Sunday Snippets, Super Prize & Sarntangling!

Here's wishing you a VERY HAPPY CHRISTMAS.

I'm skipping along to the Snippets Playground to hand in my homework to Miss Di who is hosting a new challenge WITH THE THEME of "Anything BUT Christmas". There is a SUPER DUPER PRIZE up for grabs - CHECK IT OUT HERE then come and play!

My homework is a "Sarntangled" card I made in Art Class:

The snippets used are the central white, pink and black squares, which were cut from slightly larger snippets of card. I have matching "Rose Red" cardstock and ink pad by Stampin Up, so I was able to co-ordinate the splash of colour.

MERRY CHRISTMAS one and all

I wish you a VERY Merry Christmas 
and a Happy New Year.

Your cyber friendship means the world to me and I thank you for all your visits and comments. 

Sunday Snippets (Results)

Hi there playmates!

It's results week at the SNIPPETS PLAYGROUND so after you've finished your visit here, please feel free to skip over there to find out who won the prize and who Di picked to showcase. You’ll also find out more details about Di’s theme for her next Playground Challenge starting on Christmas Day  

For my homework, I die-cut some branches from packaging (see second picture), as well as some leaves from a gelli print snippet, plus some tiny birds from a black snippet of card.

I added some Washi tape across the bottom (and on the inside too).

An A6-sized card.

Showing the branches I die-cut from packaging.

Only a week to go until Santa gets here! Hoping he has overlooked my Playground misdemeanours and has put me on the "good" list! Fingers crossed!

I will be doing further blog posts before the 25th, but just in case this turns out to be your last visit to my blog prior to Christmas Day, I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for visiting and wish you much love, laughter and happiness this Christmas and into the New Year. xxx

Sunday Snippets!

Hi Playmates

Wow it's been a freezing and chilly old week hasn't it? No snow at the time of writing this blog post, but the hard frost looks so white and pretty.

Here's my homework for today: 

5" square card

1. I brushed Navy Blue ink through my latest stencil acquisition (MASKBJ04 by Studio Light), then added some random dotty stamping using various grungy stamps.
2. The focal flower was die-cut from a snippet of watercolour paper that I'd used Brushos on (see photo below). 
3. Finished off with a Uniko sentiment using Navy Blue ink and second gen stamping onto a small white snippet which was then cut out with scissors and glued to the card front.

The snippet of watercolour paper
I used

Can you believe there's only two weeks to go until the Big Day! Time sure is slipping by! 

If you want to come and play at the SNIPPETS PLAYGROUND there's a new challenge just waiting for your homework submission HERE! We have sausage rolls, mince pies, toasted crumpets, tea, coffee and hot toddies up in the Treehouse for you, whenever you've finished playing.

Bright snippets!

Hello Playmates!

Are you ready for the Grand Switch On of the Snippets Playground Christmas Lights tonight? Keep an eye out for a fun post over at the SNIPPETS PLAYGROUND at 7.30pm.

To get you in the mood, here's a bright and colourful birthday card made from snippets.

5.25" square card - using a snippet of blue behind
the punched out flowers.

The punched-out snippets -
only used the orange ones on
today's card!

Do come along and join me, Di and Dudley up in the Treehouse for a nice mug of hot chocolate and a sprinkling of marshmallows - plus a mince pie or two! If you need a little summin' summin' extra in your drink, just nod me the wink and I'll see what's inside my satchel!

It's a new day . . .

 . . . and what will you do with it? 

Whatever you get up to today - I hope you enjoy yourself.

Flushed and still happy dancing from my win over at Allsorts last week (along with my good friend Di) - I've decided to enter this week's Allsorts challenge too! The theme is Wings and/or Tails - and I'm entering an ATC with a silhouette bird on it so that covers BOTH bits of the theme!

First, I cut a 2¼" x 3¼" piece from a larger snippet of watercolour paper that I had used Brusho powder on previously (and which had been sitting around the craft room for far too long)!

I added a die-cut bird silhouette, then simply stamped the sentiment on the watercolour paper. This was mounted to a slightly larger black snippet of card, and again onto a 2½ x 3½ piece of packaging - so I got a bit of recycling done too!

Sunday Snippets!

Hi Playmates!

In my satchel I have a White on White (WoW) Christmas card for my Snippets Playground homework. I'm hoping for extra Brownie points for using the Stampin' Up! "Softly Falling" embossing folder that Miss Di is giving away as part of her challenge prize. Hoping for an A+ for setting a good example!

So . . . I'm skipping over to the Snippets Playground to hand this in. Why not use up some of your snippets and join in too? We're a friendly bunch and there's usually someone around to lead you astray (ahem, mainly ME!).

The Playground Christmas tree is due to be decorated shortly. Dudley, Di and I have been busy stringing up fairy lights all over the place and the Treehouse is twinkling inside and out. It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas! A Grand Switch On is planned for 1st December - be there or be square!!!!

My snippets homework.

Snippets picked out to use + embossing folder
with the snippet I embossed just before taking
the photo!

Remember to emboss the envelope flap for that extra
little touch while the EF is out on your desk!

I learnt TWO lessons while making this card! The first was that if you intend to die cut something that's dry embossed - do it BEFORE you do the dry embossing! Why? Well, if you do it AFTER embossing, the embossing will be flattened when you do the die cutting! Then you end up spending 10 flipping minutes trying to get the blasted flattened dots to line back up with those inside the embossing folder so you can put it BACK through your machine again to plump it all up!

The second lesson is that if you're trying to save money on your heating bill and are wearing fingerless gloves to keep warm while you craft . . . take them off before using adhesive! 

Why? Well TINY little bits of wool miraculously shed and start sticking to foam pads and the like! You then have to spend time pulling them off, because NOBODY wants a woolly, hairy card do they?!

So there you have it: die cut first, dry emboss afterwards and take off your woolly gloves before using adhesive (or turn the heating on so you don't need gloves in the first place! LOL!).

Happy days!

A new neighbour!

I have a new neighbour, so I made a card to welcome her to the road. 

The details:

1. I stamped the houses (from a 2014 Stampendous stamp set - SSC1218), in navy blue ink, direct to the card front, along with the grounding (a little stamp from an IndigoBlu set) as well as the Woodware sentiment.
2. Onto a piece of card that I'd previously used to mop-up spare ink, I stamped the houses  twice more and fussy-cut them out.
3. One of the fussy-cut houses was glued direct to the card front, over the top of the original image; the other was added on top of that with foam pads to give some dimension.

Sunday Snippets! Shiny new challenge!

Hi there Playmates!

It's Sunday morning and time for a new challenge over at the SNIPPETS PLAYGROUND with yours truly hosting Challenge 441 for the next fortnight.

For my homework, I found a nice grungy square snippet of a gelli print which I mounted onto a contrasting colour. Then I added the sentiment and the die-cuts. The sentiment was punched out using very old SU punches.

The details:

• 5" square card base.
• 3" square gelli print snippet, mounted onto 3.25" square orange snippet.
• White die-cut flourish plus extra leaves cut from white snippets.
• Sentiment stamped then punched from orange and white snippets.

You can order a cocktail at the Playground Treehouse bar and there's often hot, buttered crumpets in the Sunday Morning Breakfast Club - or feel free to skulk about behind the bike sheds with the usual suspects trying to avoid detention! Either way, we'll all be up to no good!

All rounder OLCs!

I recently fell in love with an uber-CAS card designed by Kathy K (see the second card on THIS POST) which I just had to pinch - er, I mean CASE!

With her permission I had a go . . .

I liked them so much I made 5 in total!

Everything was stamped with black archival ink. Once the circles were dry, they were coloured with numerous Distress Oxide inks and a water brush. I used three different Distress Oxide colours on each circle.

I reckon these make fab all-rounder unisex birthday cards (depending on the colours used). Very easy to batch-make as there's only a little stamping and colouring involved! Thanks Kathy!

Wishing you a wonderfully crafty week!

Sunday Snippets!

Hi Playmates!

RESULTS from the previous Snippets Playground challenge have been published HERE, so why not wander over to see who's been showcased and who won the prize?

For my homework this week: I've made two more cards from the lovely "run-off" sheet I've been busy using up. The sheet was made while cleaning off my brayer during a gelli printing session. Guess what? - I still have a little bit of it left for another project or two!

The bottom hill is the run-off sheet snippet, and the
little "tree" is a gelli print snippet.

The heart and the bottom strip of paper are 
from the run-off sheet snippet.

Have a lovely crafty week!

Masculine OLC

Hi Friends

I simply LOVE the little "paint chip" stamp from SU's 'Textures & Frames' stamp set.

I've made a few one layer cards (OLCs) with it, and this one's perfect for a masculine birthday card. I teamed it with two lovely sentiments from Visible Image - one for the card front and the other for the inside.

5" square card - simply stamped

The inside

Thanks for dropping by to take a look at what I've been up to. 
Wishing you a lovely day.

Sunday Snippets - Happy Hallowe'en!

Hi Playmates

I'm submitting the following card as homework for the new SNIPPETS PLAYGROUND Challenge.

The small square of white card and the orange mount
are both snippets.

Miss Di is hosting the Snippets Playground for the next fortnight and there's an OPTIONAL THEME for you to play along with. It's still ANYTHING GOES, but if you wish, you can make your project  using an Autumn/Hallowe'en theme or just use their associated colours. Still only one entry, as usual.

I don't really have any Hallowe'en stamps so I decided to draw something instead. Here's my first attempt - which is on the reverse of the drawing you see on the card above (so as not to waste a snippet!).

Discarded in favour of my 2nd attempt
on the other side!

Much happier with this drawing, so 
I coloured it in with Distress Inks
& added clouds & the sentiment.

The cloud template I cut from a snippet.

Hallowe'en Party!

Remember Di is hosting a Fancy Dress Hallowe'en Party tomorrow night. I know lots of you have been busy making your costumes. We have a few frightful and ghoulish cocktails ready for you up in the Treehouse - witch(!) has been fully decked out with cobwebs and carved pumpkins etc (actually, we just didn't clean the Treehouse for a month so those fake cobwebs are REAL!). Grab your broomstick and come for a ride! Di's been busy making Pumpkin Soup in one of the cauldrons and I've been busy  making Witches Brew in the other, plus there's lots of crusty rolls and jacket spuds to help you mop up some of that Brew!

Bonfire Party!

Next weekend, we'll be setting light to a big bonfire and cooking jacket spuds, toasting crumpets and enjoying some hot soup. Might even be a sing song around the fire - but no fireworks cuz Playground Pets don't like the loud noise! Anyone seen the head of our Guy Fawkes? It's gone missing! DUDLEYYYYYY!

Allsorts' 700th Challenge

Hello and welcome!

It's 8 o'clock on a Saturday morning, which means there's a new ALLSORTS CHALLENGE waiting for you to play along with.

This week I'm delighted to have been invited back as a Guest Designer for their special 700th challenge.

This week's theme is Let's Celebrate - Any Special Occasion. This means any special occasion you choose, including Christmas. I chose to make a masculine card for an 80th birthday.

Here's my GDT card:

Lots of prizes to be won. Come along and join in the fun.

Leafy Goodness!

Hi Friends

I've made an autumnal card so that I could join in with the current Allsorts' Challenge where the theme is "Colours of Autumn" - pretty sure my leaves will count for that! 

An A6-sized card

The gel print and the die-cut leaves from it!

I used my fingers to smear red, green, yellow and orange acrylic paint all over my gelli plate and ran the brayer over the wet paint very lightly a couple of times. I used one of my larger snippets of thin white card to take the print. Once the print was dry, I die-cut it with a leafy set of dies that is my new favourite! The swirly stamp is a very old SU one, and the sentiment is from an Aall & Create set.

From run-off sheet to gift!

Hi Friends

This is a bit picture heavy . . . so you might want to grab a cuppa!

The photo below shows the "run-off" sheet left over from a gelli printing session. It's where I "cleaned off" my brayer and some stencils. I thought it was just too lovely to throw away and it proved a GREAT starting place to add MORE gesso, paint, stencilling etc! It's probably around A3 in size.

I cut a 7" x 7" piece from the sheet and added more stencilling in dark blue, as well as some gesso rings via a pot lid!

The 7" square piece that I cut off.

Below are 2 of the remaining snippets - I'll play with them another day (although I've already added gesso to the right hand piece)!

Snippets for another day!

Next, I folded the sheet in a specific way (see later video link) to create two pockets, suitable for small gifts and made a little tag with an off-cut of one of the above snippets (the bottom bit if you look closely)!

Here is the filled gift pocket

Front

Back

See HERE for a YouTube video on how to fold a paper square into the above. Because my run-off sheet is only pretty on one side, I chose to fold my pockets so that they faced the inside of the holder, rather than the outside as per the video.

My fold measurements, for a 7" square piece of paper were:

1. With the Triangle fold lined up to the LEFT of the scoreboard - score at ¾".
2. With the Triangle fold lined up at the TOP of the scoreboard - score at 3¼", flip the triangle over and score again at 3¼" (this will become clear if you watch the video!).

Snippets on Sunday!

Hi Playmates

It's Sunday morning and time for a new fortnight of fun over at the SNIPPETS PLAYGROUND where Challenge 439 has started with Yours Truly in charge!

My homework is a sympathy card, for which I used one of my recently penned Sarntangles.

I drew the tangles on a small white snippet, then mounted them onto a black snippet. The sentiment is by Printworks (no longer in business).

It's been a little chilly of late, so I have been making plenty of Hot Chocolate up in the Playground Treehouse and there's often hot, buttered crumpets in the Sunday Morning Breakfast Club.

I hope you're all busy making your costumes for the Fancy Dress Halloween Party that Di will be hosting at the end of the month! Di and I will be busy decorating the Playground and Treehouse - no doubt with a little help from Dudley!

Sarn on Sunday!

Hi Playmates!

Look at that - October is here already and another SNIPPETS PLAYGROUND challenge has started. Miss Di is in charge for the next fortnight.

It's definitely turned autumnal and I'm thinking ahead to what shenanigans we might get up to in the Playground for Halloween!

For my homework, I played with the "Monogram Messages" stamp set by Stampin' Up, with a little help from the sun stamp out of "Kinda Eclectic":

An A6-sized card

Snippets used.

Mixed Media Art

Hi Friends

I recently attended a Mixed Media Workshop (Floss Workshop Art) and had loads of fun. Here's one of the things I made.

The final result

There are 5 more pictures of the process to see - so feel free to skip to the end if you don't want to see each stage!

Step 1: Tear up old pages, sheet music, ephemera, then
 glue on with Mod Podge.

Step 2: Add Gesso around the edges of the strips 
and randomly around the piece.

Step 3: Spray on some colour, then wipe some of it off
so that you don't lose all the detail.

Step 4:  Add acrylic paint through some stencils.
Step 5: Glue on some punched-out leaves then
add black gesso around them. Add highlights with a white gel pen.

Step 6: Finally, I added a little stamping to the top,
then mounted my art onto a larger piece of black card.

The 2½ hour class went by in a flash. As well as making the above, I also made a bookmark and learnt how to make an ugly page in my art journal a lot more pleasing to the eye! RE-sult!

Gelli Print Card

Hi Friends

I attended a Gelli Printing workshop by Floss Workshop Art HERE. Floss is lovely. Very patient and knows exactly how to get the best out of you. 

The workshop was GREAT FUN and I came away with 8 gelli prints as well as my "run-off" sheet, which I will probably use for something (it was too good to throw away!).

Here's a card made with a blue gelli print. All the die cutting is from white snippets.

A6 sized card.

Close up of the die cut flower head.

Snippets Challenge 437

Hello Playmates,

Di and I have reopened the Playground now that National Mourning has ended, so there's a new challenge for you to play along with at the SNIPPETS PLAYGROUND, with yours truly hosting until 11am on 1st October.

I made a pink and purple birthday card for someone special. 

I started by adding the gelli-print snippet to the left hand side of the card front. Next, I stencilled on the flowers and dots. Then I die-cut the butterfly from another snippet of the same gelli print, but, when I placed it on the card front (before sticking it down) I saw that it got lost in the stencilled background. 

So, in order to make the butterfly stand out, I brushed pink and purple ink though the negative piece of card left over from die-cutting the butterfly! After that, I glued the butterfly die-cut over the top and doodled inside the lines.

Finally, I drew all around the butterfly in pencil and smudged it with a paper stump - and that REALLY lifted the whole thing - so I did the same to the stencilled dots! I also used a ruler to add lines at the edge of the left hand border. 

Materials:

• SNIPPETS: Gelli print for the right hand strip and for the die-cut butterfly
• SAKURA fine liner pen to doodle in and around the butterfly; the stencilled dots and the left hand edge.
• PENCIL & PAPER STUMP: to make the butterfly and the dots pop!
• DISTRESS OXIDE INKS: Kitsch Flamingo; Picked Raspberry & Wilted Violet
• STENCILS: Doodle Daisies by Zinksi Art from Funky Fossil, plus the negative of the die-cut butterfly.
• DIES: Winnie & Walter Butterfly - or is it Concord & 9th? I can't remember!
• SENTIMENT by Clearly Besotted (2 separate stamps)

Happy crafting!

A Simple Thank You Card

Hi Playmates

I know many of us (myself included) are still reeling from the sad news of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II's passing, so I'll keep this post brief.

It's really just to let you know that the RESULTS of the previous Snippets Playground challenge have been published HERE, so why not wander over to see who's been showcased and who won the prize? It might cheer you up.

5" square card - a one layer card

Inks used: Stampin' Up!'s Pool Party and Soft Sea Foam for the background chips and VersaFine Clair Twilight for the sentiment.
Stamps used: One small "paint chip" stamp from Stampin' Up!'s "Textures & Frames" set and a sentiment pulled from a JOFY stamp set by PaperArtsy (can't remember which set though!).

Sunday Snippets - Challenge 436 has started

Hi Playmates!

There is a brand new challenge to enter over at the SNIPPETS PLAYGROUND where Di is hosting for the next fortnight. Please submit your homework by 17th September.

My homework is another little ATC made entirely from snippets.

Due to their small (playing card) size, ATCs are just perfect for using up snippets. Even if you're not into swapping them, they make great card toppers!

2.5" x 3.5" ATC

• The ATC base (measuring 2.5" x 3.5") is a white snippet.
• The ATC base was topped with a 2.25" x 3.25" gelli print snippet.
• I used white snippets for the die-cut flower and lattice work.
• First line of sentiment is by Uniko, the "hugs" word is by Stamping All Day.

Some Upcycling

Hi Friends

I was just about to throw an empty(!) Frusli box into the recycling bin, when I thought: "Hey, I could die-cut that and get creative instead of throwing it away!"

So I did!

Want to see the results? Of course you do - why else would you be reading this!!!! A bit picture heavy - so grab a cuppa!

Funky Fossil Washi tape at left edge; upcycled die-cut flowers
and a grunge stamp for grounding; finished with a
stamped sentiment by Printworks.

Two upcycled die-cuts and a large
Winnie & Walter sentiment stamp.

Upcycled die-cut bird branch;
Uniko sentiment & Aall & Create
washi tape at the bottom.

The original packaging I was just about to throw away