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,