on Wednesday afternoon was convinced it would be a canoe trip! Thankfully the weather did clear up so I used the day to do quite a few errands as well while the going was good!

Last week I really thought we'd have Parsnip posing in his shorts instead of a Guest Designer! However, more than one of you lovely ladies jumped straight in to say you would love to help out - for which I am so very grateful. I already have some of you lined up for particular dates and will find time to sit and draw up a proper schedule ASAP - watch your emails!

The first person to respond was our lovely Liz of 'Crafty Sunflower', probably within minutes of my blog post appearing - and here she is:

Liz has been a GD for the Playground before, see HERE, and is a regular player, very supportive and also I'm glad to call her a very sweet friend as well. Do hop over to Liz's blog if you aren't already a follower - and also if you have time then try to read the previous post I wrote about her last appearance in the Playground, see 'HERE' above. Suffice it to say that Liz makes gorgeous cards and is often the driving force behind me rushing off to buy a particular die :) We prefer to call it 'enabling' one another!

Liz's GD card(s) are perfect examples of how to use up snippets - one with a patchwork die and one by making your very own snippets patchwork - so clever!

This is what Liz sent me:

"I was delighted to be asked to be a Guest Designer again in Pixie's Snippets Playground.  I'm sure I'll never run out of snippets, but I usually forget to use some of my growing pile of patterned paper snippets.  

The die is a Die-namics 'Diagonal Quilt Square Cover-Up' die.  I used two punches to make the flower. The patterned paper and red card were all cut from snippets. When I was making the card, I was reminded of the time many, many years go when I went to patchwork classes, stitching the blocks by hand.  There are so many fabulous patchwork designs, I thought I'd try to make a notelet, with a simple patchwork block design, using just snippets, a guillotine, scissors, a pencil and a ruler.

I started with snippet of card 4" square and I drew a pencil line across the middle vertically and horizontally.  This can be any colour as it's covered up. The red and floral patterned papers were cut into 1" x 2" strips.  Then I cut off the corners, as shown in red on the diagram to get the shape I needed for the red patterned paper.

For the floral patterned paper I need to reverse the corners I cut off, like this. 

The cross in the middle of the 4" square made it easy to line up the pieces of patterned paper.  I found it easiest to cut the blue squares and triangles slightly bigger than I needed, then trim any excess off after they had been stuck down in the spaces left. When the patchwork was complete, I layered it on a piece of yellow card slightly bigger than the 4" square and attached to a 5" square card blank."

I left Liz's words just as they were as I couldn't have explained it nearly so well. And what a clever way to use up snippets to make your own patchwork cards - even if you don't have any suitable dies!

Thank you so much for being our Guest Designer for this fortnight Liz, especially as I was in a bit of a spin. Plus, Parsnip is eternally grateful as well!

A little tale - when I lived 'oop North', the largest City close to us was Newcastle Upon Tyne. Not sure if many of you UK girls will know of Fenwicks of Bond Street in London - quite a renowned department store, with quite a few other branches around the UK. Well, the Fenwick family were from the North East and in fact their first and main Fenwicks store was (and still is) on Northumberland Street in the centre of Newcastle. 

A typically Northern expression was trotted out by some folks when they thought something was so wildly untrue or unlikely to happen that they'd almost stake their life savings on it. The expression was 'Way aye, an' if THAT ever happens - ah'll bare me bum in Fenwicks shop winderr'. They tell it as it is up there for sure :) Oh I do miss lots of things about the beautiful North of England - the scenery, the people, wonderful fish and chips and all the lovely local foods, apart from black pudding (shudder). Why can't we get stottie cakes down here for example?! All this came back to me when I was thinking about poor Parsnip being threatened with having to pose in his shorts!

Now for my picks from this past fortnight - as always, picking just three was nigh on impossible and I sat here for ages wondering how to possibly bring the number of picks down so they were manageable. So, once again I chose a sort of 'theme' I'd noticed running through some of the entries - and it's 'using waste/negatives from die cutting'. I confess that my waste generally is lobbed straight into the paper bin under my desk without so much as a second thought.

See what you make of these picks girls and they might just make you look at you die cutting waste in a new light! I think I will for sure:

This was the first 'waste from die cuts' make that caught my eye - cleverly made by Maxine. Love the black against the gold - a perfect card for a chap!

Then Darnell arrived, hot on the heels of Maxine. This card is her entry and the first one she made - now hop over to her blog to see what she did with the waste she had left after die cutting the snowflake out of that blue background! Brilliant.

And blow me, in quick succession -  in popped Barb - with this amazing Wedding Anniversary card - also made use the negative waste technique! Great stuff Barb, love the 'splatted' background and the torn edge is a lovely contrast!

And as I spotted four cards using up die cutting waste I extended the picks to four this week - so, last but not least:

Janis brought this beautiful card along to share with us - again using die cut negative waste. I love the colour combination and the fact that Janis popped a few negative scraps back in the holes as well.

I hope I covered all entries which used waste in this way - if not, blame Parsnip - the little perisher has been hyper-active this week when the rain stopped him from going out to play!

66 of you played along last fortnight and we had one new playmate joining in with us as well:

Lovely Linda

Welcome to the Snippets Playground Linda, and I do hope you return to play again soon.

Prize draw time now and our winner of the MFT 'Stitched Cover-Up Companion - Diagonal die plus the Clearly Besotted 'Aloha' stamps set is:

Carole J (Craftylicious Creations)

Well done Carole! Can you please drop me an email with your address and I'll post your prize off as soon as possible. My email address is on the right hand side bar.

Keep those snippets entries coming girls, you still have a week left to play HERE remember! The prize is a Polkadoodles 'Ribbon Gift Frame' set of dies and an Altenew 'Carousel' set of stamps. I will split the prize if you only want to play for part of it.

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

Max and Charlie are six and four

The dear little boys who live next door to us have Birthdays just a month apart. This post is really as much for my own records so I can look back and try not to repeat the same cards from one year to the other.

Having said that, my in house critic did the image panels for me on his computer and all I had to do was to print them out, cut and glue some card backing as 'frames'. Such a huge help - thanks Len!

Max and Charlie are still very much into playing at being builders and they spend hours happily moving stones and soil around their garden. It's so lovely to see children actually playing and using their imaginations - what cracks me up is the 'Beep, beep, beep' sound piping over the fence whenever one of them is reversing one of their many builder's vehicles!

Both cards are 5" x 7", tent style:

Apart from using the guillotine, the only cutting I did was the little 'age' rosettes, which had even been thoughtfully duplicated by Len underneath the image so I could pop one on top of the finished card with a little piece of thin sticky pad :)

And, MANY thanks to those of you who jumped straight in and offered to be a Playground Guest Designer. It's times like this you realise just what a great bunch our Playmates all are! I wonder, would Len take a turn perhaps? :)

Four quick Christmas cards

Trying to push towards my Christmas card making target for July a couple of weeks ago, I whipped up four very similar cards - here's three of them, all a little bit different. The one in the centre is duplicated exactly, making numbers up to four:

I used:

- 6" x 6" square scalloped white card blanks, made by Craftwork Cards and sadly neglected here

- backing papers are from Wild Rose Studio's 'Annabelle's Christmas' paper pack, trimmed and glued onto the card front

- the images are also from a matching 'Annabelle's Christmas' set, die cut using one of The Works 'Stitched Square' dies

- next I stamped sentiments onto the image squares using the Misti, Memento 'Grey Flannel' ink and stamps from the Personal Impressions 'Many Greetings' stamp set

- then the images were glued onto deep red slightly shimmery squares of card which had been die cut using a Spellbinders Nestabilities 'Scalloped Squares' die

- finally, glued the image panel in place on the card front - done!

It was a wet and miserable day when I made these - much easier than sitting in baking hot weather trying to feel a bit festive! At this point I'm still a bit behind on the target but with the rain we've had lately it looks as if that's soon gonna be rectified!

Pixie's Snippets Playground - Week 293 and 294

Well, August got off to a wet start for sure. But, we seem to be in for a sunny weekend here in Hampshire - fingers crossed.

And, it's 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.

Let's get straight in - here's my snippets card for the coming fortnight:

I used:

-  6" x 6" white card blank

- a snippet of pinky/mauve Core-dinations card stock, trimmed slightly to a bit smaller than the card front

- a smaller snippet of powder blue card (sob, it's my last decent sized snippet of this gorgeous matt baby blue card)

- a piece of 200gsm white card stock - deliberately chosen as the die I was about to use is quite intricate and I've discovered that slightly lighter weight card is best for fiddly designs - backed with Stick-It self adhesive sheet as well as using a piece of waxed paper to ensure the card dropped out of the die easily. Talk about belt, braces and double knicker elastic!

- die cut the white 'frame' panel using the main die from the NBUS Polkadoodles 'Ribbon Gift Frame' set and removed the protective backing from the adhesive layer

- found a snippet of narrow 'Cadbury coloured'  purple ribbon and threaded a piece through either side of the white die cut, wrapped it over and stuck it in place on the back of the panel

- then glued the white panel onto the blue one. Tip about centering this die cut - I drew very light pencil lines to mark the centre of the card, up and down - which made alignment a breeze.

- then glued the blue panel onto the pinky/mauve piece of card

- I now had a flat panel to work on for the stamping stage, with no exposed pieces of ribbon at the back

- fiddled around a lot working out where to place the stamps - from Altenew's 'Carousel' set. It's just a small set but so crisp and very pretty too

- then stamped the image and wording all in one go using the Misti and Memento 'Tuxedo Black' ink

 - stuck the whole card front panel to the card blank

- I had intended to just use the silhouette outline but decided to add some colouring using Faber-Castell Prismacolour pencils and Sansodor blending fluid

- the final touch is a loopy bow, cut using a little snippet of the mauvy/pink card and another die from the same set as before

Looking at the stamp set again, I can just see it coloured in red and green, perhaps with a spot of gold, on a Christmas card - with a different sentiment of course! Just a thought. 

And here's this fortnight's prize:

It's a Polkadoodles 'Ribbon Gift Frame' set of dies. There are five beautiful dies in the set - I had intended to use one or other of the corner dies as well but because I'd layered other card (and my card blanks are actually just under 6" x 6") there wasn't room - but there are some fabulous hand made cards on line which use the corners as well. And of course, all the elements in the set of dies can be mixed and matched how you wish. Plus, there's an Altenew 'Carousel' set of stamps - they're small but so detailed, the carousel looks lovely just left as a silhouette and they stamp perfectly as well. I will split the die and the stamps if you only wish to play for one or the other.

The Snippets Challenge will run for two weeks and the Playground gates will close at 11am UK time on Saturday 19th August. The gates will open again at midnight UK time on the same day.

It's 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 (MFT's 'Stitched Cover-Up Companion - Diagonal die, plus the Clearly Besotted 'Aloha' stamp set) and my picks from the past two weeks.

We're beginning to run a bit low on Guest Designers, I have about five names left. So, if you would like to be a GD do please let me know - my email is on the RH side bar or even just leave something in a comment on this post.And for this reason we very likely won't have a GD next week as many of you seem to be busy and/or on holiday. I'll just have to persuade Parsnip to strip down to his shorts and pose for you instead :)

Love from Parsnip and of course from me. He's currently rootling around looking for sun lotion ready for spot of sun bathing so he has a 'golden glow' for his Playmate of the Week spot! Sigh, I despair at times - it's not gonna happen!

Filling in time on a wet afternoon

More rain here last week, so I whipped up four more Christmas cards.

The cards were finished and sitting on my desk waiting for me to write this blog post when I spotted that Bonnie had made a 'not totally dissimilar' card HERE. Bonnie used stamping but it shows that I could be 'on trend' as they say - that would be a first for me!

I made four cards, all the same design and two of them have the backing frame and 'Noel' in gold with the tree in silver - and the other two have the metallics reversed. I like both versions but for some reason the ones with the frame in gold just seem to stand out more - possibly as the frame is 'stronger' in gold than silver:

Needless to say the cards were really 'tricky-woo' to photograph!

I used:

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

- piece of mirri card trimmed smaller than the card front and glued in place

- piece of white card, die cut using a die from the Lil' Inkers 'Stitched Rectangles' set - and then kept to one side

- then die cut the tree using a NBUS Tim Holtz Sizzix die called 'Woodlands' and either gold or silver metal effect adhesive sheet made by X-Cut, a dream to use

-also die cut the word 'noel' using a Poppystamps 'Noel Snowflake' die and either gold or silver mirri adhesive sheet as above

- then placed the tree and the sentiment (I snipped the dangling snowflake off the sentiment for this card) onto the piece of die cut white card and ran it through the Cuttlebug, using the embossing plates and an embossing folder as a 'shim' 

- glued the white card layer onto the card front, already nicely decorated with the tree and sentiment

I've had the Sizzix tree dies for ages (comes in a set of two, the one I used is slightly narrower than the other one) and of course now I can't understand why it's taken so long! Love them!

As I've said before, running the piece of card through the Cuttlebug after the die cut pieces were put in place really 'sets' them and also gives a beautiful finish with mirri card or this X-Cut adhesive sheet in particular, almost as if the card has been foiled.

Less is More #339 - Pierce Your Project

Happy August folks!

Another great challenge over at Less is More this week - 'Pierce Your Project'. You can do this in a variety of ways such as paper piercing, brads, eyelets, sewing and a whole host of other things. I opted to use pierced 'faux stitched' dies to frame a fun frog:

I used:

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

- then used the largest die in the Lil' Inkers 'Stitched Rectangles' set to add a frame of 'pierced stitches' to the front of the card. I actually did this before trimming the card down to size but using low tack tape it could just as easily be done to a card already cut to size

- then die cut a smaller panel using a die from the same set and the same shade of white card

- stamped the frog and the sentiment onto the panel using the Misti and a Misti magnetic Creative Corner to make stamping in the corner easier. In truth, I could have stamped with the card panel over to the top right of the Misti and skipped the use of the additional Misti Creative Corner - but am a creature of habit and I always stamp in the bottom left corner of the Misti :)

- for the stamping I used a piece of clear acetate with grid lines on to position the frog and the sentiment - just to make sure the sentiment was straight. I find this an invaluable help and the NBUS stamp set I used is by Joy Clair, called 'Hoppy Birthday', such a fun set as well!

- used a Memento 'Tuxedo Black' ink pad and then coloured the image using Faber-Castell Polychromos pencils - blending using Sansodor blending fluid

- backed the image panel with white fun foam and glued it onto the card front

- final touch, added Glossy Accents to the eyes

A couple of little tips about using Sansodor blending fluid:

I popped a small piece of foam (from a make-up sponge - or a small piece of white felt would work either) into a little plastic jar and sprinkled a few drops of Sansodor on to moisten the sponge - absolutely ages ago. It rarely needs more drops adding and also ensures that you don't flood your work with blending fluid as you only need the tiniest amount on your blending stump.

I have a variety of different sized blending stumps but, again ages ago, I was given a great tip by Irene who was a UK bloggy friend. She sent me some really dinky pointed 'blending tips' that I believe are supposed to be used in a holder and changed when necessary. I know I have a spare packet of them with the brand name on, somewhere in here, but can't find it right now. Such a shame as I much prefer them for small areas and they seem to be almost made of a plastic like material which doesn't go at all 'blunt' like traditional cotton or paper stumps or tortillions. Yet they are slightly absorbent - if anyone knows what I'm talking about I'd love to know who makes them please! Sadly, Irene has given up blogging and I don't have her email address to ask her, sigh.

Edit: HOORAY, first Chris S and then Cara got in touch and the 'nibs' are from the Ranger 'Cut 'n Dry' range - try Amazon HERE if you're in the UK. IMHO you get more control using the wee little things without a holder! Thank you so much ladies! :)