Dudley update

He's home again, went in at 8:30 this morning and we finally got to pick him up at 4pm! Today was one of the longest days ever and the house was so quiet. In fact, it still is as Dudley is somewhat groggy and sleeping most of the time. In between twittering like a little distressed bird - bless him. We'd been warned about the twittering etc. - thankfully.

And yup, he's wearing a very smart dark blue 'onesie' with his plume of a tail poking out. He does look rather cute I must admit.

I'll add an update to this Sunday's Snippets Challenge results post but wanted to just let you know in the meantime that he's through the little op. 10 days until the lab tests are back but we're staying upbeat about that. He goes back to see the vet on Monday for his first post-op check-up, then a week later it's results time.

Thank you so much for your concern to date - it means more than you'll ever know.

Love,

Rudolph Days - November - 2019

I suddenly remembered it was coming up to the last Rudolph Days Challenge of 2019 over at Scrappy Mo's. I haven't missed a single one this year and didn't aim to start slipping now, so I did a little batch of six of these:

I used:

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

- Stampin' Up's 'Real Red' card stock, cut an eighth of an inch smaller on all sides and set aside for now

- a 'pre-loved' but brand new/unused matching set of stamps and dies (from a Facebook De-cluttering group), made by Sizzix and called 'Fairisle Stocking'

- first used SU's 'Real Red' ink pad to stamp the stocking onto white card and then used a Dewdrop Brilliance ink pad in 'Pearlescent Ivy' to stamp the holly sprig

- die cut the stocking and holly sprig using the dies that came with the set

- then die cut the aperture into the 'Real Red' layer, using the MFT 'Peek-a-boo' Window rectangle die, having checked using the little die cuts for what I thought was the best position on the piece of red card

- glued the red layer of card complete with aperture onto the card front, using Collall All Purpose glue

- then stuck the holly sprig onto the top of the stocking using a teeny piece of narrow red line tape, before adding the whole stocking into the aperture using thin sticky pads

- the sentiment is from a Clarity Stamp Word Sticker Collection called 'Clarity Christmas & Celebrations'. A great idea and a huge time saver as well

- finally, added some tickles of red sparkly Stickles to the holly berries. I generally add my Stickles using a very fine pointed brush, which is better as I'm a bit clumsy and also it allows me to mix two colours of Stickles together on a scrap of paper then pick it up with the brush (deep and a bright red in this case)

Once again, I forgot that the double stitching on this lovely aperture die doesn't show up so well on dark coloured card, sigh. And, although it doesn't show up in real life, I think that in future, when I'm using the black background Clarity stickers it would be worth gently running a black marker round the cut edge just to hide any smidgen of the white backing before adding them to cards etc. Little Miss Picky strikes again :) But I do so love the stickers anyhow!

I keep telling myself to just stop making new Christmas cards and concentrate on actually doing the inserts for a bundle of Christmas cards still not totally finished and then get cracking to get them in the post. It's a bit hard though, all the more as I plan to run our Grand Christmas Draw again this year and need to make all bar a couple of the samples for when it runs! Having said that, I guess finishing and posting what I have should take priority - certainly for Overseas.

I'd also like to join in with Craftyhazelnut's Christmas Challenge #465 - so sorry I haven't been along to play for a while Hazel! It's always anything goes, with an optional theme, which this time is 'something beginning with the letter R' - so my red qualifies there, wahoo!

Of course, tomorrow is the start of Dudley's 'Little Adventure', as explained on Sunday's Snippets post  - wish us luck. 

Pixie's Snippets Playground - Challenge #366

It's drier, but noticeably colder down in the South of England - Winter is closing in for sure.

Once again, we have a slightly different format this week, in addition to my own card and prize(s) we also have Karen back with us as our November Guest Designer,  more further down this post.

First of all, here's my snippets card for today:

I used:

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

- snippets of plain (ish) green and also striped paper card from Lawn Fawn's 'Really Rainbow' paper pack. I love how just a strip of left over paper from this vibrant pack adds so much 'oomph'

- hand cut the green paper to form a wavy 'hill' and glued it in place using a small tape runner, then trimmed off the sides from the back of the card

- did the same with the straight strip of paper, leaving it straight to form a border along the top of the card as if the wee girl had been trying out her huge paintbrush :)

- then stamped the images I wanted to use onto snippets of white card using stamps from the Neat and Tangled 'Paint Night' set of stamps and the Misti, plus Memento 'Tuxedo Black' ink and also stamped the sentiment onto the card front

- adding the little scene into the plain easel was easy using the Misti. To be on the safe side I did mask down each side of the easel using strips of Post-it notes, in case the little image wasn't lined up properly - knowing I could always carefully fill in any blank stripe down a side using a fine tipped permanent marker. Not needed though as it was lined up perfectly, a very precisely designed and made set of stamps and dies

- coloured the images using Faber-Castell Polychromos pencils and hopefully picking out the colours from the stiped strip of paper at the top of the card front

- die cut the images using dies from the matching set of dies and then glued them in place using a Zig glue pen

- final touch was to colour the letters in the word 'COLOR', again picking out colours from the striped strip of paper at the top of the card

I've had this lovely set of stamps and dies for over a year now, bought last September when I went to a Dies To Die For pop-up shop. For some reason I kept avoiding using it, probably fearful of the colouring aspect.

I would have liked to place the little girl and the easel closer together so that she is more obviously showing off her painting, but I'd added the easel image a tad too far to the right  and had to pop the little girl further to the left to balance the thing out (ain't hindsight wonderful). The set comes with a good few different options and three sentiments to choose from. There are also little (or in fact  quite big) paint droplets, complete with matching dies. I stopped short of using them for fear of overload, but on a bigger card they would be a fun touch. And, on this design of mine they would have probably looked quite cute almost dripping from some of the coloured strips on the top backing paper.

And here's the prize for this fortnight:

A Neat and Tangled 'Paint Night' set of stamps (14 in total so you really can ring the changes) - plus the matching set of nine dies. Obviously it's all one prize!

As always, the Snippets Challenge will run for two weeks and the Playground gates will close at 11am UK time on Saturday 7th December. The gates will open again at midnight UK time on the same day.

It's a maximum of ONE entry, please say in a comment if you wish to play and be a possible winner of the prize. 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 want to be in the draw in a comment on here, 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' on the blog post itself - just in case you're only playing for fun - otherwise I don't add you to my little list.

And now onto our Guest Designer for November - who is Karen Letchworth, of 'My Cup Runneth Over'.

It was lovely to see how many of you already follow Karen, and I reckon at least 10 more of you added yourselves as followers. Wouldn't it be great if you could bump those numbers up a bit more - Karen only needs 29 more followers to reach the magic 1,000!

And here's what Karen made:  

Another fabulous card making such clever use of a variety of gorgeous snippets, similar colours and designs to last fortnight's papers used by Karen. I really think this is gorgeous, and I adore the beautiful bow as well!

Thank you SO much Karen for being Guest Designer again this fortnight and for your snippets inspiration. Please don't be a stranger - you have some wonderful ideas to share and it would be great to see you joining in with the other girls and entering the fortnightly challenge.

Do hop over to Karen's blog, the link is above and Karen also has another give-away of her own for this challenge.  How generous is that?

Latest Dudley news:

Dudley is as full of fun as ever, although on Thursday he's going into our vet's animal hospital for a little operation - nope, not THAT one! Whilst in Cornwall we'd felt a very dark mole on his side, hidden by his silky coat but enough to ask the vet about when he had his booster shots after we came home. She said to keep an eye on it - and back we went yesterday as it's grown, is standing more proud and doesn't look right.

She can't say exactly what it is, so he's booked in to have it removed and checked out. That's the only way to rule out anything sinister and it's best to do it in one go rather than a biopsy, which might then be followed by a further op.

Poor little scrap doesn't know what's coming. Needless to say I'm almost beside myself worrying over the anesthetic, the results etc. etc. Len is more pragmatic - although I think there's no doubt he's doing it to keep my spirits up as much as possible.
 
We'll then have to wait a further week for the pathology results - whilst nursing what may well turn out to be a very cross little dog! He doesn't like us leaving him anywhere for long (although if all goes to plan we'll leave him first thing in the morning and should be able to collect him later on that afternoon). And he'll probably be even more cross when he finds out he most likely has to wear a 'onesie' whilst the stitches heal :) The scar won't show once it's all healed up - and tomorrow I'm taking him to the Groomers for a bath and blow dry as well as a nail and pads trim as we won't be able to take him to be groomed for a little while after the op. of course.

We only just found out, after days on end of no activity, that the third little hedgehog is still around and not fully into hibernation mode as we thought might be the case. CCTV picked it up at around 7pm this evening (Saturday), having a little feed. We missed it and only realised when Dudley went out for his final wee of the evening and Len spotted that the food had been disturbed (he has a Heath Robinson system whereby hedgies can nose a little cover up to get at the food but local cats can't. It then cleverly drops back into place - he should patent it really). Checked the CCTV footage just now and 'shoo 'nuff' - there the sweet little critter was, tucking in! So, we're back on high alert here.

Not using Dudley as an excuse, but hope you understand that right now my head is all over the place and I know I've fallen behind on commenting on the Snippets challenge that closed on Saturday morning. Having said that, who knows - by the time you read this I just might have caught up!

Lots of love from us all - Parsnip, Dudley (woof, woof!) and of course me,

Pixie's Snippets Playground - Challenge #364 - results

Still the fireworks go off at random times around here, usually nothing like as bad as I whined about last weekend, thankfully. And Dudley doesn't seem to be too bothered by them after all - when they're further away.

It's been another mixed week, a lot of rainfall, with some hedgehog rescuing here. More about that further down this post.

First of all, let's get going with this fortnight's picks:

What a brilliant card, made by Carol L. I love the design and absolutely tons of snippets used as well! A lovely example of picking three colours from a pile of snippets and coming up with a very striking card.

Jane (of Jane's Journal) brought a wonderful Autumn wreath to share with us. It's gorgeous and a super way to use up lots of snippets. The leaves are made from the printed pages of an old book BTW, with a lot more work to make them look this pretty!

Here's another Christmas card, this time made by Eemeli, using lots of little snippets. I recognise some of the papers from quite some time ago - a lovely card indeed!

And we had three new Playmates this time:

Gail (I Like Paper)

Lynn McAuley

Adry

Do please hop over to welcome our new Playmates and comment on their beautiful work.

So, that's my picks, and our new Playmates from Challenge 364, and I do hope they've given you some inspiration for ways in which you can use up some of those snippets.

We had 59 entries and three new Playmates this time round. Whoop, whoop!

Time now for the prize draw, which is for the Memory Box 'Budding Tree' die and a Memory Box 'Mini Butterflies' die. And the winner is:

Janis in ID

Well done Janis! I'm sure it's absolutely ages since you won one of the fortnightly prizes - so this is certainly due. Please send me your address, with your full name at the top as well so I can copy and paste or just write straight from the email onto the envelope - for speed and ease. It's also confirmation that you still would like the prize of course and I'll post your prize once I hear from you. Please put Playground Winner or similar in the subject line of your email in case it drops into my junk mail. Email address is on RH sidebar as always.

Remember folks, there's still almost another week to run on Challenge #365 - you can find it HERE. The prize is a SWALK 'Friendship' stamp (which is grey unbacked rubber) and a Gemini 'Stitch Edge Circle' set of dies. And do remember that we still have our Guest Designer Karen's wonderful snippets make and very generous give away - over on her blog HERE. And, Karen will be joining me again for the next November Snippets Challenge, next Sunday (24th November). I can't wait to see what she's made to share this time.

Long story cut short, we (Len really) rescued two little hedgies during the week. Out during the day time - which is always a worrying sign that they need help.

Here they are the following day, after their temporary home (large clear plastic crate) had been cleaned out, ready for me to take them to a local animal rescue place in a pretty village just 10 minutes drive away from us: 

The little one nearest to you is curled into a ball and covered, slightly, in bits of the newspaper they shredded up even more during their overnight stay. They really had made one heck of a mess of the crate, putting it nicely - poop everywhere, food all eaten and water almost drunk - must have been quite a party :) It got so bad that, even though we had doors closed, we eventually had to pop the crate into our garage for the night, out of Dudley's hearing - he was going Havanese-ape!

A couple more photos:

This is the braver one, woofling and trying to explore to find a way out. Many years ago we had a hedgie that we'd rescued manage to escape from a more shallow box that Len was holding - whilst I was driving along country lanes to a much further away animal rescue sanctuary and now we're very careful. They really can climb!

And here's a closer look at the little one that was curled into a ball. If you look just above the little shred of newspaper stuck to his prickles at the left of the image, just follow up slightly and there's his little dark snout peeping out, with his darker eye patches on either side. His eyes were also open but the camera didn't pick that detail up.

There are over 130 hedgehogs being looked after at the rescue place - mostly from late litters. And a plethora of wildlife ranging from squirrels, ducks, geese, birds, hedgies of course - you name it, Rita will take it in and look after it until it's well enough to be released. One truly amazing lady for sure! It's run purely by her with some help from her daughter with no funding, apart from donations.

And, the following evening under cover of darkness, the CCTV picked up a third hedgie that's even smaller, coming to feed. It's proving more elusive to catch but we live in hope. By the way, the two hedgies we managed to rescue are both little girls - important - as they continue to raise future hedgie generations of course!

So, that's been the excitement for this week. No photos of Dudley - a friend and I went out for lunch during the week and it was the first time she'd met Dudley. She was absolutely enchanted by him - he certainly wins the ladies over!

Love from Parsnip, a wave from Dudley - and of course hugs as always from me,

18th Birthday card for Ben

One of Len's Great-Nephews celebrated his 18th Birthday recently, and finally I remembered to re-use a stamp I'd bought a while ago for such Birthdays. This is the card I made:

I used:

- 6" x 6" square white card blank

- a piece of patterned paper, white spots on black, from the Altenew 'Essential Black and White' paper pack, cut slightly smaller than the card front and glued in place

- stamped the main elements of the image onto a piece of white card stock using Memento 'Tuxedo Black' ink and the Woodware '18th Birthday' stamp set - and of course the Misti!

- then stamped the number 18 onto a piece of diagonally striped black and white paper from the same patterned paper pack

- carefully fussy cut the number 18 out and glued it onto the white stamped image - making sure I ran a black Whispers marker round the edge of the fussy cutting first, this hides any little white bits that might otherwise show up :)

- trimmed the image panel to required size and glued it to the centre of the card front

The Altenew paper pack is very stylish and lends itself nicely to cards such as this one.

Little tip when you need to fussy cut any apertures - which I had to do on the number eight, top and bottom. Use a hand punch to punch one or more holes in the aperture first. It makes fussy cutting so much easier and you don't run the risk of ruining the stamped image by trying to poke the end of a pair of sharp scissors through to get started.

Pixie's Snippets Playground - Challenge #365

And the wet weather lingers on - but nothing like as bad as further North where there's now flooding. Flood water causes such dreadful damage and my heart really goes out to anyone affected by it.

Today is Remembrance Sunday here in the UK and also in many other places around the World. Armistice Day is tomorrow of course (11th November). I always watch the Cenotaph ceremony on TV - and always end up in tears, needless to say.

We have a slightly different format this week, in addition to my own card and prize(s) we also have a very talented guest designer who recently came to play for the first time. More further down this post.

First of all, here's my snippets card for today:

I used:

- 6" x 6" white card blank

- snippets of backing paper for the 'frame' and then the top layer, from the Studio Calico 'Snippets Collection' paper pad. And they are snippets as I used scraps from the 12" x 12" paper pad, just in case you think I'm cheating!

- glued the layers onto the card front

- then stamped the image onto a snippet of white card using a SWALK 'Friendship' stamp and Memento 'Tuxedo Black' ink pad - as well as the Misti of course

- coloured the image using Faber-Castell Polychromos pencils 

- die cut the image using a circle die from the (now sadly unavailable) set of 'Stitched Circle' dies by The Works 

- glued the image onto the card front and called it done!

I've had this adorable stamps for absolutely ages - using coloured pencils made it very easy to colour and I do think it reminds me very much of the Playground. 

And this is the prize is for this fortnight:

A SWALK 'Friendship' stamp (which is grey unbacked rubber) and a Gemini 'Stitch Edge Circle' set of dies. As I said, The Works seem to have discontinued their stitched circle dies but this set I have on offer as part of the prize is actually even better as it has eleven dies in total. The largest one is 4.6", the same size as my die which I used for this card. I'd prefer not to split the prize - you can always give part of it to another crafting friend of course.

As always, the Snippets Challenge will run for two weeks and the Playground gates will close at 11am UK time on Saturday 23rd November. The gates will open again at midnight UK time on the same day.

It's a maximum of ONE entry, please say in a comment if you wish to play and be a possible winner of the prize. 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 want to be in the draw in a comment on here, 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' on the blog post itself - just in case you're only playing for fun - otherwise I don't add you to my little list.

And now onto our Guest Designer - who is Karen Letchworth, of 'My Cup Runneth Over'. 

First of all a little bit about Karen who is a lady who loves using snippets. I love her work and when she offered to be a Guest Designer for the November Snippets Challenges, I jumped at the chance!

So, to introduce Karen to you:

And this is what Karen wrote:

Hello, my name is Karen Letchworth, and I'm so grateful to be a Guest Designer for Diane here at The Snippets Playground.  I've been crafting for most of my life, and I always enjoy using my snippets (paper scraps) in creative ways so that all those cute little bits and pieces of our favorite patterned papers never go to waste.  I hope that the ideas that Di and I share with you this month will inspire you to use your snippets and play along with us.  I welcome you to visit my blog, My Cup Runneth Over, to see my give-away (additional prize for this challenge).  Let's all get creative and make some lovely new cards and projects using our Snippets! 

And here's what Karen made, firstly the pile of snippets followed by the finished card. I think it's absolutely fabulous and certainly makes wonderful use of a lovely variety of snippets:

Thank you SO much Karen. That's such an inspiring snippets card!

We'll see Karen back here in two weeks time - and I do hope you manage to hop over to her blog, the link is above and Karen also has a give-away of her own for the challenge.

Of course, you might only use one snippet on a card, and that still qualifies you to enter the challenge. I'm often guilty of using minimal snippets when I have a prize to offer that doesn't especially lend itself to using lots of snippets, such as my prize for this next fortnight. Last fortnight of course I went a little bit mad with all those tiny butterflies! But it's wonderful to see innovative ways of using up the little perishers.

Latest Dudley news:

Dudley's hair is already growing nicely and he really does so look like a puppy! But, no photos of him at the moment, the right opportunity just hasn't presented itself.

We had some local idiots set off a horrendously loud display of fireworks in their back garden the night before Guy Fawkes.

Dudley had been fine with other fireworks but this lot absolutely terrified him. It was heartbreaking to see him frantically scrabbling to get onto one of the sofas with me, he was shaking like a leaf. I wrapped him in a fleecy throw, a bit like a sausage roll, and held him close - which seemed to help calm him, a bit like a Thunder Shirt works I guess. Poor little sausage (roll). It's such a shame too as he'd been fine with fireworks up until that point.

I do so wish that legislation would be tightened up regarding outdoor fireworks. A neighbour's two cats were absolutely terrified and also various local kiddies woke up screaming in fear. And I bet there's a lot more. This can't be right or fair surely? I'm probably a lot more sensitive now that we have Dudley and can see the effects, but my vote is to ban domestic garden displays! Or at the very least to limit them to one night only for Chinese New Year, Diwali, Guy Fawkes and New Year. As it is, we'll have them all the way to New Year and beyond from now on.

Rant over, hops down from soap box :)

Lots of love from us all - Parsnip, Dudley and of course me,

Bonfire Night Birthday

Yesterday one of our young neighbours reached 11 years old. He recently became very grown up and now cycles to and from school with friends. So, of course his card had to feature a bike a bit like his - I know it's orange but haven't really been close enough to pick up more details so had to sort of 'wing' this card:

I used:

- 5.75" x 5.75" square white card blank

- a whole sheet of paper from a paper stack called 'Let's Fly Away', free with Quick Cards Made Easy back in 2012, trimmed to exactly fit the card front then glued in place

- then trimmed a snippet of white card to the same width as the card front and about 3.25" in height

- die cut the sentiment from a snippet of green card, using a die by Impression Obsession called 'Birthday Top Edgers'. The secret to getting the 'underline' is to place the die just about an eighth of an inch above the straight edge of the piece of card you're using before die cutting the sentiment, which means you don't need to fiddle about afterwards trying to cut the underline itself - glued it onto the white panel using a Zig glue pen

- die cut the bicycle from a snippet of orange card using Sweet Dixie's 'Racing Bike' die and glued it onto the white panel using a Zig glue pen

- layered the white panel onto a green panel using Collall All Purpose Glue, which was cut from another snippet of the same green card and trimmed to the same  width as the card front and about 3.5" in height

- finally added the image panel to the card front using Collall All Purpose Glue then and finished off with three glossy black Josy Rose Hot Fix Nail Heads

The 'Racing Bike' die was much bigger than I expected when it arrived - but it's fun to use and makes a bold statement. Little note to self, check sizes when ordering on line!

Pixie's Snippets Playground - Challenge #363 - results

Another busy week here, with an outing for us to the local surgery for flu jabs, all the capers of Halloween, and the grand finale on Friday was a huge mix-up with Sainsbury's and our grocery order.  Their fault, not mine. As I type this on Saturday I'm waiting for them to finally arrive with a freshly picked order, but apparently they now have a broken down van to deal with and can't make the chosen time slot - so it could be some while yet! Before dark we hope, sigh. Ocado - I'm coming baaaaack to you.

Rant over, so let's get going with this fortnight's picks:

Our lovely Sandra made this brilliant card for her Grandson Nathan. Love the design using little snippets and all the more as, if you look closely, Sandra has cleverly used the waste from the die cut balloons and their strings to fill in the background a bit. Love it!

I chose this darling card as the idea is new to me - and possibly to you.  Jules, who originally started off the Snippets Playground all those years ago, made this beautiful 'scrapling' which is basically made from the small strip you have left over after cutting a card from a sheet of A4. I have a shed load of white strips of card here and it never occurred to me to make dinky little tent shaped cards or bookmarks using them. Do hop over to read more at Jules' blog HERE.

You might want to have a cup of coffee or something to settle down with if you hop over to Vinita's blog HERE, where she's showing this absolutely fabulous Book Box Card to celebrate Diwali. It's gorgeous, uses loads of snippets, even has a shaker element to it and Vinita has tons of wonderful step-by-step photos in her blog post.

When I worked in London I made a great friend who is Hindu and she used to bring the most wonderful savouries and sweetmeats into the office to share at Diwali. We're still in touch but she lived and still lives well North of London and of course we're down in Hampshire. Sometimes I wonder however we managed that daily hoof into the City, at the mercy of British Transport etc., for so many years without ending up in a Funny Farm!

So, that's my picks from Challenge 363 and I do hope they've given you some inspiration for ways in which you can use up some of those snippets.

I do actively look for new and innovative ways to use up your snippets - although I confess that often my own snippets makes will show minimal use of snippets, with exceptions such as the current challenge and all those butterflies of course.

We had 54 entries and no new Playmates this time round.

Time now for the prize draw which is for the wonderful Lawn Fawn 'Manatee-rific' set of stamps with matching dies - along with a Lawn Fawn 'Bayou Backdrop' set of dies. And the winner is:

Vicky

Well done Vicky! Your first Playground win, and what a win as well! I'm so pleased for you. Please send me your address, with your full name at the top as well so I can copy and paste or just write straight from the email onto the envelope - for speed and ease. It's also confirmation that you still would like the prize of course and I'll post your prize once I hear from you. Please put Playground Winner or similar in the subject line of your email in case it drops into my junk mail. Email address is on RH sidebar as always.

Remember folks, there's still almost another week to run on Challenge #364 - you can find it HERE. The prize is a Memory Box 'Budding Tree' die and a Memory Box 'Mini Butterflies' die.

I thought I'd have a photo of Dudley to share - wearing his cute little bandana - taken at Halloween. Sadly, Len, who took it, says it's too dark - such a shame as he really looked so cute in real life! We'll have to do an action replay asap.

Dudley's coat is already looking really lovely - and his latest trick is to pirouette round and round on his hind legs, holding his front legs out sideways (just like a little ballet dancer) to help him to keep his balance! I'll try and take a short video the next time it's dry enough for us to be in the garden, which is when he dances best as that's 'treats' time! Watch out for Rudolf Nureyev appearing here soon!

He's fast asleep right now under my desk with his head gently resting against one of my feet. We've had very high winds and rain here since the early hours of the morning which has made for interesting 'toilet trips'. Someone here will scamper outside for a quick wee but is determinedly hanging onto 'the rest' - and it ain't Len or myself!   Hmm, we're keeping a close eye on him just in case he tries to 'perform' indoors rather than risk being blown away! It would be a surprise if he does but we're not taking the risk - it took me weeks to recover from the 'Avon Lady Special' performance he did last November whilst he was being toilet trained.

Edit: The grocery order arrived on Saturday, only 15 minutes after our original chosen time band, long saga with issues with the delivery, but we're now all sorted out! And, little Dudley is a brilliant ice breaker - even the burliest delivery driver almost breaks down and whimpers when he sees him! :) And to be fair, it's not the delivery guys at fault with all this - it's their IT system, rubbish 'pickers' and also carelessness at the Sainsbury's end as the stuff is loaded/thrown into delivery crates.

Love from Parsnip, a wave from Dudley - and of course hugs as always from me,

Olivia is 10!

Most of you know that we have two Grand daughters living in Germany, on Len's side of the family although of course I love them as if they're my own. Today it's Livi's 10th Birthday, and as always I had to scramble to make her card in time to post. Their tastes change so quickly that it doesn't make sense to make their cards too far in advance - she says, trying to convince herself!

For a good while now, Livi has adored dragons - especially 'Toothless'. I've used his image on a card for her in the past but the other day I spotted a great die, which was here from Amazon in less than 24 hours - and this is the card I made:

I used:

- 5" x 7" white card blank, side opening

- a sheet of paper trimmed to exactly fit the card front, from Papermania's 'Elegance' paper pack -it's cream with shimmery gold streaks as a pattern - then glued in place

- snippets of black, orange and lime green card, backed with Stick-It for all the die cute

- die cut the dragon from black card and the flames from orange card and popped them in place on the card front - using a Sweet Dixie die called 'Dragon'

- then die cut the word 'imagine' from lime green card, using the Memory Box 'Sketchbook imagine' die, left the backing in place and set it to one side before then die cutting it from black card

- left the black 'imagine' in the die itself and carefully peeled off the backing so I could stick the green 'imagine' on top of it (which would be the back in fact) - offsetting it slightly

- then removed the whole word from the die itself (leaving the black die in the die whilst setting the two together means less chance of distortion)

- then peeled off the backing from the green layer of card and popped the word onto the card front

- ran the whole card through the Cuttlebug using just the cutting plates to make sure everything, including those pesky little dots above the letters i were firmly adhered

- finally touches were to add some clear Wink of Stella to the flames and also to mix two different shades of green Stickles on a scrap of paper and then add the eye using a very fine stiff brush to pick up the Stickles

All done, in two shakes of a lambs tail!

It was all the more appropriate to make a card with a dragon on as Livi's Birthday present from us is an animated model dragon - not Toothless but another one of her favourites.

Whilst browsing for ideas on how the die would look when actually cut, I came across a lovely card made by Liz for the Playground, coming up to three years ago - HERE. It's well worth a look!

Happy Birthday dear Olivia :) x

Really sorry I haven't managed to skip around commenting on Playground entries as yet. It's been another busy week here - but I'll get round to see you ASAP!