Pixie's Snippets Playground - Challenge #347 - results

Finally walking fine and coming down and back up the stairs with ease. Phew!

Let's get straight on with the fortnight's picks as I'm late - writing this on Saturday. Would you believe I had a list of 10 possible picks - some wonderful makes this past fortnight. Sadly, I'm sticking to three though, as follows:

These are such a sweet idea and a great way to use up snippets as well. Alice shared these altered/decorated paper clips (wouldn't they make great bookmarks?) and also, on her blog post HERE there's a link to Kitty's blog where she got the idea from - with more details on how to make them. Ha, and I think that cute little doggie looks a bit like young Dudley right now!

Liz sent a good few of us into squeals of delight with her amazing slider card! Do hop over and you'll see the card actually slid open, and also Liz's previous blog post shows another slider card plus a link to Jennifer McGuire's blog where you can see the secret of how it's made. I think it's very clever and hope to make the girls in Germany their Birthday cards using the same idea - later this year. It's a bit like the 'unending card' which always tickles children as they can't work out how it's done!

And here's another new idea I hadn't come across before. Using the Gina K template (or your own homemade one of course) to create a wreath of die cuts! Jeanne H skipped in with this clever idea - so pretty as well. And of course, Jennifer McGuire has a great tutorial on YouTube HERE if you want to know more! 

I'm sure most of you know that I made my own wreath template a good while back, before we could get hold of the real thing in the UK. The link to that post is HERE if you're interested. I used a big square die to do the cutting, but on YouTube there are tutorials on making your own template using a ruler and a craft knife.

We had no two new playmates this time and a total of 57 entries. It's lovely to see such healthy numbers - thank you so much for joining in!

Now it's prize draw time, and our winner of the bumper bundle of goodies, kindly donated by Lynn (Linby) is:

Joanne (2Craft Everyday) 

It's a first win for Joanne - so well done! Please send me your address, with your full name at the top as well so I can copy and paste or just write straight from the email onto the envelope - for speed and ease. It's also confirmation that you still would like the prize of course and I'll post your prize once I hear from you. 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 and I'll post the prize off to you ASAP this coming week.

Remember folks, there's still almost another week to run on Challenge #347 - you can find it HERE. The prize is a Clearly Besotted stamp and die set called 'Hoppy Easter'.

Afraid there's no new photo of Dudley this time, in fact right now he looks such a mess. I brushed his coat thoroughly and redid his top knot yesterday and within about ten minutes he'd undone all my hard work. So, that's a job for this afternoon. Thankfully he's fighting less and less when I'm doing it - and sometimes even just flops down on the table with a resigned sigh so I can work more easily! The only thing is that he loves to roll his eyes right down so it's a bit like looking at at alien only showing the whites of his eyes! Shudder - and I'm sure he knows it makes my knees feel wobbly and does it on purpose!

The hedgies are visiting each night, at least two of them, possibly more. Luckily they're fed outside the big penned in area on the patio at the back of the house as Dudley is inclined to woof at them still. Len strikes again though - he bought a garden ornament which is a very good likeness of a hedgie and moves it around outside the penned in area. Sometimes it's even at the feeding station which always makes me jump! The idea is to get Dudley used to seeing a 'hedgie' - only time will tell! 

And lastly, I'm hoping that ScrappyMo will be running the Rudolph Days challenge this month - from 25th to the end of the month. Comments aren't being published on her blog, there's no recent post and I know that she's also due for Surgery on her knee on 29th March. Hopefully all is fine and she's just busy right now. For once I actually have my RD card all made! Which is a bit of a miracle as my mojo has taken a long hike lately!

As always, Parsnip and Dudley send their love, and so do I of course! 

Recent prize winners

Just to let you know I finally managed to get to the Post Office yesterday with prizes from Challenges #344, #345 and #346. UK ones were posted First Class so may be with you today and the Overseas one went by Airmail of course.

Enjoy!

PS My baby pink laptop is packed away again even though I'm still resting at each end of the day - so I'm only likely to comment on the Playground when on this/my main laptop. It's fast, easy and there's just something about using a keyboard!

Pixie's Snippets Playground - Challenge #348

Whoop, whoop! Over the past few days, I'm almost there! Practically ready to venture out wearing shoes and without a walking stick! So, taking Dudley to the groomers possibly extended thing by two weeks in the end. But, a lesson learned and I won't be doing that one again!

Lets get right on with my snippets card - it took me two days, day one to stamp and colour the images and then the following day I did the rest of the work. Partly as I seem to get tired quite easily right now - need to get out and about, that'll be a good tonic. Anyhow, here's the card:

I used:

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

- a slightly smaller snippet of white card on which to build the little scene layer

- snippets of white card, onto which I stamped the images using the Misti, Memento 'Tuxedo Black' ink and a sweet little set of stamps by Clearly Besotted called 'Hoppy Easter'

- then coloured the images trying wherever possible to match the colours with a snippet of striped paper I found tucked in the back of Echo Park's 'Hello Summer' paper pad. The pad is almost finished and I'm really sorry about that as it's so bright and cheerful

- next I die cut the images out, having made six carrots, using the matching set of dies

- only then did I spot that there's even a teeny die included to cut out some little clumps of grass - I'd missed that when stamping and colouring! So, I just found a titchy snippet of toning green card and die cut some grass  clumps as the Misti etc had been put away after the previous spell of stamping and colouring the images

- and then it was just a matter of assembling the card really, topping the front panel with the striped paper on a backing of red card just to define the edges

- the little die cut pieces were just added using a Zig glue pen

- then, with heart in mouth I remembered I needed to stamp the sentiment! So out came the Misti, Memento 'Tuxedo Black' ink pad and the 'Hoppy Easter' sentiment from the set of stamps - phew, success as well!

- to give the card more dimension, I backed the front panel with some thin white foam sheet before gluing it to the card front - job done!

And of course, the prize this fortnight is this:

A set of Clearly Besotted 'Hoppy Easter' stamps, along with matching dies. The carrot and grass dies are very small so I was really careful when making my own card!

Naturally the prize is both items, not to be split. I've have these for ages and really wanted to offer them a couple of weeks ago, well in time for the winner to use them for this Easter. Still, it's such a sweet prize and you can always get a head start on next Easter's cards :)

As always, the Snippets Challenge will run for two weeks and the Playground gates will close at 11am UK time on Saturday 30th March. The gates will open again at midnight UK time on the same day.

It's a maximum of ONE entry and 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're wanting 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 playing only for fun - otherwise I don't add you to my little list.

Mr Linky is below - please let me know if you have any problems linking, it's easy for me to sort out so don't struggle on alone ☺

With luck and a following wind (and we have plenty of that in the UK right now) I plan to post off prizes this coming week! It might be too much information but originally I had a slight flare up in my left foot about a week or so before the massive one in the right foot. So it seems like I get a warning but thought I'd knocked it on the head by taking some emergency Colchicine (as much use to me as a chocolate fireguard it seems). One thing I should have done was to cut my toenails as soon as that first one kicked off. However, my lovely Len very carefully and gently trimmed them for me yesterday - and not one squeal from me either!

No photo of Dudley this week, he's just as mischievous as ever needless to say. But, he's slowly getting more used to being brushed and groomed by yours truly - and Len sometimes brushes him over if he's lying on the table beside him. And, I'm getting better at putting Dudley's little topknot in as well. Len still has to hold him but sometimes he'll just lie his head down as if to say 'Get on with it Mama!'. The doggie latex bands we use are really tiny, smaller than loom bands if you remember that craze. On my second go at doing the topknot I was struggling and dropped a band onto the table beside Dudley. That boy really is a Hoover - he was onto it right away in a split second, sort of grinned at us when Len was trying to open his mouth, gave one gulp and there it was gone. Looking back. it's funny but of course we were worried - in fact Len was almost dangling the little chap by his back legs! Needless to say, nature took its course and he's just fine - little tinker!

And lastly, recent events around the World, NZ in particular, have totally shaken us here. Senseless and such a waste of precious life - I really have no words to express how very sad it is. 

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

Dudley puppy cards!

Although I'm so much more mobile, still no shoes here for now so not able to go out as yet. As you lovely winners are being so patient I decided to sit and have a play in my craft room, making some cards to enclose with the next few prizes.

And the stamp set I used was such a lucky find, and it was't me that found it either! It was spotted by a lovely friend on a Facebook 'craft decluttering page' who thought it looked just like Dudley as a puppy and thanks to her I managed to buy it! Thanks for the heads up Donna :) x

I made eight cards using two of the little dog images and also two different papers so I mixed and matched them ending up with two cards of each design being identical - and here's two of them:

I used:

- 5.5" x 4.25" white card blanks, tent style

- backing papers from Dovecraft's 'Back to Basics Bright Spark' paper pad, trimmed to slightly smaller than the card front and then a contrasting band added using a tape runner

- then glued the backing paper layer to the card front

- stamped the adorable little dogs and sentiments using the pre-loved Stampin' Up 'Bella and Friends' set, the Misti and Memento 'Tuxedo Black' ink

- only minimal colouring was needed to make the little pups look like Dudley, I left his body white but added a little touch of peach along his spine and of course he still has his lovely peach coloured ears. Also coloured the collar, little heart and bone - all using Faber-Castell Polychromos pencils

- die cut the images using a die from The Works 'Stitched Circles' set of dies

- then just popped them in place using thin sticky pads

- final touch, a little tickle with a grey Pro marker as a light shadow and to help ground 'Dudley'

Pixie's Snippets Playground - Challenge #346 - results

Yippee, I'm back to where I was before taking that trip out with Dudley a week past Thursday, which really set me back. The past couple of days have been so much easier so in fact I'm quite a lot better than I was before that ill-fated trip. Loads less pain and walking indoors without the stick most of the time. Phew, thank goodness for progress.

Let's get straight on with the fortnight's picks and first of all, we have a *Gold Star' for this amazing 'altered' bottle' - made by Sindhu:

Sindhu - this is just fabulous! So much work and what a lovely result! Please help yourself to the Gold Star badge (it's on my right hand side bar) to display on your blog, if you wish of course.

And our three picks are:

Wow, I just love this 'baking themed' card, made by Jenny L! So much detail in such pretty colours (just like icing on the fairy cakes I recall as a child) - and the inside is lovely as well, so do hop over for a look HERE.

Pam made this great card, using snippets of course - and what really caught my eye is the clever use of the red button for the letter O - really clever touch!

I think this is such a clever card, made by Glennis. The cupcake case is made of four layers of snippet strips and the candle is brilliant - it's a real Birthday cake candle, sliced down the middle!

We had two new playmates this time:

Keti

Sonja

Welcome to the Snippets Playground girls - hope you all come back and play really soon.

Including our two new Playmates, we had a total of 67 entries - so pleased to see so many of you striving to use up those snippets!

Now it's prize draw time, and our winners of the three MFT  'Christmas Tree Window' dies are as follows:

Heather

Jules

Greta

Please send me your addresses girls, with your full name at the top as well so I can copy and paste or just write straight from the email onto the envelope - for speed and ease. It's also confirmation that you still would like the prize of course and I'll post your prize once I hear from you. 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.

I'll post the prizes off to you as soon as I'm out and about - until I can get a shoe on am not going far. I still have Andrea's prize as well as Lynne in NI's to post from the other week as well - after the last setback I truly don't want to take any chances though. 

Remember folks, there's still almost another week to run on Challenge #347 - you can find it HERE. The prize is a lovely bumper bundle of dies and stamps, kindly donated by Linby. 

Other news on the 'home front' is that the hedgies are out of hibernation and coming to feed each night! Len says they look well and the only glitch right now is that Dudley woofs at them! Unfortunately the timing of his late night 'wee' toilet trip is around the time they first appear - happily they're separated by the fact that the patio area is penned in but it's close enough for him to think they're interlopers. Naturally we know he'll need to be allowed out and will have to get used to them but we're not sure that the neighbours would agree with 10pm woofing sessions! He was fine with them before they hibernated but of course he's grown a lot since then and probably is more territorial - little scamp! Also, I never knew this previously, puppies go through a 'fear' phase at around six months old - they also do at around three months but the six month old one is more telling. So he's probably a bit shy of them too!

As I said last week, we kept Dudley's bangs/fringe when he was groomed last week and the girls did him a cute little top knot - which probably lasted less than 24 hours before the band slipped loose. So, he was still walking into things and we both got quite worried. Finally the styling lotion for doggies (I kid you not!) plus a bag of tiny latex bands arrived on Thursday and I set to right away with the usual good 'brushing Dudley' session and then bit the bullet. Len had to hold him still - needless to say but I managed to tie a little top knot! Finally we can see his dear little face properly - and he looks a lot more grown up in some ways as well. And of course, he can see where he's going!

The band is still holding well as I type this (Saturday) with just a few of the shorter wisps escaped - the secret seems to be to wrap the band around the top knot and then almost make a little bobble of the clump of hair with the final turn so it sort of holds against itself.

And - at last - here's a photo of Dudley, taken yesterday by Len, with his top knot 'wot I did'! Excuse the background cables etc! At last you can see his lovely eyes properly - although he'd just been asleep on a table beside Len's desk:

And you want me to smile as WELL as look regal? No chance, I only perform for treats.

I bet you're surprised at how much more grown up he looks, we are! He now is looking much more like a proper Havanese but I promise you, he's still every bit as mischievous as ever - right now he's having a mad 10 minutes with Len and a squeaky ball. He (Dudley of course!) certainly can move at quite a rate - it's like having an animated white fluffy rug running riot!And, underneath all that lovely coat, there's actually quite a small dog hiding. Next time he's wet I'll try and take a photo!

Hope you all have a lovely week ahead. Thank you for all the kind wishes about this foot - they seem to be working, mwah! x

Parsnip and Dudley send their love, as usual - and of course me too,

Hooray for Penny Black Stickeroos!

Mid-afternoon on Monday I realised it's a friend's Birthday later in the week and Len would be passing a post box on Tuesday so he could post it for me. Huh, we both looked right through the box of made up miscellaneous cards here and not a single one was suitable! That's a lesson - must try and make a few to have as standbys.

Whilst being laid up I've been browsing on line a lot and came across a really pretty sheet of Penny Black Stickeroos I'd not seen before - and thankfully the packet had arrived and was sitting there on my desk, certainly saved my bacon!

This is the card I made straight away at top speed, using just one of the stickers - the sheet has four large ones  a really lovely pink stem of flowers, three with beautiful poppies and two other small ones - one is poppies and the other a butterfly), dated 2016 so not all that old as I'd thought PB stopped making them a while ago:

I used:

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

- piece of the same shade of off-white card onto which I stuck the Stickeroo (from the 'touched by love' sheet) before then trimming it down to the size I wanted. You get no second chances with Stickeroos if you make a mistake!

- then backed the image panel with some pretty pink card and glued it onto the card front

- the sentiment was stamped using Memento 'Tuxedo Black' ink onto a leftover snippet of the off-white card then trimmed down and backed with a small piece of the pink card. The sentiment stamp is from a set I use when I want a small font - it contains 22 different sentiments, made by Personal Impressions, called 'Everyday Words Happy Birthday', designed by Lindsay Mason. Not sure if it's still available to buy as I've had mine for many years - but it's a good all-rounder as it covers a lot more than just Birthdays

Then I wrote the card, stuck a stamp on and breathed a huge sigh of relief - before toddling off to rest up a bit more.

Pixie's Snippets Playground - Challenge #347

I'm really sorry but my plans to make a snippets card on Friday for this challenge went a bit askew. So here's our logo of the Snippets Playground keys - it would be great if you could pop them onto your own blog sidebar or somewhere if you haven't already done so:

The week was going 'sort of OK', although I cancelled my hair appointment on Tuesday in favour of not taking any chances at being unable to get Dudley to his groomers appointment on Thursday. And how right I was to have done that!

I'll do an update at the end of this post but meanwhile we can jump straight in with the prize for this fortnight and it's a bit of a bumper one. Not so long ago, Lynn B (known to us as Linby) sent me a lovely package of goodies, all new and unused, for the Playground Toy Box. I could only source the adorable narwhal stamps and dies to make my own sample card (a few challenges ago) so I kept the other goodies for the time being as a future prize. It's almost serendipity really and I'm so very grateful for Lynn coming to the rescue - in advance as it were!

Above we have a 'Vase and flowers' pair of dies, made by Apple Blossom and on the right is a Crafters Companion set of stamps called 'Sweet Wishes'.

And above we have a Crafters Companion set of stamps called 'Spread Your Wings' and the sweetest set of Christmas/New Year stamps, by Apple Blossom, called 'Woodland Party'.

I really do not want to split this lovely bumper set of FOUR items - they cover different occasions and styles and would make a great addition to your 'stash'. As it is, I still have prizes to post to winners of two previous challenges. And I'm totally sure that if you do win then neither Lynn nor myself will mind in the least if you share your good fortune with friends that are local to you. So, if you play for the prize you'll be playing for the whole bundle. To be honest, I know that I could use every single item quite happily.

As always, the Snippets Challenge will run for two weeks and the Playground gates will close at 11am UK time on Saturday 16th March. The gates will open again at midnight UK time on the same day.

It's a maximum of ONE entry and 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're wanting 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 playing only for fun - otherwise I don't add you to my little list.

Mr Linky is below - please let me know if you have any problems linking, it's easy for me to sort out so don't struggle on alone ☺

Here's the update on what this past week brought. Feel free to just sigh and move on - I know that's exactly what I would jus love to do with this ongoing saga.

Having rested for most of the week, even managing to make a card for ScrappyMo's Rudolph Days Challenge, things were looking up and on Thursday afternoon we took Dudley to the groomers. I wore the most comfortable shoes possible, used the walking stick and took it very steady. We dropped Dudley off and then I suggested we called to see if a prescription was ready for me in our local Sainsbury's pharmacy. On a roll and getting over confident with it.

It wasn't too difficult getting round the supermarket as I used a shallow shopping trolley as a 'Walking frame with wheels'. Sure it wasn't comfortable but I'd dosed up on strong painkillers just beforehand. The prescription wasn't ready so we poodled around the supermarket doing a bit of shopping and killing time before collecting Dudley.

When we got back home the foot was sore but I thought that was to be expected - but didn't bargain for what hit me yesterday. One huge step backwards just as if an elephant had been tap dancing on the top of my foot - the shoes have a soft flap over the top and just that pressure must have been too much! So that put paid to my plans to sit at the desk and make a snippets card.

Today is an improvement thankfully and at least am sleeping much better, for several nights running now. I think it's just that the foot has been so inflamed it's taken a bit of a hammering already and it takes very little to cause it to react. So, back to being totally barefoot for now and just very grateful that we have no appointments lined up. Huge thanks to prizewinners for being so patient as well.

I do so wish I'd taken a photo of Dudley when we got home on Thursday - he still looks absolutely gorgeous after being bathed, slightly trimmed around his 'skirt' and paws, nails clipped etc. and he was also blow dried but when we picked him up he looked ready for the show ring! In the end we've decided to persevere with his fringe/bangs and the dear girls in the salon tied him a sweet little top knot. Ha, needless to say it was out by yesterday morning but it showed his sweet little face and huge brown eyes off perfectly. He looked just like a typical Havanese - what a surprise, I should hope he would! I now have some small latex bands bands and also a doggie hair styling product on order so we can keep going with the growing out of his fringe! Ha, ha - first catch your Havanese though - he's one wriggly little puppy! We weighed him at the pet place and he's 6kg now - so has put on half a kilo in six weeks. That's pretty good and means his rate of growth is slower - sort of plateau-ing.

Sorry about all the words, I did find writing about the gout useful for future reference. Looking back to three years ago it was quite a few weeks before I was able to attempt what I did on Thursday. That time, Christmas landed just as I was getting over the worst so there was no reason to be out and about. Having said that - I did so love the outing the other day, hence probably not knowing when to stop!

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