Sunday Snippets - 'When Santa got stuck up the chimney'

The current challenge over Christmas Kickstart is such a great theme  - 'A Christmas Sing-along'! My immediate thought was 'Driving home for Christmas' by Chris Rea, but Linby had already entered a super card with that as her song choice. Sooo, I came up with this card instead:

Most of my leftover snippets, some got lost in the tidying up!

I used:

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

- making the main feature of the card - Santa - was my next step as all the other placements depended on how he turned out in terms of size

- I used red, white, green and also flesh coloured snippets. The flesh colour was a Papermill Direct swatch sample. The die set was an Amazon buy last Autumn - unbranded with just 'Christmas Santa' on the packet

- die cut all 14 pieces and assembled them using a glue pen - also added a touch of pink Polychromos pencil  and a little Tombow pale grey here and there as I went 

- Santa's eyes were coloured using a deep blue Gelly Roll Glaze pen

- a snippet of Tonic iridescent  'Firestone Red' mirror card, trimmed to one sixteenth of an inch smaller all round than the card blank

- a piece of paper from an Amazon unbranded paper pack called 'Moonlit Reverie' - it has a slightly vintage look about it - trimmed to one eighth of an inch smaller all round than the red mirror layer 

- then took a sheet of brick patterned paper from another Amazon paper pack called 'Brick Wall Texture' and trimmed a 'chimney' measuring 2" wide x 1.5" high 

- glued the 'brick chimney' onto the moonlit sky paper then glued them onto the red mirror card layer

- glued the bones of the image layer to the card front

- used teeny red mirror snippets to die cut my favourite Tonic (discontinued) Christmas sentiment twice, layered them together then glued to the top left hand corner

- final step was to use thin sticky pads to glue Santa in place  - stuck in the chinmey!

I had intended using a small 'Ho, Ho, Ho' die for the sentiment but, given Santa's predicament I doubt if he'd have been chuckling out any 'Ho's right at that time! 

The song 'When Santa got stuck up the chimney' was very popular in the mid-70's. But, being somewhat vintage, I remember my Dad singing it to me when I was little and apparently it was first out in 1953!

I ended up with two cards the same - which was a bonus, given all the faffing around making up the Santas!

And now, drumroll! Take a bow Len! I originally intended to have Santa resting and looking out of a frame or a die cut circle and was half prepared to go down that route when Len spotted a Santa all made up and immediately said 'he needs to be partway out of a chimney'. Bingo! Many thanks for that inspiration, you clever chap.

 I'd like to enter this card into the following challenges: 

- Allsorts Challenge #843 HERE  - under 'Anything Goes'

- Christmas Kickstart #107 HERE - 'A Christmas Sing-Along'

- Darnell's NBUS Challenge #83 HERE - my NBUS items are the moonlit sky paper pack, plus the brick wall paper pad and the Santa die, both of which I've had a for a while

Dudley Pupdate: Recently, I remembered how good Schwartz Slow cooker mixes are - I'd used them in the past with much success plus we still had a selection of packets here. So, with some encouragement Len had a go using one for the first time a couple of weeks ago and on Thursday just gone he did a repeat performance - Beef Stew in Ale (he used Guinness, as I used to do). The Schwartz slow cooker mixes are almost all 'dump and go' - needing no pre-frying of anything. The 'Chicken in red wine' mix needs some bacon frying but if we use that one then this time I'd just add some snipped up pre-cooked bacon rashers from the supermarket! Just chuck it all in the slow cooker, turn it on and leave it! After about an hour, delicious smells were already wafting in the kitchen. 

Dudley promptly abandoned his sentry duties AND Honka Duck entirely, raced down the stairs and posted himself, sitting slap bang in front of the worktop where the slow cooker was doing its stuff with his nose twitching for ages! At times he would get up onto his hind legs like a white fluffy meerkat, but it's well out of reach - very funny to see. He was so intent on remaining at his 'guard the slow cooker' assignment - he even missed the post arriving! 

The results from Sarn's Challenge #525 are now published in the Snippets Playground HERE.  

One last thing, Sarn has jokingly dubbed it 'skive-itis', but it is very noticeable how entry numbers are very low. It's been sliding for a while and I'm wondering what's wrong. Would you prefer a 'theme' each fortnight? Are you happy with 'Anything Goes'? Are we running out of steam? Let us know, by email if you prefer.

Love from Dudley and yours truly