Pixie's Snippets Playground - Week 262

Happy New Year! Let's hope 2017 is a much better year for many of us - personally I'm glad to see the back of 2016. It's not been the finest of vintages for sure.

And, the mahoosive 'Five-years of the Playground' celebrations have finally drawn to a close. Thank you so much for all the lovely comments and a load of fabulous entries as well!

First, let's look at my snippets card for today - which is a Christmas card as I still had one really nice prize left over:

To prove that I really did make three almost the same and to show what just green and gold looks like for the trees themselves

I used:

- 4" x 5.25" white card blank

- snippets of matt gold card, with a touch of sparkle embedded, bought at Coventry when Kim and I were up there back in September/October. Trimmed the card to just a bit smaller than the front of the card blank and glued it in place

- snippets of white card stock, die cut using a Lil' Inker 'Stitched Rectangle' die and then embossed using a really old Sizzix die called 'Dots' - looks like falling snow to me!

- the trees were huge fun to make - and I made three at the same time - gotta love the Misti :) 

- I used a great stamp set called 'Filled Christmas Trees', made by Lil' Inkers (don't the trees remind you a bit of peg stamp designs, without all the hard work)

- first I stamped the trees using Brilliance 'Pearlescent Ivy' ink onto snippets of white card and then added the little tubs using Brilliance 'Pearlescent Chocolate' ink

- next added the words in the spaces left on the stamped images, using Brilliance 'Pearlescent Poppy' ink

- then I coloured the trees mostly using a gold Gel pen - picking out various elements and also adding some gold to the words. I didn't use my Signa gold pen, although I love it I do find it can be too 'blobby' for very fine detail and will totally cover any lines/veins within a leaf for example

- on the 'Joyful' card I also used Whispers pens in green and red (that's my favourite card of the three!) as they have really fine nibs at one end

- then die cut the trees using the larger of the two dies from the Lil' Inker co-ordinating set and just popped them onto the card front using thin sticky pads

I love, love, love this set of stamps and dies! My first thought was to make one long card with a row of three of these trees on it - but, I had smallish white and gold snippets to use up and also (being conscious of the time it took to make and colour the trees as it was a first play) I wanted three cards to show for the time spent :)

I bought my stamps and dies from Tara over at Seven Hills Crafts - and am delighted with the versatility of the set. You can keep the trees very simple without any additional colouring and they would still make an impact. You can just stamp the trees or choose to die cut them - and there's even a small sized die if you wish to just use the top part of the tree (above the gap for the sentiment). They would make fabulous gift tags of course - and in fact I think that just using one or other of the dies with plain or patterned card would look great for some simple tags. Imagine these trees stamped and embossed in white on Kraft card for example? The list goes on and so many possibilities - top marks to Lil' Inker!

Sales pitch over :)

Now for a peek at my picks from the past two weeks - you amazed me by finding time to join in, although I did spot a couple of people shouted out for prizes and then didn't actually enter anything into Mr Linky. That's fine though, I take Mr Linky as the main man when selecting prize winners anyhow.

Love the clean and crisp look of this card, made by Janice. And yes, we did have a good few Christmas cards as entries this past fortnight! :)

White on white, with a touch of silver. Beautiful card made by Maura!

Karen L made these fabulous Christmas scenes - love them!

What a lovely card this is, made by Wanda. I love the stamping in white onto coloured card for those flowers!

What a delightful baby card, brought to the Playground to share by Liz. I love these shadow box dies sets - this one is just so cute!

Linby shared this fabulous selection of gift tags - and also made me giggle. Apparently her hubby thought she intended to chop up old Christmas cards to make them into tags - I wonder how many of us started our crafting journey doing things like that?

Isn't this THE most amazing pop up box card?! Made by Kathleen and just perfect - it really does look like a bouquet of fabulous flowers.

Such a lovely Christmas wreath, made by Vinita. Wonderful shades of blue and there are lots of photos covering the whole making process over on her blog too.

I love this cute little dragon to pieces! Judy (PJ) made this gorgeous stepper card and aren't the colours in the snippets papers just so perfect with her wonderful colouring? Cute, cute and more cute!

Elizabeth made these Christmas baubles, using snippets of fabric and pretty trimmings beautifully! As I always say, remember that a snippet doesn't have to be card or paper :)

Isn't this the sweetest New Year card?! Made by Nina and I just love how the 0 in 2017 is made by using the bottom snowman in this wonderful balancing act :)

As always, I could carry on with more picks - but time is precious right now.

We had 72 Playmates joining in over the past two weeks - with two new little friends joining us:

First was Chantal, with this lovely box, hiding sweet treats!

And then Marjeta, with a super New Year card.

Hope you both come back soon to play along with us :)

I have pages of notes about who would like to win what from this previous fortnight and I need more time to do the prize draw - 16 prizes in total! Give me a day or two and I'll be sure to publish the results as soon as possible. I'll be asking you to send your snail mail addresses to me right away as I need to get the packages posted ASAP.

This coming week's prize is quite obviously (from the way I've been tooting the trumpet about it!) the fabulous Lil' Inker 'Filled Christmas Trees' stamp set and also the pair of matching dies:

I'm sure you'll agree it needs to be a single prize, it would be a shame to split up such a perfect pairing!

The Snippets Challenge will run for one week and the Playground gates will close at 11am UK time on Saturday 7th January. 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 this week's 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 :)

Have a lovely week! Love from Parsnip and of course me,