Pixie's Snippets Playground - Weeks 315 and 316 - results

Well, things are on a much more even keel now and, apart from no Guest Designer (purely down to me being too busy to sort one out), we're back into the swing of our fortnightly Snippets Results Sunday post.

However, I couldn't let the post go without showing a snippets card to start off with, so I made one :) At the beginning of January I rummaged through the shop bought Christmas cards we'd been sent and then kept some aside for potential 'up cycling'. So I used part of one of them for my snippets card.

It's also for Scrappy Mo's Rudolph Days Challenge, which runs from 25th to the end of each month:

I used:

- 6" x 6" creamy white card blank

- snippet of Christmas red card stock as the 'frame', trimmed a bit and then glued in place

- piece of patterned paper from the 'All is Bright' paper pad made by My Minds Eye, trimmed to smaller than the red layer and glued on top

- the Christmas card that I 'cannibalised or up cycled' had a sparkled snow globe shaped topper, stuck on the front of the card with sticky pads. One useful tip about removing toppers like these is to sneak up on them from behind! In other word, place the card front face down and then carefully prise the card away from the topper - much less likely to damage or crease the topper if you're holding it down firmly on a flat surface (ask me how I know - from years ago when I wrecked a few promising 'toppers')

- then I picked off the residue of the sticky pads from the back of the globe topper and replaced them with fresh ones

- measured from the centre of the patterned paper layer using a ruler and lightly drew guidelines to help when placing the topper

- carefully added the topper to the card front and then finished off each corner with a shiny red Josy Rose hot fix nail head

Showed it to Len and he said 'Wow, that looks just like one you would buy in a shop' - my snort of laughter and then his closer look at the topper gave the game away a bit :) Waste not, want not I always say!

Time now for the fortnightly picks and, as always, so difficult to choose:

Lia brought this really beautiful card to share with us - look closely and you'll see the centre panel is actually cross stitch! So pretty and the way the rest of her card has been designed to perfectly echo the stitched panel is utterly gorgeous - love it!

I wonder just how many of us began our card making journey by making little cross stitch panels into cards - I know I did, but my panels were just very plain as all the work and enthusiasm had gone into the stitching :)

This is a super card, made by Sharon F over at Higgledy-Piggledy ( I love that blog name and it's much like my craft room right now, which is well overdue for a really good blitz and clean). The scalloped doily effect lends itself perfectly to our 'English tea time' and the idea of the hearts being poured from the teapot is just so clever! Great split sentiment as well :)

And last but by no means least is our lovely Kathleen with a brilliant idea for a card for a football loving boy (or man for that matter). Love the cupcake idea and the paper piecing goes perfectly. Kath used stickers for the boots and footballs (boots and balls just didn't sound polite!) but I bet you could find suitable stamps or even images on line to play around with. One to remember!

We had three new Playmates this fortnight - the most we've had for a while:

Katrina (aka CornishKat)

Nonni

Pam Sebring

Welcome to the Playground girls - it's always fun to see some new faces playing along with us. I hope you came back again soon and also that our Playmates will hop over the say 'Hello' and perhaps add themselves as followers. We're a happy little bunch as I'm sure you'll soon find out.

We had a total of 59 entries including our three new little Playmates! So, we've taken a bit of an upwards turn - yay!

Prize draw time now and our winners of the Lawn Fawn 'Shammies' (two were on offer) are:

Pat

Lynne in NI

Lynne's 'yes please' comment did make me giggle - she finished off by admitting 'I'm a dirty beast who never cleans her stamps'' :) No excuse now girls!

I still need your addresses, with full name at the top of your address so I can copy and paste please. I know that some of you do wonder why I always ask for your address when you're a winner and you may think 'But she already knows my address anyhow').

Answer - it's confirmation that I've got the right person, that you still want the prize and also that your address is the same. I will keep on asking, even if it's a bit of a nuisance - plus it makes life easier for me as I don't need to hunt in a few places for your address (a small price to pay for a prize I hope?). I don't want to make more work for any of us but have had a few near misses with unexpected address changes, as well as a couple of changes of mind about the prize even.

Please put Playground Winner or similar in the subject line of your email in case it drops into my junk mail - much of it won't, but you never know. Email address is on RH sidebar as always. If I hear quick enough I'll pop these in the post when I'm out tomorrow or Tuesday.

Keep those snippets entries coming, you still have a week left to play HERE for weeks 317/318 remember! The prize is MFT's 'Sushi Date' stamp set, kindly donated by Tara of Seven Hills Crafts.

One last thought, as this is your Playground, I need opinions and I can't emphasise that enough! For a long time I did weekly challenges numbered as such.

Now it's fortnightly with two weeks (eg. 315 and 316). Is this confusing you at all? If so then I can flip back to when we switched to fortnightly and from that point calculate (still fortnightly) future challenges numbered as a single challenge spread over two weeks. eg. this coming week (really a fortnight) would be Challenge #319 rather than 319/320. And the following challenge would be Challenge #320 then the next one, two weeks later, would be Challenge #321. Hope that makes sense? We would lose track of the weeks I've been running the Playground - but that's not the main issue. It has to be what you would like :) Let me know please.

Love from the little white peril Parsnip - and of course me,

Rudolph Days - June 2017

Here's my Christmas card for the June Rudolph Days challenge over at ScrappyMo's - phew, managing to join in part way through rather than a last minute sprint.

For various reasons, crafting time wasn't on my side so I resorted to a scrabble through our box of received Christmas cards for one to 'up cycle' - and this was the end result:

I used:

- 5" x 5" square white card blank

- image from a card received a couple of years ago, chopped down quite radically to fit the card front as well as leave space for a sentiment below

- used a Woodware 'Fancy Corner' punch to add interest to the image

- mounted the image onto a slightly larger piece of deep red card stock, using Collall glue

- stamped the sentiment straight onto the card blank using the Misti for alignment and to ensure a good clear stamping - plus Memento 'Gray Flannel' ink and a sentiment from the Inkylicious 'Seasons Greetings' set

- then glued the image panel in place and stepped away

The image is beautifully 'flittered' in real life (that's how it came) - but as per usual, impossible to pick up in a photo - sigh. Ha, and it looks as if the camera can't even take a straight photo either :)

Merry Monday #253 - Bears

Such a cute theme over at 'Merry Monday' this week - 'Bears'! As I used the image from an up cycled Christmas card we were sent a couple of years ago, this is a 'one off'. Meaning my monthly target for 12 Christmas cards per month beginning in December has really slipped for June - but in the current heatwave, even I'm finding it hard to feel Christmassy! And that's quite an admission from one who can normally howl Christmas carols at the drop of a hat :)

Anyhow, this is what I came up with:

I used:

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

- piece of apricot Core-dinations card stock (chosen to pick out the apricot ribbon on the little bear's parcel) - which was die cut using the MFT 'JOY photo card frame' 

- then I placed the frame how I wanted it to be over the image and popped the piece of waste from the centre in place. Holding it down firmly I then carefully removed the die cut frame and used low tack tape to hold the waste panel over the image (you could just pop a little bit of low tack sticky runner on the back of the waste panel before dropping it in place of course)

- then carefully cut around the image, just about three sixteenths of an inch away from the piece of die cut waste which was covering it, and took the piece of waste away

- that gave me enough room to add very narrow red line tape around the back of the die cut frame and then carefully pop it over the image panel

- glued the framed panel in place and left it at that

Of course, another way would have been to just lightly run a pencil line around the frame inner as a guide - but OCD was lurking here!

The card came with the gold stars already glittered, extra bonus. The colours are really non-traditional and, the white card blank I used is actually very slightly 'off-white'. I love really crisp, very white cards but I bought these on line and was quite disappointed when they arrived a while ago. But, they do have a use as a lot of commercially produced Christmas cards are printed on slightly off-white card - which makes for a good match when up cycling!

Still think it's hard to beat Hobbycraft if you want to buy bright white card blanks - and their 'own brand' 300gsm own card stock is also great for making your own blanks too. Of course, my favourite Samuel Taylor also do brilliant white card stock in various weights as well - it's usually best to buy at craft shows for good deals though.

Upcycling - times three

About a week ago I was idly flicking through the box of received/shop bought Christmas cards that I always hang onto after each Christmas. Am quite selective though and if I truly can't see any way a card could be up cycled then it goes off to one of the supermarket collecting points in January for The Woodland Trust. I always hang onto hand made/crafted cards and absolutely love looking through them - those I won't ever part with, or re-use, needless to say!

Back to my 'idle flicking' - this is the glossy 'shop bought card' that caught my attention:

I love robins and it's such a pretty card just as it is really. But, nine on one card seemed much too tempting not to have a play with.  The images are quite small, about 1.5" square each and no sentiment, but a die set that I bought not too long ago came to mind.

I must confess that I'm quietly delighted with how the three cards I made out of that one card turned out - here they all are:

And here's a single one on its own, for a better view:

I used:

- 4" x 6" white card blank, tent style

- one triple window die from the Just Rite Frame Set 'Three in a Row' to die cut the apertures. I did have to trim a teensy bit off one side of the card before positioning the die, just to be sure it would fit through the Cuttlebug in a single layer. The secret is to line up the die so you have it at equal distance from the top of the card as well as on either side - if you're aiming to make a similar card

- so now there was a card with three stitched apertures i on the front - cool :)

- next I double checked the robin images and sadly each one would need to be positioned separately - it was a gnats whisker but too risky to try and adhere strips of three at a time, sigh just my luck :(

- backed each aperture with red line tape and trimmed the images so there was a good overlap before adding them behind the apertures. One tip, I added all the red line tape around the apertures for each single square before starting to add the images from behind (by eyeballing from the front of course)  and then just peeled off as much backing as was needed as I went. Reason? Too much of a chance of accidentally sticking bits where not needed - remember am still recovering from 'turquoise-gate' here!

- now the images were in place behind each aperture - and of course this was the point at which I fretted about wrecking the whole venture, getting ready to stamp the sentiment

- backed the inside of each front of the cards with a slightly smaller piece of white card stock using red line tape, so I could work without any stray 'sticky bits'

- then, using the Misti I aligned a stamp from the triple stamp Inkyylicious 'Seasons Greetings' sentiments set and inked it up using Memento 'Tuxedo Black' ink and stamped it in place - phew, always a risk but it worked just fine! Should have done that earlier really but I just couldn't visualise which of the sentiments in the triple set would look best.

The die set also comes with an outline die to cut those frames in a row, 'free-standing', as an 'add-on die to a card top - if that makes sense And there are also three dies to cut smaller 'stitched' square inserts or cutouts. Really versatile!

They also do a two by two die (ie, four squares) and I so wish I could recall just who perked my interest to go hunting! Apologies but I do look at so many blogs each week, sigh. Bad  for the purse!

Card(s) all done, and I had three almost the same - apart from the slightly different images and the in-house critic gave them a double thumbs up - yay!

This card is for Craftyhazelnut's Christmas Challenge #300 -'Use a sentiment' of course.

 As well as Hazel's other Christmas challenge blog, which is Craftyhazelnut's Christmas Challenge Extra for September.

F is for........................

Over at Craftyhazelnut's Christmas Card Challenge the current theme is 'Something beginning with F'.

So, folks, I present to you - Flying Father Christmas and Fearless Furry Fido with Fairy lights in a Flurry of Frosty snow with a Foiled sentiment - snigger :)

I used:

- 5" x 7" white card blank, tent style

- a layer of SU's 'Real Red' card stock from the snippets folder

- a snippet of white card stock, embossed using Darice's 'Snowflake Background' embossing folder

- the front of a 2014 Christmas card from the up cycling box. The card was circular with a straight piece at the spine and a very narrow straight piece along the bottom edge. It was just a case of finding the right sized circular die in the Tonic Studios 'Circle Layering' die set. I totally love this set of dies, there are 14 in total ranging from the largest at 14cm in diameter down to the smallest at 2.5cm in diameter - plus they come in a durable plastic package with their own magnetic sheet as well

- final touch was just a red, foiled with gold, sentiment topper - which I'm sure dates back to when Lakeland Limited sold a few craft supplies!

And this card is also for Craftyhazelnut's Christmas Card Challenge Extra for April, where it's always 'Anything goes'.

And I just realised that it's right in line with the current challenge over at Merry Monday #125 - Use a cat or a dog. Wahoo, three challenges with one card!

Di
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