All puffed up for Christmas

I love robins, especially when they 'puff' their feathers up to keep warm. So I was delighted when a sweet friend offered me a set of pre-stamped images to use for 'batch baking' some Christmas cards. I made eight cards the same in this run - and still have some robins left to play with:

I used:

- 6" x 6" square white card blank, side opening

- once I'd made the 'toppers' and could work out the spacing, I stamped the sentiments before gluing anything at all to the card front - using the Misti, Memento 'Tuxedo Black' ink and a stamp from the Paper Smooches 'Christmas Sampler' set of sentiments

- the adorable puffed up robins were already stamped and I then coloured them using Pro markers

- die cut the image using a die from the Tonic Studios set of plain circular dies and ran a ball ended tool around the inner edge of the die cut whilst it was sitting inside the die

- then I just cut eight squares of 4" x 4" card from a 12" square sheet of SU's 'Real Red' card stock (nine in fact, so that's now in the snippets folder)

- then topped the squares with slightly smaller squares of holly patterned paper from LOTV's ''Twas The Night' paper pad

- glued the layers together and then popped them onto the card front

- asked in-house critic if I should add googly eyes, the verdict was 'nope', so I obeyed! Ha, and probably stopped the cards from leaping over the thickness limit for normal sized letters :)

Breathed a huge sigh as am slowly getting back on track with the self-imposed Christmas card making target!

I was still short of inspiration though and was so thankful for these lovely images to kick me into action! I've since found out that they're from a set of three by Hobby Art called 'Round Robin' - what a perfect name :)

Crumbs, I almost missed ScrappyMo's Rudolph Days for September challenge this month! Entering this, at the gallop :)

Black and pink butterfly card

Here's my card, using an 'unbranded made in China' die sent to me out of the blue and here's what I made:

I used:

- A6 white card blank

- a smaller piece of thin indigo coloured card, which has a slight shimmer to it, for the backing frame

- trimmed a snippet of white card slightly smaller than the indigo card and glued those two pieces together

- then die cut the fabulous butterfly die using indigo card again which was backed with Stick-It adhesive sheet

- popped it onto the piece of white card and ran it through the Cuttlebug with the embossing plates as well as a large embossing folder to give the right thickness (don't put the embossing folder next to the card as I think you might get a slightly rippled surface even though the folder would be closed)

- then used the Misti to position and stamp the sentiment using SU's 'Melon Mambo' ink and a sentiment from MFT's 'Tickled Pink' set of stamps

- glued the whole panel to the card front and added little bright pink KanBan self-adhesive diamante gems to the butterflies and flowers

Ha, I almost had a moment of total madness when I set out to make this card by pondering over actually inlaying the die cut! Can you imagine putting all those teensy little pieces of white back in place? Although by running the whole panel through the Cuttlebug as I described above, you do achieve the impression that the die cut is inlaid anyhow.

It's absolutely ages and ages since I dug around in my quite large box of self-adhesive pearls and gems and I must have almost a gazillion sheets of those multi-coloured KanBan gems. Seems to me like they've been breeding on the quiet. 😉

Pixie's Snippets Playground - Week 297 and 298 - results

Well, that week raced past for sure! Autumn is definitely on the way - Spike the hedgie and his huge tribe are almost eating us out of house and home. We have no real idea just how many hedgies are visiting us now but word certainly must have got around.

We're doing a huge declutter here and a lot of time is being spent sorting and either Freecycling, taking to local charity shops or dumping stuff that's been accumulated over donkey's years. In fairness, little will be dumped as one man's rubbish is usually another man's treasure as they say :)

Let's get straight on with our Guest Designer for this fortnight - it's Elly of Elly's Creaties with this fabulous card:

Here's the front

A little peek inside

And a look at the snippets that Elly used for her glorious die cut flowers

What a brilliant card! I just adore the depth and texture Elly has incorporated into this stunner for her first Snippets Playground sot as Guest Designer.  I do hope it won't be the last as Elly is so talented and her cards are always beautiful.

This is what Elly said about her card:

I have used two snippets for my flower die.

First I layered my card with designer papers and then I used a stencil and made the brick wall with texture paste .

I stamped the butterfly and colored it with markers.

I also layered the inside with designer papers.

The sentiment/text is on vellum.

I hope you like it. 

 

And a few words about Elly:

Thanks for the opportunity to be a Guest Designer for this challenge.

My name is Elly and I live in the Netherlands.

I've been married to Jan for almost 48 years and we have 2 beautiful daughters and 2 lovely sons in law + 4 granddaughters.

I've been making cards for many years.

I love all kinds of styles and I always like to try something new.

You can find my blog here..https://ellyscardcreatief.blogspot.nl/

Greetings, Elly.

 

And here's the lady herself:

Little Miss Marple here noticed that the file name of the lovely photo of Elly implies it might be a passport photo - so why do my passport photos always look as if I'm under arrest?

Huge thanks to Elly for being our GD this fortnight and also for being such a loyal Playmate.

Drum roll - it's time for the fortnightly picks! And we have a Gold Star again this time!

 

Sonia made nine of these marvellous tea light bird houses as gifts for her daughter's teachers. I adore them and as always Sonia has given lots of lovely detail about how to make them for yourself over on her blog HERE. I'm sure you'll all agree that these are well worth a *** Gold Star *** award - do collect your badge from the right hand sidebar Sonia and well done!

Now for my other picks from this past fortnight - and I struggled as always but here are the final three I chose to show you:

This is such an eyecathing way to use up some of those little snippets strips we all seem to hoard! Made by Kath and, although it might look easy, I bet she spent quite a while arranging those colours to achive such a lovely result. Love it - one to remember!

And last, but not least, I picked this really elegant card, made by Steffi H for you to see. I know, I know - we still have three months until Christmas, but time will fly past. This card is so lovely - and as well as using snippets it's a possible for 'batch baking' :)

49 of you played along last fortnight, with two new Playmates joining us:

Lavinia - with these adorable pop up box cards

 

 

And Gwendolyn, whose card image I can't copy to this post, but do hop over and take a peek if you can!

Prize draw time now and our winner of the Darkroom Door stamps - 'Butterfly' and 'Stand Out' (very kindly donated by Megan) and the Joanna Sheen 'Pressed Flower' stamp set is:

Kathy K

Well done Kathy, from what I know of your lovely work these stamps are right up your street, particularly the Darkroom Door ones! Can you please drop me an email with your address - then I'll post your prize 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 set of stamps with matching dies by Lawn Fawn called 'Hang in there' - as well as a set of The Works 'Stitched Circles' dies. I will split the prize (ie. the Lawn Fawn stamps and matching dies together or the Works set of stitched circle dies) if you only want to play for part of it.

Love from the little white peril Parsnip, who sat sobbing on the hallway floor yesterday when he saw me nipping off to the local charity shop with a huge bag of soft toys - I think he thought he might be next! Never fear little chap, you're here to stay for always - I need a little 'troublemaker and spy' in the Playground!

Rushed card for a chap!

Good grief - I suddenly realised it was one of Len's great nephew's Birthdays coming up and made this on Sunday in one heck of a hurry I can tell you:

I used:

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

- snippet of black card as a frame

- snippet of white card, die cut using a die from the Lil' Inkers 'Stitched Rectangles' set 

- stamps from a pre-loved SU set called 'Sky is the Limit', stamped using Memento 'Tuxedo Black' ink

- glued the layers together and popped them onto the card front

- ack! Noticed a faint black smudge at one wing tip but had no time to make another card so I die cut Joe's name using Tattered Lace 'Alphabet' dies and glued the letters over the smudge!

A case of 'more haste, less speed' as my Mum used to say but at least it will arrive in time :)

Entering this into the current Less is More challenge #346 'Take Flight', even though it's not really imaginative enough. 

Pixie's Snippets Playground - Week 299 and 300

Phew! What a last minute panic to make this fortnight's snippets card! Loss of mojo, trips away, catching up on chores (sigh) etc. have been taking me away from crafting lately.

The latest venture forth was for my (ahem-th) Birthday and we tootled off to Leeds Castle in Kent for a short break. I'll try to add a photo to this post - we took loads but I'll do a post with more about our trip next week - with luck. It truly is such a beautiful place and the Castle itself is stunning.

And HUGE thanks for all the lovely Birthday wishes, cards, gifts ........ and for just all being you - mwah!

So, here's the snippets card I managed to make, just yesterday:

I used:

- 4.25" x 5.5" white card blank, side opening

- snippet of pink spotty paper which I did in fact glue to a slightly larger card blank before trimming it down to size. So much easier and accurate as well!

- snippet of white card, trimmed to leave a decent border of pink spotty paper around the edge of the card

- die cut a pale blue snippet into a circle using a die from The Works 'Stitched Circles' die set and kept it to one side

- dug into my hoard of white snippets and stamped the little sloth (with Memento 'Tuxedo Black ink) and also a load of leaves using Lawn Fawn's 'Hang in there' adorable set of stamps and coloured them using Faber-Castell Polychromos pencils and Sansodor blending fluid

- then I used the matching die set to cut the sloth image but I did cheat a bit and just fussy cut the leaves even though the set of dies does come with dies for the leaves, as well as a party hat :)

- at that point I knew where I wanted to position the image and blue backing circle so I used the Misti to stamp the sentiment (Memento 'Tuxedo Black' ink again)

- the stamp set comes with an exclamation mark as well as a bracket, but I was finding I was all fingers and thumbs so I just used a black fine line pen to add brackets

- then added the white panel to the pink 'spotty card front, with a layer of fun foam as backing to add dimension

- then just glued the blue circle, cute little sloth hanging from his branch and a selection of leaves in place - using a Woodware Fine Tip glue bottle

- finally, added a little bit of 'Glossy Accents' to the 'little chap's' eyes

This is obviously a Get Well or similar card - but the sentiments do include a selection for a 'belated Birthday' card as well, such as 'Sorry I'm slow'.

And that leads nicely into our prize(s) this coming fortnight, which of course are are:

A set of stamps with matching dies by Lawn Fawn called 'Hang in there' - as well as a set of The Works 'Stitched Circles' dies -still amazes me that they give you eight dies in a set.

The Snippets Challenge will run for two weeks and the Playground gates will close at 11am UK time on Saturday 30th 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. As I already said, the prize is a set of stamps with matching dies by Lawn Fawn called 'Hang in there' - as well as a set of The Works 'Stitched Circles' dies. I will split The Works 'Stitched Circle' dies from the matching Lawn Fawn ' Hang in there' stamps and dies (which do come as a pair), in which case I'd do a further draw for the other item(s). 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 (two Darkroom Door stamps - 'Butterfly' and 'Stand Out' (very kindly donated by Megan), plus a set of Joanna Sheen stamps called 'Pressed Flower' from me), another Guest Designer and my picks from the past two weeks.

And, here's a sneak peek at Leeds Castle where we spent a few days last week. We were incredibly lucky with the weather, which is always a bonus of course:

Love from Parsnip and of course from me,

Taking a little break for now.

Things have been busy here and will be so for a few more days. I'm about and watching - plus the Playground will still operate as usual, even if my commenting is perhaps a little bit later than I would like.

Normal service will resume ASAP :) Whatever 'normal' is of course! Parsnip is still on regular patrol and any misdemeanors are reported back to me 'toot sweet'....with huge relish! The little white fluffy 'snitch' :) x

Pixie's Snippets Playground - Week 295 and 296 - results

Oh what a fun time we had in Swindon last weekend! The 'Monkeys Convention' went down a storm and we spent most of the time laughing. I've added a few photos at the end of this post. And I also recommend that you hop over to Helen's blog - HERE to read how the whole weekend unfolded, written from a monkey's viewpoint of course :) Just make sure you aren't drinking a cup of coffee at the same time - cough, splurt!

Let's get straight on with our Guest Designer for this fortnight - it's Charlotte of 'Lady Joyful'! This is Charlotte's first time as a GD in the Playground and I'm delighted she offered to share this lovely snippets card with us:

What a brilliant way to use up snippets of vellum! I love the translucence where the balloons overlap one another - a great idea and one to keep for the future!

This is what Charlotte said about her card:
For this card I started by stamping some balloons over the background of the card. I then used two different sized circle dies to cut some snippets of vellum that I had covered with double sided sticky tape. I arranged the vellum circles on the card how I wanted them, adhered them down and trimmed off the overhang. I then used a few of the off cut snippets around the edge of the card to give the impression of even more balloons. The balloon stamp set has a stamp for the string, so I used that to stamp strings on all the balloons - both the stamped ones and the die cut ones. I stamped on a happy birthday sentiment, and ended up restamping "birthday" onto a snippet of grean pearlised card (because I'd stamped it wonkily on the card base!)

And a few words about Charlotte herself:
I'm Charlotte a.k.a Lady Joyful. I'm a Brit living in Finland with my husband and our three cats. During the day I work as a nanny for two little boys, and when I'm not working my time is filled with blogging, photography, and, of course, card making!  I started making cards at the beginning of last year and quickly became addicted. I still consider myself to be a newbie and feel that my style is still developing, but I lean towards CAS. As I'm quite frugal I do tend to horde all the bits and pieces of snippets from my cards, and I'm always looking for interesting ways to use them up.  I'm very excited to be guest designing for Pixie's Snippets Playground this week - thanks Di for having me along!

Huge thanks to Charlotte for being our GD this fortnight and for showing us such a neat trick with those balloons as well! And I did love her honesty about covering up a wonky 'birthday' stamping - I think it adds dimension in any case, so a fortunate 'accident' indeed.Do hop over and say 'Hello' to Charlotte!

Drum roll - it's time for the weekly picks!

One card totally blew my socks off last fortnight and is certainly very worthy of a Gold Star:

 

Jenny L made this utterly scrumptious Christmas card for her slot as a Rudolph Days Challenge designer and she also brought it into the Playground to share with us. It's absolutely gorgeous with so much detail - someone is going to be over the moon to receive this at Christmas! Do please take your Gold Star badge from the right-hand sidebar Jenny - and very well deserved is too!

Now for my other picks from this past fortnight - and I 'homed in' on 'scenes' this time. In fact I also picked scenes last time - but these ones don't necessarily include any up cycling and also it does seem to be quite a theme at the moment: 

I'd already picked this fabulous scenic card, made by Charlotte (aka Lady Joyful), regardless of the fact that she's also our GD this fortnight. I think this is fabulous! There's a whole load of inlaying of die cuts going on here - so clever.

Love this card, made by Carol L. Who doesn't like Penny Black stamps - and it really did make me smile! The sentiment sort of sums up last weekend's 'Monkey Convention' really!

And, how about this delightful shadow card, made by Fiki?! Do hop over to her blog, there's a step-by-step 'how to' and I'm sure you'll be very tempted to have a try!

53 of you played along last fortnight, with no new Playmates joining us. I bet loads of folk were running round getting ready for the little ones to return to school - it seems so quiet without Max and Charlie playing happily in the garden next door. Sigh.

Prize draw time now and our winner of the Memory Box 'Dragonfly stems - Left Corner' die and Clearly Besotted's 'Say What?' set of assorted sentiments is:

Meena

Well done Meena - I think this might be your first Playground win! Can you please drop me an email with your address - then I'll post your prize 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 two Darkroom Door stamps - 'Butterfly' and 'Stand Out' (very kindly donated by Megan), plus a set of Joanna Sheen stamps called 'Pressed Flower' from me . I will split the prize if you only want to play for part of it.

And here are a few photos of our 'Monkeys Convention' in Swindon:

The formal giving out of our surprise gifts from Monkey, Darrell and Nigel - matching tee shirts! Yaaay! What a brilliant idea of theirs and we happily paraded all over the hotel with chests puffed out - well, the monkeys did at least!

All dressed alike and posing for the official photograph. Love how Marvin is perched so casually :) So, we have Marvin at the front left then (left to right) Monkey, Sammy, little Nigel and Darrell. And at the back, Hank and Norm.

Monkey, Darrell and Nigel all live with Helen. Hank and Marvin live with me.

Things degenerated into a card school while we 'grown-ups' sat and talked for England!

And that night WHY did they decide to have a sleepover in MY bed? 

Time flew past and it didn't seem long before we sadly had to part company and go our separate ways. Little paws on top of one another to take the solemn vow to meet up again for another Convention, same time next year - if not sooner!

Love from the little white peril Parsnip, who stayed home with Len to keep him company - and of course from me too,

70 years young - my friend Moira

Today is the Birthday of one of my very best friends, dating back to our boarding school days! Moira, I hope you have a fabulous day!

As we oldies know, even if we have aches and pains, it's what's going on in your mind that keeps the years at bay. Ha, in which case I should be just about approaching my late teens mentally! Never lose the sense of fun and silliness, and with a cheeky smile you can usually get away with most things!

Anyhow, I wanted to make a memorable card for Moira's special Birthday to sum up how daft we can be when together. So, I sent off for a new stamp set and then got the jitters about colouring it. However, short of selling the stamp set on or giving it away, I had to attack it - and so I did - one week ago. Amazing, I ended up with time to spare and this is the result:

Love this sentiment!

I used:

- 6" square white easel card - ie. one card with a line scored horizontally across the centre of one half and firmly folded and burnished to remain well folded plus
a panel for the front of the card

- plain green backing card - SU's 'Certainly Celery' to cover the base of the easel card and the panel front panel - glued in place

- papers from a QCME freebie pad called 'Let's Fly Away', trimmed slightly smaller than the plain green card and glued in place

- then I stamped the image and both sets of words, using the Misti and Memento 'Tuxedo Black' ink. The stamp set is of course by Stamping Bella, from the Uptown Girls range and it's called 'Thelma and Louise'. I'd decided that the 'Thelma and Louise' wording would go above the image and the other wording would be used on the the easel card base

- coloured the image using Faber-Castell Polychromos pencils and Sansodor blending fluid

- despite having a ton of dies here, not one was the right size so I just trimmed the image down and then popped it onto a backing of more green card and glued it in place on the front panel

- stuck the front panel onto the folded easel part of the card using red line tape

- trimmed the 'karma' sentiment (which I just love!) and popped it onto a backing of green card then added some thick Hunkydory sticky pads to the back before sticking it onto the base part of the easel card to act as a 'prop'

- stamped the {HAPPY birthday} onto a snippet of white card,  using Memento 'Tuxedo Black' ink and a stamp from the Hero Arts 'CLO47 Messages' set

- then trimmed and backed it with green card and glued it in place on the base

- die cut the numbers and sun from medium strength adhesive sheet backed snippets of orange and turquoise card using the sun from the Joy! 'Sun and Moon' set and numbers from the Memory Box 'Classic Numbers' set and popped them in place

- final touch - Glossy Accents on the sunglasses, bottle and rear lights

In the end the stamp wasn't really as frightening to colour as I'd feared. Mind you, it would have been totally different using Pro markers as opposed to nice sharp coloured pencils! And, as it is, that car looks like it's due a respray in close up! Bit like me really :)

Pixie's Snippets Playground - Week 297 and 298

Ha! Here we go again with a new fortnight and my snippets card.

When this publishes, I'll' be at 'little Monkey Convention' in Swindon with my friend Helen. Heaven help us - it promises to be just a little bit chaotic to say the very least!

I had some problems when this post first published - for some reason I'd lost Megan's photo of her lovely card and also there was no link to her blog. Hope this is all sorted out now - here we go again!

Time was very precious in the lead up to 'Monkey Convention' and I made something quite quick - using two fabulous stamps so kindly sent to me by Megan. But first of all, we have Megan herself again as a Guest Designer as she then very sweetly made a brilliant card using the same stamps:

And this is what Megan said about her GD card:

I recently discovered Darkroom Door Stamps are a smallish Aussie company and purchased three sets of the same stamps… one for me and the other as a small thank you to Di for running the ever popular Snippets Playground, with an extra set for the toy box… spreading some love for one of our Home grown stamp company in the process. Miss Di was unaware that I had posted anything and I received an excited email after the surprise package arrived, with a huge thank you from Di.

I think Di does an amazing job running Snippets Playground and giving away so many prizes to all of the class mates all over the world. A Huge thank you to Di for all the fun and giggles and encouragement to use up those little bits and pieces from my scrap box along the way, and a huge Thank you for having me as a Guest Designer again.

On to my card, my Sister-in-Law started off my collection of spray inks a few years ago and I have of course added to them and spent some time making a mess, I mean creating a few backgrounds with them in various colours to set aside for later use making various sizes based on how much white paper and card I had laying around, from small 3 inch squares to whole A4 sheets. I used two spray inks for the main background Crushed Grape and London Blue and I’m guessing Cherry Pie and Lemon Zest on the butterfly all from Dylusions.

I stamped the butterfly directly onto one of the smaller pieces of cardstock and the sentiment onto another two white snippets (do they breed when I’m not looking???) and heat embossed them both with Black glossy embossing powder. I fussy cut the butterfly and sentiment out, laying them on the card before deciding to get out one of my stencils and some white ink to add more interest in the background, carefully inking directly on the card with the ink pad moving the stencil around so the pattern would be a little random. Another CCD die arrived around that time that I thought looked perfect for more interest and I used yet another white snippet to cut one, which was then cut in two pieces and placed behind the butterfly. I finally stuck everything down adding foam dots behind the butterfly to give some more dimension finishing off the card with a few sequins from a local discount store.

And this is my effort - not as good as Megan's (for a start it didn't even cross my mind to chop up the stamped sentiment!) but I did have such fun making it and just going a bit mad colouring the butterfly:

I used:

-  DL white card blank

- a snippet of orange SU card for the 'border/frame'

- another snippet of white card onto which I stamped the image and sentiment - using Memento 'Tuxedo Black' ink - the Misti was a real life saver when aligning the stamps. The stamps are made by Darkroom Door and are clled 'Butterfly' and 'Stand Out'

- then coloured in parts of the butterfly using any bright and dazzling gelly roll or sparkly pen I could find

- trimmed the centre panel down and then trimmed the orange border frame - just by a whisker!

- glued them together than glued the assembled panel onto the card front - and called it done!

Thank you so much for your really kind words, GD card and all the effort you put into this Megan - and of course this week's prize - with a little added bit from me as well:

It's both of the Darkroom Door stamps - 'Butterfly' and 'Stand Out' (very kindly donated by Megan, all the way from Oz where they're made). Plus a set of Joanna Sheen stamps on plain grey rubber called 'Pressed Flower' from me - those have been in the toy box for quite a while so I thought they would make a nice addition to Megan's lovely donation.

The Snippets Challenge will run for two weeks and the Playground gates will close at 11am UK time on Saturday 16th 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 the two Darkroom Door stamps plus the Joanna Sheen set 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 (Memory Box die called 'Dragonfly stems - Left Corner' and Clearly Besotted's 'Say What?' set of assorted sentiments), another Guest Designer and my picks from the past two weeks.

Thank you for the feedback about a possible 'theme' in the Playground now and again. At some point we'll give it a whirl - but to make things easy (I like easy!!) you will still have the option of making an 'anything goes' snippets make instead. We don't DO stress in the Playground! 

Love from Parsnip and of course from me,