Right now as I'm typing this on Saturday, the day before publication, we seem to have plunged into Autumn temperatures with a vengeance! Talk about going from one extreme to the other. We're at the point at which the central heating will automatically kick in if it drops a degree or so cooler - in August for goodness sakes!
Our return trip to the garage went off smoothly, and this time Dudley was much more settled during the car journeys, thankfully. I'd been contemplating wearing ear defenders but decided it wasn't wise whilst driving.☺
Let's move straight into this fortnight's
picks:
Charlotte always makes such gorgeous cards, and this fabulous rainbow card is a prime example - using loads and loads of very narrow snippet strips. Do go and have a peek
HERE - Charlotte has a really great video on her blog, showing how she made this card which is so well worth watching. She has such a gentle lilt to her voice - always so soothing to listen to.
What a struggle I had copying
Becca's card from Flickr! But it's much too pretty not to share and uses quite a few snippets beautifully - love the design and lovely colours as well. I particularly like the current trend for long slim cards and this is a perfect example of making the most of the shape with three little focal point circles.
The pretty cream and tangerine background paper reminds me so much of the little Laura Ashley prints from way back in the 1980's. In my 'previous life' I made a duvet set for a single guest room as well as curtains and a roller blind from a Laura Ashley design print almost identical - albeit leaning slightly more towards rust rather than peach. Then I decided it would be nice to wallpaper the room to match. It was in a loft area of the house we lived in and the side walls were curved so it made sense to take the paper right across the ceiling as well. Not easy and probably sounds revolting these days but I was so very proud of the end result. It doubled as my sewing room and I never got tired of it.
Vicky recently won the Spellbinders 'Kaleidoscope' dies prize and I absolutely love how she used it for this CAS and very elegant card. The set of dies included the large element plus three smaller dies and it's one of the smaller hexagons that Vicky used here - what a lovely result!
I know I usually try to stick to three picks, but this time I just couldn't reduce the numbers below four - so you have this adorable card,
made by Heather, to finish with. The card is such a lovely design and the absolute icing on the cake, apart from the amazing colouring, HAS to be the wonderful paper pieced umbrella that the three little friends are sheltering under. Such a clever touch and it really pulls the whole card together perfectly!
So, that's my picks and I do hope they've given you
some inspiration for ways in which you can use up some of your own
snippets. I always look for imaginative ways to use snippets when choosing the fortnightly picks. Of course a snippet to stamp a sentiment on qualifies folk to enter - but I do love to see clever ideas for using up those pesky little scraps which seem to breed overnight. They're the one thing we all have in our craft supplies for sure!
We had 39 entries in total, and no new Playmates this time. Bit of a dip in numbers.
Now for the prize draw, which is for a bumper prize of a Sweet Dixie set of 'Daisies' dies from Viv - and a Joanna Sheen
'Diamond Lattice' stencil plus a set of Clarity Stamps 'Christmas and
Congratulations' sentiment stickers from me. And the winner is:
Congratulations Val! I know from the style of your card making that you'll get a lot of fun out of using your prize. Please
send me your address, even if you know that I know it already, with your full name at the top as well so
I can copy and paste for speed and ease. It's also confirmation that you still
would like the prize of course and I'll do my best to post your prize ASAP this
coming week. 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 #385 - you can find it
HERE.
The prize is a Memory Box 'Cream Puff Heart' die and an Avery Elle 'And then' set of sentiment stamps.
Sorry that the font size varies throughout this post, it's not your eyes playing tricks I promise. It's probably linked to me using a 'Playground Results' template dating from before the switch to the new blogger interface, sigh. I've looked at the HTML and to be honest would need more time to tinker around and get rid of the size variations than I have right now. Once you mess about with HTML it's a whole different ball game - and I used to be a programmer way back in the days of steam driven computers so do have a bit of a head start. Look as if I'll be starting from scratch next time!
A bit of stuff about the Playground Challenge now. Firstly, you may have noticed that many blog challenges seem to have fewer entries right now. Perhaps the COVID situation is getting people down, I know my own enthusiasm for card making and also blogging is suffering. So, I'm hoping the slip in numbers of snippets entries is just a reflection of of what's going on elsewhere rather than the Playground sliding down towards its 'sell by date' As an example, today as I type it's Saturday 27th August late afternoon - and the last entry was on Thursday (thanks for that info. Mr Linky). Sigh.
That, and the colder weather, also set me thinking about Christmas and the annual bumper 'holiday' draw I've run for the past few years. It's a huge amount of work and I'm most unlikely to run it in future. This year seems as good a time as any to call a halt, unless there's some sort of miracle, which is as likely as pink flying pigs to be honest. Of course, knowing me I'll find some way of us having a very much scaled down Christmas/New Year Playground celebration - just not a whole load of prizes on an almost daily basis for two weeks which is so labour intensive. Making samples, writing and scheduling blog posts plus even wrapping and posting all the prizes seemed to take forever.
On a more upbeat note, little bit of Dudley news. He has offered his paw for treats for a long while while now - I've just taught him to give me a 'high-five' too. So adorable!
Love from Parsnip, a happy 'high-five' and woof from Dudley - and of
course
hugs as always from me. Stay safe, wear those masks - and keep on crafting.
