Pixie's Snippets Playground - Challenge #406

Once again, quite mixed weather here - although we didn't get as much rain as had been forecast. I've been out and about a bit running essential errands such as giving the car a decent run, finally posting off an overdue Playground prize to Vicky, who was so patient - and also to the chemist to collect a repeat prescription. No socialising for us just yet though.

I also made a batch of eight Christmas cards for the Rudolph Days Challenge which runs until Wednesday - my blog post is HERE. Almost lost the will to live in the attempt, which covered four days. Learned a big lesson there - keep it simple when planning a card to reproduce several times over!

All of those little events conspired to mean that my snippets card for this challenge had to be made in double quick time. Unless you count the absolute age it originally took me to make the background using every colour of Brusho I possess - NOT! There's a secret to it - read on:

I used:

- 5.75" x 5.75" square white card blank

- a sheet of paper from the absolutely beautiful Honey Bee 'Team Tie Dye' set of papers, trimmed to 5.5" x 5.5" and glued onto the card front

- a genuine snippet of white card, die cut using dies from the Whimsy 'Big Hugs' set of dies and my sweet little Altenew die cutting machine. Still avoiding using the Cuttlebug whenever possible otherwise i probably would have inlaid the sentiment die cuts

- then just glued the letters plus the XOXO strip to the card front using a Zig glue pen - finished!

You might well have noticed how much I like using both wide washi tape and also papers which at first glance have that 'I made this background myself' look about them. It's a current trend which will no doubt be replaced by something else, but meanwhile I'm enjoying having quick and easy backgrounds to hand.

The Honey Bee 'Team Tie Dye' set of papers is especially lovely - they're double sided and quite a few look as if you had a good session using Brushos and many others are just as if Yupo and alcohol inks have been used. In fact, all the papers really are images of original work carried out by members of the Honey Bee Design Team - gorgeous - love them all!

And here's the prize on offer - a very recent purchase but I needed to pick out a prize from me where the sample card would be quick and easy to make:

 

Above is a little close-up peep at inside my own pad at two of the papers, which look a bit as if they've been designed using alcohol inks ☺

It's a Honey Bee 'Team Tie Dye' set of papers (so you can also cheat as I did) plus a Whimsy 'Big Hugs' set of dies. The die for the letter 's' in Hugs is separate so you can just say 'Hug/Big Hug'. I can see loads of uses for both parts of this prize, paper and the die set - which I won't be splitting of course.

I am quite conscious that some of you are more into stamping than die cutting and I do try to vary the prizes as much as I can. Often it depends on how organised (or otherwise) I am! I do have a really fun stamping prize coming up in six weeks time.

As always, the Snippets Challenge will run for two weeks and the Playground gates will close at 11am UK time on Saturday 10th July. 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.

 

Please also remember that I only allow a total of nine other challenges, which makes 10 in total, when you enter a snippets make into the Playground.

 

I'm typing this on Friday as Saturday is 'shower Dudley day' and then a baking session for me. In this hot weather we've been having, he does like to have a full freshen up and is much less stressed about the whole business, thank goodness. Earlier this afternoon he was doing zoomies around the back garden, he's like a little rocket when his engine gets going. ☺ And the sheer joy on his face was such a delight to see.

 

Pupdate: all three of us got a good soaking  - nothing new there then!

Stay safe and be kind. 

  

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

Rudolph Days - June 2021

Good job I set out really early out to make my entry for ScrappyMo's Rudolph Days Challenge for June - HERE. 

I got SO VERY over-ambitious and went for a 'batch bake' of eight almost identical Christmas cards - without really factoring in how detailed and repetitive each one would be, with lots of steps at every single stage. I ended up with two times four each of very similar colourways - thanks to using a lovely Altenew 7" wide washi tape called 'Watercolor Nebula'. The repeat of the pattern is predominantly red/indigo sky then turquoise/purple, so that's how I ended up with four of each - the change in colourway does have a fine dark coloured line dividing it so I had to dodge those as well.

It's only fair to say that working with such wide washi tape is trickier than narrower ones - plus due to the 'skyline' size I ended up trimming what was supposed to be a much taller background to make a 4" square. Wasteful perhaps, but needed IMHO, for these cards to end up more balanced.

Here's two of the eight cards I made:

 I used:

- 5.5" x 5.5" white card blanks - side opening

- very slightly smaller square of black card to leave just a tiny bit of the white border showing - deliberately, due to the white writing on the sentiment strips I planned to use

- glued the black panels to the card fronts (in fact I did this at the end after fiddling around with sizing of the the image panel)

- the skyline - which was the first thing I did in reality - was the die cutting, using dies made by Memory Box 'Cityscape Silhouette' and 'Cityscape Nightline'. Die cut the solid 'Cityscape Silhouette' using snippet/s of gold mirri card then topped it with the 'Cityscape Nightline', which was die cut from snippet/s of black card and set the pieces to one side, after assembling them - then giving up for the day

- and that's how the fight started - an expression which always makes me smile. See an example below to get the idea ***

- cut USA sized A2 pieces of white card ready to cover with the washi tape - Altenew's 'Watercolor Nebulus' and after a good bit of wrestling ended up with eight covered rectangles. Remember, this was a bit of a voyage of discovery for me. My tested way (see HERE) of adding washi to a piece of card worked well. It was more a question of trying to place the design to get the best out of it - and also avoid those dark dividing lines between the colour change

- as said earlier - in the end I trimmed the panels down to 4" x 4" as the skyline wasn't too 'high' on the taller card and decided to go for square rather than US A2 rectangular cards - waste, waste, waste - to Altenew it equals profit methinks ☺

- by now I was lying on the floor on my back like a toddler drumming my heels, with Dudley joining in for fun, he's a great little heel drummer to be honest - and it was almost Day Three for goodness sakes!

- once again I walked away in disgust and felt quite dispirited

- totally ignored the mess on my desk in Day Three and fiddled around with grocery deliveries, letter posting and such

- back to work on Day Four and added the Clarity sentiment strips (from Clarity's 'Christmas and Celebrations' word sticker set) - really great if you're in a hurry or contemplating just giving it all up - to the upper left hand side. Had to use red line tape in the end as the washi and Clarity 'sticky' didn't wanna be friends and hug one another nicely

- mounted the image panel(s) onto a one eighth of an inch larger gold mirri card square

- then - finally - added the panels to the assembled card front and called it a day - Day Four to be exact!

What did I learn? Mostly not to dive into a big 'batch bake' without even just mentally listing all the steps first to get a feel for what you're letting yourself in for. In future, I'll stick simpler designs and steps - this almost finished me off! 

I'm also adding this into Darnell's NBUS Challenge #27 because it's the first time I played with this particular new washi tape - although certainly not the first time I drummed my heels on the floor in anguish! ☺

And before I forget - here's an example of 'and that's how the fight started':

*** It was a lovely warm sunny summer Sunday so I decided to drive my family to the seaside.

After driving for a while the children started getting restless and asked "Where's the beach daddy?".

I replied, "She is right beside me in the passenger seat"

And that's when the fight started.

I found LOADS of these little gems - many made me cry with laughter - but this one just grabbed me as being a little less personal then others. Happy days!

Pixie's Snippets Playground - Challenge #404 - results

That was a scorching hot few days and nights here in our part of Hampshire, 28 degrees during the day - hot in homes without air-con, no air-con is usual for domestic homes in the UK. I suspect that at some point new homes will be built with air con here due to climate change. Followed by torrential rain from Thursday evening onwards - which resulted in a fair bit of local flooding. Thankfully not right where we live but it did curtail my plans to post off Vicky's prize. One day much too hot to even think about venturing out in the car and the next day needing a canoe!

First of all, the picks - Susan and I were so aligned in what entries we would pick to showcase - I feel it does show I'm doing something right:

Val skipped in with this gorgeous rainbow card - super use of snippets and I do so love the 'shower of matching pollen' falling from the flowers. Very CAS and pretty too.

This is a perfect new home card - shared with us by Christa. Love the dear little houses in those pretty colours with the roof lines very cleverly matching the added scallop strip along the lower edge of the card. Another really pretty card.

 

Paper piecing is a marvellous way to use up snippets and this gorgeous card made by Maxine is a perfect example of using the technique to perfection. The added glossy accents to the raindrops is a lovely touch and also how Maxine did some clever shading on the umbrella!

That's my/our picks from Challenge # 404. We had 31 entries and no new Playmates. 

Time for the draw now and the prize is a Hero Arts 'Knitting' stamp set and matching Hero Arts 'Knitting Frame Cuts' - kindly donated by Susan B our Guest Designer. The winner is:

Karen Letchworth

Congratulations Karen! I've had a quick search through the Playground and think this might be your very first win - although you're often a 'pick' of course! Delighted you were picked by the random number generator and knowing what lovely cards you make I'm sure you'll show us the end result once you use your prize.

Please send me your address as I ask in the paragraph below this one - I'll pass it onto Susan B, who will then post your prize directly to you from Canada.

Please send me your address, with your full name at the top as well so it can be can be copied and pasted for speed and ease. It's also confirmation that you still would like the prize of course.  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 one more week to run on the current Challenge #405 HERE. The prize is a Crafter's Companion stamp set called 'Hello Summer', a Crafter's Companion set of two dies called 'Summer Afternoon' to compliment the set of stamps, a Waltzing Matilda 2" x 2" doily die called 'Tiny Doily' and a set of two stamps by Creative Expressions called 'Apple Blossom Spray'. Prizes kindly donated for Ruby'sMemory  Challenge by Val and Viv.

Dudley is such a pickle - he has to be the most inquisitive dog ever and always has to be where the action is. During last week though he overstepped the mark when we had a telecomms engineer here to bring optic fibre from the road right into the house. Amazing how they fish the fibre through the service ducts then bring it up into the home. Dudley did his usual 'welcome' barking session then when he went to see what Mr BT was doing he decided it would be fun to wrap his paws round one of his legs for a little bit of 'doggie fun'! Needless to say he was returned to my care promptly by Len with a moveable barrier across the top of the stairs. 

So he then 'woofed' every time the guy went in and out of the front door - resulting in me unceremoniously plonking him in our bedroom for timeout - and putting a further moveable barrier across the doorway. Of course he calmed right down when he couldn't see the Mr BT at all. Instead he sat on the end of our bed and glared at me in total indignation right across the landing to where I was working at my desk - for the rest of the visit! So hard not to laugh but oh boy was he SO cross with such an accusing and very grumpy face at his fun being stopped. The good thing is that he never bears a grudge for long, just a token 'I'm ignoring you' when first 'sprung' from his timeout. Never a dull moment when he's around.☺ It's a bit like having a toddler really - he will be three years old on 22nd July, how time flies.

Finally, it's come around so fast but it's June's Rudolph Days beginning on Friday 25th until the end of the month - over at ScrappyMo's. I've been working on a batch of identical Christmas cards for days now - one of those designs that you know will have a good outcome but boy do I wish I'd gone for a simpler design with less steps!

Love from Parsnip, myself and the usual happy 'high-five' and woof from Dudley,

Pixie's Snippets Playground - Challenge #405 - Ruby's Memory

Hello again - thanks for calling by! Every third challenge is dedicated to dear sweet Ruby's Memory, in aid of the centre who originally rescued her, and this is our fourth one.

It's actually working in terms of more time for me to play as I'm finally able to post on here more than once a week - hooray!

So, here's the prize for this challenge - kindly donated by our lovely Val. As it's finally Summer and 'tea party' season - I picked out a few tea party themed items to make up a bit of a bundle. I also added in a pretty floral stamp set from Viv, which she sent me literally months ago:

So here's what the prize is:

- Crafter's Companion stamp set called 'Hello Summer' - lots of great sentiments are included as well

- Crafter's Companion set of two dies called 'Summer Afternoon' to compliment the set of stamps

- a Waltzing Matilda 2" x 2" doily die called 'Tiny Doily'

- and the sweet set of two stamps by Creative Expressions called 'Apple Blossom Spray'

Huge thanks to Val and Viv for the prize goodies! It means I can send off another donation to the rescue centre. By the way, if anyone ever wishes, I can let you have copies of USPCA's acknowledgement emails.

I won't split the prize by the way. All of the 'afternoon tea' themed elements go so well together and the apple blossom stamp is a lovely addition. Do feel free to play along and then, at your end, share the prize if you wish.

As always, the Snippets Challenge will run for two weeks and the Playground gates will close at 11am UK time on Saturday 26th June. 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 I won't be splitting the prize of course.

 

Please also remember that I only allow a total of nine other challenges, which makes 10 in total, when you enter a snippets make into the Playground.

It's so hot here - Dudley spends a lot of time lying on cool tiled floors. I would love us to get a doggy paddling pool but something (as well as Len) tells me that Dudley won't be keen. I suppose he could surprise us though! We have a cottage break booked by the sea in Dorset a few months hence (already delayed from 2020). It depends how things go with COVID of course but I would love to know what he will make of the beach and sea. As I already said, he might not take to it - he's actually quite a complicated little guy and sometimes too intelligent for his own good. On the other hand, he might even dive into the waves and set off paddling like fury in the direction of France ☺

Years ago, in a previous life, when I had Bichon Frises, one of them called Benjie adored the water. If we took him down to the local park and gently meandering river he literally would take a totally carefree flying leap from the river bank for a swim! Sending all the ducks flying and his bestie Dougal, our other Bichon, standing safely on the river bank, looking on in admiration, but with absolutely no intention of joining in. After the first unexpected swim we learned to always keep doggy drying towels with us. But the sheer joy on Benjie's face made it all so worth it.

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

Super fast snippets Birthday card

Despite having a perennial 'Birth Dates' book, it's only useful if I remember to check it regularly. Suddenly realised Len's Great Nephew had a Birthday looming and I needed a card for him 'toot sweet'.

A quick scamper around the internet turned up a few ideas and this is my take on one of them:

I used:

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

- snippet of black card stock, trimmed to very slightly smaller than the card fron and glued in place

- snippet of white card stock, trimmed to leave a bit of a bigger black border this time (3.75" x 4") - not glued onto the card front just yet

- snippets of paper which were tucked into the back of LOTV's 'Country Gent' paper pad

- trimmed three different patterns down to 2" wide then trimmed them crosswise keeping the plainer brown piece a bit narrower

- glued the pieces in place, using a Zig glue pen, working from the top and bottom towards just below the middle of the card, where I wanted to place the sentiment

- the sentiment is from Barbara Gray's everyday Word Sticker Collection - just eyeballed sticking that in place

- then dug out my trusty very dinky 'office hole punch' which accidentally fell into my handbag the day I retired and punched three circles from the plainer brown snippet

- stuck those in place - again working from left, right and finally the centre one - finished!

It's always so much easier to place the likes of slips of paper and punched dots by working from the outside towards the centre -  lesson I learned the hard way a long time ago.

Typing this post and taking then editing the photo has taken much longer than it took to make the card - luckily everything just fell into place for once. Bit like the hole punch falling into my handbag really ☺

Ha, Len had a close call when he commented 'oh, it's just like fabric/wallpaper samples'. Soon held his hands up in surrender when he saw my face - a mix of 'gosh, you could be right' and 'gotta death wish honey?'

Pixie's Snippets Playground - Challenge #403 - results

Well, at long last we seem to be really moving into Summer! About time too as well.

First of all, the picks:

I picked Vicky's card firstly as I love the design, colours and freshness. The snippets element totally sealed it though - I adore those lovely flowers! Vicky used a heart shaped punch and snippets of designer paper and see how perfectly the flowers are aligned with the polka dot pattern. Perfection - and such a lovely way to create flowers.

Here's another card using snippets very imaginatively - made by Shannon (SHartl). It's a sunburst card and always such fun to make, there are plenty of tutorials on YouTube if you fancy having a go! I particularly love how Shannon has used black as a contrast to the lovely pinks and greens - and the vertical sentiment is just perfect!

And last, but not least, Jane W hopped over with this gorgeous card - more pinks and greens. This is a really lovely example of playing with a load of snippets, a couple of dies and arranging them in a design that's a real delight to the eye. I really love how Jane used the beautiful flower spray and also tied it together so neatly by stamping some leaves on the sentiment panel. Gorgeous!

That's my picks from Challenge # 403. We had 39 entries and no new Playmates. Number of entries in the current challenge are disappointingly low so far - just 18. Still one week left to play along though - and Susan has donated not only her time but also a really great prize. Where are you all hiding?

Time for the draw now - no hanging around this week! The prize is a set of Sweet Dixie 'DIY Tools' dies, and the winner is:

Vicky

Congratulations Vicky! After your generous prize for the 'Ruby's Memory' draw recently I was so pleased to see your name pop out. Along with being a pick as well, buy a lottery ticket as these things often come in threes ☺

Please send me your address, with your full name at the top as well so it can be can be copied and pasted for speed and ease. It's also confirmation that you still would like the prize of course.  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 one more week to run on the current Challenge #404 HERE. The prize is a really lovely Hero Arts 'Knitting' stamp set and matching Hero Arts 'Knitting Frame Cuts' - kindly donated by Susan B our Guest Designer.Perfect for knitters as well as cat lovers.

Dudley is still into mischief here. Need I say any more? I did some baking yesterday afternoon and he never left my side, every time I looked down there was a little hopeful face gazing up at me. It was compounded by the fact that at the same time I was cooking a joint of pork in a sauce in the slow cooker for 'pulled pork' - it smelled and, later on, certainly tasted delicious. Yes, he did get a little taste put to one side before I returned the shredded pork back into the sauce. Talk about cupboard love ☺ By the way, I actually cheat and use quite a lot of the Schwartz range of slow cooker packet mixes since I got back into the swing of using a slow cooker at least once a week. It takes away all the measuring out of herbs and spices etc. - I only had to add tomato ketchup, cider vinegar and brown sugar for a delicious barbecue style sauce.

Right now he's lying on his back with his front paws sort of 'flopped' and head to one side having 40 winks - at the top of the stairs. I'm sure he's plotting on one of us tripping over him and all the way down!

Love from Parsnip, myself and the usual happy 'high-five' and woof from Dudley.

Hello, hello, hello!

I just played with some washi tape with a difference - 'Rainbow Splatters' by Pink Fresh Studio. My order containing this recently came from Katrina of Bumbleberry Papercrafts, who deserves a shout out here. Her prices are very good, service is great and she stocks a lot of USA craft goodies as well - including A2 sized envelopes. I know some of you already buy from Katrina - and I truly recommend that you hop over for a little browse. And of course, both Seven Hills Crafts and Dies to Die For are great favourites of mine too. 

Back to the washi tape, it's the widest one I've ever had at 5.5" wide and 11 yards long. What's really clever about it is that it comes with a 'grid lines' dividing bit in the pattern at every 4.25" as you unroll it, so it's perfect for an A2 (USA) card front. Plus - the way it's designed is that you get three distinctively different 'rainbows' - divided by the  grid lines. I totally LOVE it! Hope that's a bit clearer than mud!

I made three cards, hence the 'Hello, hello, hello', in a little production line, the other day:

I used:

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

- piece of white card trimmed to 5.75" x 4.25"

- one panel of the Pink Fresh Studio 'Rainbow Splatters' washi tape. As the tape is so wide, I didn't chop a whole panel off in one go - knowing my luck, it would curl back on itself. So this is what I did: unroll a little - just an inch is enough - place the long edge of your piece of card along the end of the unrolled piece of washi , flip it over so the piece of card lays flat on your work space, glass mat preferably, and gently unroll the tape from the roll onto your piece of card, constantly smoothing it as you go. It's a bit of a tough one to get going but once you have the knack and ignore You Tube videos where they pull off a whole panel at once, then you're good to go. Any creases will smooth out using a bone folder or the palm of your hand

- then I trimmed the panel to 5.25" x 4.00" and glued it to the card front using Collall All Purpose glue

- die cut the word 'hello' from a snippet of muted gold card, using my Altenew mini die cutting machine a die from the MFT Die-namics 'Hello There' set (it also come with the words 'hi' and 'there') - then twice twice from snippets of white card

- stacked the three layers of the 'hello' together, with the gold on top, using a Zig glue pen

- glued the word 'hello' onto the bottom right corner of the card - done

The three cards were super fast to make and I love that they're quite different, despite being the same layout. 

So hard to take photos with the current sunshine, even with curtains closed, the colours on all three cards are much brighter in real life.

The 'splatters' are advertised as 'gold' and I admit that I did expect a brighter and possibly shiny gold. The little splatters do catch the light briefly if you wave the cards about. I don't have much more of that lovely muted gold card stock left - literally just a few snippets, but plain white would also work well for the sentiment, or even black. 

I was tempted to risk using my Cuttlebug as my shoulder seems to be on the mend, but resisted and stuck to the Altenew Moni machine. Otherwise, I wanted to have a go at die cutting the panel using a 'rectangular' stitched die. Not too sure how the washi will react to being die cut with a load of little perforations. Probably OK and I did keep a little scrap of trimming to try it out when I feel surer of not knocking what progress I've already made.

A lovely friend just got herself an electric die cutting machine and am pea green with envy here! I need to knuckle down and clear a couple of book shelves then move stuff around a bit to set up a dedicated cutting area. I don't need a big machine and will keep the Cuttlebug as a fall back - so far the Gemini Junior seems to tick all the boxes for my fairly unambitious needs.

I'm entering this into Darnell's NBUS Challenge #27 for June 2021 - HERE.

And, with Em's encouragement, I'm also entering into The Rainbow Card Challenge#30 - where the challenge theme is 'Radically Rainbow'. I have no idea how I haven't come across this challenge before now - it looks like fun with a new colour each month and two Radically Rainbow themes per year.

No idea what's going on with the Snippets Playground, numbers have plummeted lately. I bet everyone's been out enjoying the sunshine whilst it lasts!