Sunday Snippets - By the sea

I bought a die not so long ago and used it the other day for my snippets card below:

I used:

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

- first thing to tackle was the actual die cutting of the beach huts, which proved to be a mental agility test! 

- die cut the complete row of die cut beach huts in one single strip from a snippet of plain white card and, I confess, looked at them on and off for a whole day in between doing other Christmassy preparations such as finishing off writing Christmas cards

- eventually, given that I wanted to inlay the red and blue pieces, I decided to snip the white die cuts apart and treat each beach hut seperately. That worked for me as I could take it step by step

- drew around the complete row of beach huts dies onto a snippet of white card, backed with a snippet of  Stick-It adhesive sheet

- then very carefully trimmed the outline down to a whisker inside the actual outline cutting line - phew!

- snipped each sticky backed beach hut apart - easier than it sounds I promise, and then peeled off the adhesive side backing before sticking each one onto the reverse of its matching beach hut - sticky side showing through the holes and strips in the design!

- then took snippets of the same red and blue card that I planned to use for the background 'frame' and, one by one, die cut each beach hut all over again. Only this time I carefully placed the coloured die over its matching 'white base' and gently poked the small pieces in place. It wasn't infallible as some tiny pieces needed real encouragement so it took ages, but not one tiny piece escaped!!

- once the huts were complete I set them aside in a little plastic dish for safety - didn't want any disasters after all that work

- used a backgound snippet of Tonic pearlescent 'Red Velvet' card, trimmed to 5.25" x 4" and glued onto the card front 

- next a snippet of Tonic pearlescent 'Navy Dazzle' card trimmed very slightly to 5" x 3.75" was glued onto the red layer

- then took a piece of paper from the unbranded 'Sea Wave' pack, sold by Amazon. and  trimmed it down to 4.55" x 3.5", and glued it onto the outline 'frame' on the card front

- the next step was to stamp the sentiment, I used VersaFine Clair 'Nocturne' ink and a NBUS stamp from the lovely Penny Black NBUS 'without limits' set of stamps'

- glued the beach huts in a row along the shoreline and suddenly the card sprang to life!

- final touch was to add three teeny white seagulls, using a Gummiapan die - the end! 

The middle beach hut has a partly cut door which I gently scored at the hinge side and opened, then popped a die cut rectangler in red behind the open door - just for fun. 

I would like to enter this card into the following challenges:

Allsorts Challenge #838 - HERE. The theme is ' New' - or 'Anything Goes'

Darnell's NBUS Challenge #81 - HERE. The unbranded 'Beach huts' die and the Penny Black sentiment stamp set were having their first outing

Dudley Pupdate: We're ahead of ourselves for once here and the Christmas tree is now decorated plus most of the other indoors stuff is done. Len did the outside lights etc. a week or two ago. Indoors we had Christmas music playing to add to the atmosphere and I set to and opened up the tree decorations. At that point I thought Dudley was about to explode with excitement, skipping about almost squeaking in delight! He loves anything sparkly - and the mere rustle of tissue paper sends him off into paroxyms of sheer joy. The lounge is all done and only one or two hours work, if that, remain to pop up some other special decorations.

Very importantly, the results of Challenge #520 are now published HERE . 

Do please come and play in Sarn's current challenge over in the Snippets Playground - just scroll down from the results post. It's our big Christmas giveaway draw and well worth playing along.

Love from myself and Dudley, xxx