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,