Pixie's Snippets Playground #368 - Prize D

Merry Christmas everyone! Hope you have/are having or even have had a wonderful day, however you celebrate.

Here's another in the 'Snippets Playground Celebration' prize draw, and as today is Christmas Day, it's a bumper prize. It's also Len's Christmas card:

I used:

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

- snippet of dark blue card, trimmed to an eighth of an inch smaller than the card front on each side, then glued to the card front

- another snippet of dark blue card which I stenciled using Hero Arts 'Unicorn' white ink and MFT's 'Snowfall Horizontal' stencil

- snippet of snowflake paper from LOTV's 'Frosty Christmas' paper pad, layered onto a snippet of white card which I'd covered with double sided adhesive sheet (medium strength) and then trimmed to an eighth of an inch smaller than the dark blue layer I cut earlier - purely to give it more strength for when I die cut the aperture

- then began work on the snow globe itself using assorted snippets of card, all backed with Stick-It double sided adhesive sheet snippet (I never throw even the smallest piece of that stuff away as it can be pieced together so easily!)

- first I stamped the sentiment using Memento 'Tuxedo Black' ink, a snippet of beige card (Neenah 'Desert Storm' I suspect) and a stamp from the adorable Clearly Besotted 'Simply Said Christmas' set of sentiments

- die cut the sentiment using the 'base' die from the fabulous MFT  'Classic Snow Globe' set of dies

- then, really taking my time as some of the dies are quite small and could easily be lost (the nose is teeny, tiny!), I die cut the little pieces for the snow scene to go inside the 'snow globe' - popping them into a plastic lid for safe keeping as I went, as well as putting the dies back into the packet straight away

- using the snowfall stenciled piece of dark blue card I then set about assembling the little scene. The attention to detail by MFT is lovely, for example - you have one plain snowman and one with eyes and 'button holes'. Cut the plain die from black card and then top it with the detailed one, cut from white card and you have the eyes and buttons like magic. Similarly, the scarf is two die cut pieces - one whole one with the 'tail' and one which is just the top part - add them together with the top part on top of the larger 'tail' die cut and you get a scarf which really looks as if it's been looped

- ran the little scene through the Cuttlebug to ensure all the little pieces were well adhered

- and this is where I took a huge gulp, remembering my recent attempt at a shaker card

- worked out where I wanted the snow globe to sit on the card front and die cut the globe aperture - then added the beige base base of the snow globe with its ready stamped sentiment and ran it through the Cuttlebug, as I'd done with the little scene panel

- then ran narrow red line tape around the back of the aperture before sitting one of the MFT 'Classic Snow Globe' shaker pouches in place and making sure it was adhered 

- crunch time! This time I thought ahead more and avoided pouring the shaker elements in later on. First I ran more very narrow red line tape around the back of the die cut snow globe aperture (in the LOTV snowflake card piece) and also some narrow tape around each side of the entire front panel (I'd trimmed the scene part down to just a small square)

- at this point I only removed the red line protective plastic layer from what I'd run around the actual aperture, with the shaker element nicely attached as described before

- with the little scene square in front of me I added some 'Jewels - Ice Cube Mix' shaker elements bought from Lucy's Little Things - making sure they weren't too plentiful and also in a small pile well away from the sides of the square

- just placed the LOTV snowflake layer with its shaker aperture over the top, pressed down and bingo - success!

- removed the red line tape protective red plastic from each side of the little scene (very pointed, angled craft tweezers are the one item I couldn't manage without for almost all my card making) and adhered the square to the back of the LOTV paper/card layer

- then all that was left was to glue the front panel onto the blue layer I'd added to the card earlier - finished!

I know this is such a lot of detail, much of it is for my own reference, but it does also, I hope, explain how to use the shaker pouches and avoid the risk of shaker elements getting trapped between layers as happened to me very recently in the baby dragons card.

Of course, you can add (for example) a little Christmas tree to the scene - but I like to stick with what's in the prize whenever I can.

And of course today's prize is:

MFT's 'Snowfall Horizontal' stencil, MFT 'Classic Snow Globe' die set  (along with a pack of 10 matching shaker pouches which Tara of Seven Hills Crafts kindly added into my order as a gift for me for me - as well as a set for the Playground), a packet of 'Jewels - Ice Cube Mix' shaker elements from Lucy's Little Things - plus a set of Clearly Besotted 'Simply Said Christmas' sentiment stamps. As I said, a bumper prize to celebrate today - and also it's a complete prize which I won't be splitting.

At the end of all of the celebrations I'll do a massive draw session for all the prizes using the one Mr Linky - which is on the main snippets post HERE along with details of exactly how to join in - so you do need to have entered one snippets make, over on that post during this fortnight, to be in with a chance :) Maximum of one entry please - to keep things fair for those who may not have time to craft. Mr Linky closes at 11am on Saturday 4th January so you do need to have added a snippets make by then to be eligible for the draw.

Just leave a comment on this post if you would like the chance to win today's prize.

Depending when you read this, my hope is that Len, myself and and Dudley are on the way to or are currently replete (totally stuffed!) with Christmas Dinner - and also probably looking forward to the next few days of rest and recuperation!

A quick tale about Dudley. No photo but we've been trying so one will appear ASAP. However, I was wrapping his Christmas gifts from Santa the other day - wrapping in my craft room with the unwrapped gifts in the very centre of our bed. It's a big bed as well as too high for him to hop onto. Next thing I know, there he was merrily playing with a new squeaky toy on the floor. HOW he managed to get hold of it is beyond me but he was clearly delighted he'd managed to pull the wool over my eyes! We do privately call him 'Stealth' as one minute I'll be in my craft room working alone and without so much as a whisper or slightest brush - there he is curled at my feet under the desk. I swiftly confiscated said squeaky toy and pressed his 'erase memory' button!

Love and Christmas Greetings from Parsnip, Dudley and of course me, your own Christmas Pixie,

Pixie's Snippets Playground - Challenge #367

I'm sure many of you know that we got Dudley's results back on Wednesday, late afternoon. I wrote a little post about it HERE, and thank you again for all your lovely and very supportive comments. As you can imagine, the relief is enormous and now we just need him to have the outer stitches removed on Monday (the inside ones dissolve on their own of course) and what we hope is his final check up for this little adventure we've been on. I think he's going to miss wearing his sweet onesie! He's been totally amazing as well as really patient and now we want to just put this behind us and move on, whilst doing regular little checks of course. As a few of you have said, knowing your dog's body and then acting fast if you find something untoward is certainly what helped with a happy outcome in Dudley's case.

So, happy thoughts here and we're finally feeling a bit like Christmas is in the air!

Here's my snippets (very un-Christmassy) card for today:

I used:

- 5.25" x 4" white card blank, side opening

- snippets of white card - and I have  tons of those - trimmed to the same size as the card front

- then die cut the aperture in the piece of card for the front, using an MFT Peek-a-boo Window' square die - placed that piece of card onto the card front and lightly penciled in the frame I could position the stamp I wanted to use for the image

- before setting the front panel to one side I used the Misti to line up a sentiment from the Clearly Besotted 'Hot Stuff' set of stamps and stamped it using Memento 'Tuxedo Black' ink

 - then stamped the image I wanted to use onto the card front itself, within the square I'd penciled in earlier

- rubbed out the pencil marks and coloured the little 'newly hatched dragon' using Pro markers

- because the Pro markers had bled very slightly through to the inside of the card front I covered that with another snippet of white card, trimmed to slightly smaller than the card front

- time to assemble the shaker element. On the reverse of the front panel I ran some red line tape right around the die cut aperture, then right around the sides of the panel and a couple of strips across as well

- working from the bottom I added the panel to the card front, leaving the top of the shaker punch aperture, the very top of the card and also one side open - don't ask me why I didn't put the shaker bits into the punch and gently place the card front straight on top, hindsight being 20/20 vision this might have worked better but I didn't want it to be 'wonky'. The result of me choosing this tortuous route is explained below

- used some Lucy's Card 'Little Things' 'Bubblegum' sequins for the shaking element - I almost drowned the poor little dragon - note to self, use a LOT less another time!

- due to a bit of an issue I had to rootle though my ribbons and add a  knotted length of ribbon down one side of the cards - not really by choice but there you go!

I've had the lovely set of stamps for over a year now, and the aperture die and shaker elements almost as long! For some reason I didn't get matching dies - either they weren't available or I was still on the fence about dies which leave a white margin around the images when they're die cut, I'm fine with them now! And of course have also had the same as a duplicate waiting in the Playground toy box.

Lack of concentration thinking about Dudley meant that I managed to get a couple of really tiny clear sequins trapped in between the card front and the die cut layer with the shaker pouch in place as I was filling it. Grump, grump! Also, it showed all the more as I'd picked a snippet of quite thin white card stock for the die cut front. What an eedjit, lesson for the future there, sigh.

Of course this 'boo-boo happened right at the  very end and I just didn't have the heart to tackle another card - so found a snippet of lilac ribbon and tied it in a knot, around and running down the side where the teeny sequins were trapped to cover up the two very slight bumps. Job done - although I'd have preferred a more CAS card, without the ribbon.

I love Lucy's sequins mixtures, but every single packet I have is discontinued, I think Lucy moves onto new mixtures very frequently. Sequins are easy enough to find but her mixes are quite special - Simon Says Stamp used to stock them I think. In the UK you can buy directly from Lucy.

And here's the prize for this fortnight:

A Clearly Besotted 'Hot Stuff' set of stamps (can be used for babies, friends and Birthdays with the sentiments provided in the set), an MFT Peek-a-boo Window' square die and a packet of 10 MFT Square Shaker Pouches (quite why they call them replenishments I don't know - possibly as they're 'consumables'). And it's all one prize - sadly no sequins though, explanation above.

As always, the Snippets Challenge will run for two weeks and the Playground gates will close at 11am UK time on Saturday 21st December. 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.

The little hedgie seems to have gone into hibernation - we haven't picked it up on CCTV footage for a good few days now. I hope it survives the Winter and we'll still be keeping watch.

And just a quick 'heads up' - I'll be running the Grand Christmas Draw again this year. The format will be the same as it always is and it will run from Sunday 22nd December, closing on Saturday 4th January. During that time you have to enter just one snippets make to cover the whole fortnight as usual, it also keeps a level playing field, but you'll need to comment on each individual prize that you would like to be in the draw for as they appear day by day - and there are a LOT of prizes to be won. So, as I keep saying, you will need to comment over here if you want to be in the draw. And do try to comment as the days go by - not all at the end. I know that we have busy family times over the festivities so I will allow some leeway of course! Comments show up on Blogger's dashboard in date and time order so it's really easy to spot a 'cluster' of comments from one person all made at the same time so you would be found out. This is to be fair to people who do take the time to hop in regularly.

No photo of Dudley this time round - he's fast asleep right now and I don't want to disturb him.

Edit: Huge apologies! First of all this post was still marked as draft so it didn't publish on time - and secondly, I totally forgot to add Mr Linky! It's all sorted out now - just shows my state of mind recently!

Lots of love from us all - Parsnip, Dudley (woof, woof!) and of course me,

Pixie's Snippets Playground - Week 244

Wow, we've had some pretty hot weather here in the Playground this past week. The duck pond has been in great demand for the purposes of cooling down too.

Our little family (or it might be families!) of hedgehogs are eating us out of house and home. We now have two feeding stations set up for them and reckon there could be as many as six of them visiting, in all shapes and sizes. It's almost as if there's a big neon sign flashing on the side gate, which we deliberately had cut high enough for them to come and go, saying 'Hedgie Diner, this way'! :)

My snippets card today is a shaker card, not something I tackle very often to be honest but I've had a 'Never Before Used Schtuff' die here for ages, just waiting to be used. It cries out to be a shaker card (although the die would work well without the shaker element too).

And this card is for Darnell's latest NBUS challenge #7 as well - make sure you join in, I bet every single one of you has something unused to play with for the first time:

I used:

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

- snippet of gold mirri card, trimmed to an eighth of an inch smaller all round and glued onto the card front

- snippet of black card, die cut using a die from the Lil'Inkers 'Stitched Rectangles' set

- then die cut the circular HOORAY aperture, using a NBUS Clearly Besotted Shaker Shapes 'Circle Hooray' die

- two layers of black fun foam, die cut using a die from the Lil'Inkers 'Stitched
Rectangles' set with a circular aperture die cut to line up behind the black card layer - using a slightly larger plain circle die than the HOORAY die

- glued and red line taped the two layers of black fun foam together and backed them with a circle of white card

- using the piece of black card with the die cut word I worked out where to glue three sequins and stuck them in place onto the white backing card

- die cut a circle of acetate, again using the slightly larger plain circle die, swiped it with an anti-static bag and glued it behind the HOORAY aperture in the piece of black card

- then it was just a case of popping some Lucy's Cards 'Little Things' shaker card gold selection called 'Champagne' into the 'well' of the white card backed fun foam and then gluing the card front on top

- then glued the whole thing to the card itself before adding some little pieces of shaker selection to the front, just to break up the starkness

Ha, despite using the anti-static bag, the shaker stuff does cling a bit to the acetate - but I rather like that. It looks more spread out and still has movement when it's shaken.

Here's the weekly 'peek at the picks' - as always it's a tough choice, I try not to favour the same Playmates too much and also look for ideas that might inspire you:

I love this sweet card, made by Megan. It's a cute little dog, waiting and watching for its owner - and when you open the card up you get a view of the little chap stretched up to peek out :)

I really love the impact of this card, made by KathyK! Wonderful colours and just the one black snippet for the 'frame' - it's fabulous.

I picked this card, made by Pen as the hand drawn water colour pencil flower is just amazing! It was drawn onto a snippet of water colour paper and the frame is also a snippet. Isn't it beautiful?!

What a stunning CAS card, made by Bonnie! A snippet of a Brusho background and then a gold snippet for that beautiful butterfly. It's absolutely fabulous Bonnie, and lots of impact.

Isn't this a beautiful card, made by Shaz in Oz. I just love how well the two main dies (the Piestra panel and the Snowflake Ornament) work together - yet they were released years apart. I have both of them here and would never have thought to combine them! Well done Shaz - and welcome back to the Playground. So pleased that you're recovering.

And last, but not least, Brenda of Floral Fantasies hopped into the Playground with this amazing canvas. It's fabulous and just so much what I would choose in a shop of course, I love pink :) And, Brenda also gives good instructions as to how she made the canvas into such a work of art - yet more inspiration in the Playground!

We have one new Playmate this week:

Helen C from Oz hopped into the Playground with this really fun elephant tag. I love how the darling little hat matches the dotty paper and washi tape - clever touch!

Welcome Helen, I do hope you come back to play with us again.

Now it's prize draw time, for the three embossing folder sets from last week. Only, there are in fact six sets to be won! I saw just how many people loved the set and ran off and bought three more so I could double the number of winners. This week, because it's a bit time consuming, I'll still use the Random number generator but you'll have to trust me on the results. It takes a while to fiddle around copying, editing and then inserting the screen shots into a post.

And the winners are:

#9 - Helen

#54 Sandy J 

#8 Jenny L

#61 April

#44 Sue T

#19 Pen

Can I please remind winners that they now have to drop me an email to claim their prize - as well as including their current address. My email addy is on the right hand sidebar as usual!  

This coming week's prize is:

A Clearly Besotted Shaker Shapes 'Circle Hooray' die - along with a packet of 'Champagne' shaker card mix to get you going! Just like I used on my snippets card of course. Both items make up the prize and won't be split. I've just checked out the Clearly Besotted website and it looks to me as if this die is discontinued already, it's only been around since last year - sigh.

The Snippets Challenge will run for one week and the Playground gates will close at 11am UK time on Saturday 3rd September. The gates will open again at midnight UK time on the same day.

A maximum of ONE entry and please say in a comment if you wish to play and be a possible winner of a prize. Please also link back to the Playground in your blog post to be eligible for the draw.

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 :) 

A couple of challenges to watch out for in the coming week:

Rudolph Day over at ScrappyMo's, which is running right now, to the end of the month.

Darnell's NBUS challenge, in which you use something Never Before Used - hangs head in shame here as I could enter this umpteen times over and still have loads of unused goodies! It began yesterday and runs until 5th September.

Have a great week! Big hug from Parsnip, and of course me.

'Congrats' shaker card

After more years than I care to remember, finally bit the bullet and had another try at making a shaker card. My one and only try previously was a disaster but I was driven by all the lovely shaker cards on so many blogs right now - as well as a free gift with Simply Cards & Papercraft magazine, issue 145 :)

If you want the die, back copies of the magazine can be found on line if you just Google the name and issue number of the magazine.

Followed the magazine instructions pretty closely, added in a couple of tips along the way - and this was the end result. It's pretty simple and will be fine for either a Wedding or Wedding Anniversary I should think. It's an optical illusion if you think the champagne flutes are standing on top of the background paper - they're die cut into it - amazing what a bit of shadow can do:

I used:

- 5.75" x 5.75" square white card blank

- a piece of white card, topped with a sheet of patterned paper from the Wild Rose Studio 'Wedding Bells' paper pack. The swirly patterned paper just had a few darker swirls and a couple of doves in one corner - perfect for what I wanted!

- then used a full covering of standard grade double sided self-adhesive sheet to fix the paper to the card before doing a small amount of trimming to just slightly smaller than the card front

- next die cut the two champagne flutes into the patterned paper/card - using the free die (it's a single flute BTW) from issue 145 of Simply Cards & Papercraft

- flipped the die cut sheet over,  added a piece of acetate across the die cut area using strong red line tape and swiped it over with an anti-static embossing pad 

- added a couple of little silver sparkly snippets of card behind the acetate on the stems/bases of the champagne flutes

- then it was time to face my nemesis - the dreaded foam tape. My one and only previous attempt all those years ago had ended up with the sequins sticking round the edges of the shaker aperture - such a disappointment :( But this time I had a plan!

- I crept up on a new roll of Stick-It 10mm wide foam tape (1mm thick) when it wasn't looking and patted just a little bit of talcum powder on either side of the roll to take away the stickiness along the edges yet still leave the 'body' of the tape nice and sticky

- snipped a length of the sticky foam tape and then cut it down the centre. In truth, the foam tape is fairly narrow to begin with but I knew that I would be working quite close to the top edge of the card and wanted to be sure to leave space for more tape later on in the process

 - then for each glass I removed the backing strip which meant I had two sticky sides to the foam tape and then added it right around the bowl and across the top of the champagne flute making sure that the lightly but now non-sticky talc coated edge faced into the die cut aperture where the sequins would be going

- sprinkled a few iridescent sequins into the flutes and then covered each of them with a snippet of white card

- added the whole panel to the card front using more foam tape and this time I left the backing strip in place as I added the foam tape to the edges of the 'shaker panel'

- die cut the word 'Congrats' (using a die from the Penny Black 'Hooray' set) from a snippet of the silver sparkly card which had been backed with Stick-It adhesive sheet and popped it in place on the bottom right hand side corner

- final touch was to add a little scattering of iridescent sequins around and between the champagne flutes, using Glossy Accents and a cocktail stick

One very happy bunny here - it worked!

Here are the little hints and tips I'd picked up about making shaker cards:

- swiping an anti-static bag across the inside of the acetate layer (which will have the sequins up against it) helps to ensure that your shaker 'bits' move more freely

- a few places offered the tip of using a little touch of talc on a cotton bud around the edge of foam tape once it's been fixed in place to stop the sequins from sticking to the sides. I went one step further and gently rubbed a very fine whisper of talc right across both sides of a new roll of foam tape. I'm sure it's quicker in the long run with less chance of talc smears on the acetate. I then popped the roll of tape into a card packaging cellophane bag before storing it in with my other tapes and glues etc. - I used baby powder so it smells of bath time in the nursery!

- and my final tip is one I stumbled across when looking at on line videos on the subject of making shaker cards. I wonder how many folk struggle with curves, circles etc. when fixing foam tape in place? And it's all down to the rigidity of that backing strip which protects the foam tape! If you remove it before sticking the foam tape down you can shape the tape so easily - what a simple tip! Of course you have to work quite carefully with it as you will get sticky fingers - but, as the seasoned crafter who was singing the praises of this tip said, 'why didn't I think of that one before now?!'.

BTW, I only just got away with using the 1mm thickness foam tape and the slightly cupped sequins. Would need thicker tape or two layers if adding seed beads into the mix :)

Di
x