Snippets Challenge 29th Oct - 11th Nov

Hi Playmates

Well autumn is truly upon us and it's lovely to have it in full flow after a late start.

We're starting to gather wood for the Snippets Playground Bonfire Night on 5th November (next Sunday eek!), but once again, out of respect for our pets, there will not be any whizzbangs! Just the bonfire, jacket potatoes, pumpkin soup and some buttered rolls to keep us playmates warm!

A6 sized card using up snippets of black card and a gelli print

Snippet used for bird die.

I mounted a gelli print snippet measuring 1" x 3.5" onto a black snippet strip measuring a quarter inch larger all round. Then I die cut the bird from a further black snippet. Glued everything together and attached to the card front after stamping a very small text/ledger stamp by Gummiapan along the left hand edge. Decided it would make a good masculine card, so I added a Happy Birthday sentiment too.

Miss Di is in charge of the SNIPPETS PLAYGROUND for the next fortnight - so skip over there to find out what lovely prize she is offering, as well as all the details on how to enter. 

Adventures in Gelli Printing (1)

Hi Friends

Tried out my 6" round gel plate for the first time the other day, and got my 8" x 10" plate out while I was at it! Want to see what I got up to? This post is a bit photo heavy, so you might want to grab a cuppa!

Here are the cards first:

2 x greetings cards and an ATC

Materials:

• A few gel prints made with acrylic paints, leaves and a brayer.
• Bird silhouette die by The Works.
• Leafy circle die "Circle of Leaves" by Simon Says Stamp (recently given to me by a very kind friend).
• Leafy sprig on the ATC - part of a leaf die by Pink & Main called "Leafy Dies 1" (recently given to me by the same very kind friend - don't you just love happy mail?!)

Here are two masculine cards made with the blue circle gelli print:

Apologies for the ATC turning up again in this photo!

Here are the gel prints I made beforehand. 

• Today's cards come from the 6" blue circle and the 8"x10" orange/pink print. I'll show you the cards made with the top golden circle in another post. 

The orange/pink leafy die on the ATC comes from middle print shown below:

Here's an envelope I made with the bottom gel print shown in the above picture. It's so pretty IRL:

It's VERY easy to get carried away making lots of prints and then you find yourself wondering what to do with them all - so I thought I'd share a few ideas here. 

Please come back next Wednesday for another post on my gelli printing adventures!

Sunday Snippets!

Hi Playmates!

Today I have a CAS butterfly card to share with you. 

After all the stormy weather this week there are precious few butterflies fluttering around now! However, I stamped some onto a gel print snippet, then cut them out and glued them to the card front. I also heat embossed the sentiment with gold EP. 

5" square card

Attempting to show the shine of the heat embossing!

The sentiment and butterflies are from separate Visible Image stamp sets.

Di has published RESULTS from the previous challenge, so please put your wellingtons on and puddle-jump over to the SNIPPETS PLAYGROUND to admire the top picks and discover who won the prize.

Snippets Challenge: 15-28 October

Hi Playmates!

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

Here's my homework:

ATC measuring 2.5" x 3."5"

The wonderfully arty trees are by Chocolate Baroque and were kindly sent to me by a lovely blog friend (mwah!).

To make the ATC, I took a white snippet that was slightly smaller than 2.5" x 3.5" and added a bit of stencilling to the background, along with some grounding for the trees image. The trees were coloured, cut out and glued on. I chose a Tim Holtz Small Talk sticker which I coloured with the same green ink, chopped up and glued to the ATC. I doodled a border around each word to make them stand out a bit more.

Finally I mounted the white snippet onto a grey piece of card measuring the correct ATC size!

As stated at the beginning of this post, I shall be running amok in the SNIPPETS PLAYGROUND for the next fortnight - so skip on over to find out what lovely prize is on offer, and get all the details on how to enter. Good luck!

Autumn Leaves for Allsorts!

Hi Friends!

I have an autumnal card for you today, just right for adding to the ALLSORTS CHALLENGE (#748) this week!

A6 sized card

The above card started out like this:

Home made texture paste added!

. . .  because I was messing about with some texture/modelling paste I made with talc, PVA glue and white acrylic paint (although you could add ANY colour of acrylic paint to the talc and glue)! Anyway, I scraped the homemade paste* through a pretty stencil and left it to dry.

Next, I added a variety of Distress Oxide inks, which was NOT very successful colour-wise. So I got a baby wipe out in a vain attempt to mop up some of the mess, but a happy accident occurred and I liked what the baby wipe did to the overall colour.  Then I sprayed some water onto the card front so that the Oxides reacted with it! Once dry I stamped some splatters over the top. See below:

Distress Oxides, baby wipe &
water + some ink splatters!

Wondered what to do with the card front after that - but as luck would have it, I'd used some autumnal colours on a recent gel print, so I die-cut some leaves from it, plus a branch for the leaves to hang from and glued them on. I also added the word "moments" using first, second and third generation stamping.

Die cuts and words added.

However, the leaves looked a bit lost on the card front . . . so, to remedy that, I decided to add a brown shadow using the same Walnut Stain Distress Oxide ink I'd used for the words. The shadows really help the leaves to pop. Success!

Finished result (with the shadow added).

Unless you're a card maker, you would never know how much work went into this would you?!

Please take a look at my lovely blogpal VAL'S leafy card for another idea on using these dies.

*There are a number of YT videos on making your own paste, but I most liked Chrissie Stokes's version. However, I didn't measure anything, I just put a dollop of glue and some acrylic paint into a pot and added talc until I was happy with the consistency!!! I kept the remaining paste in a small jar that would otherwise have gone out into my recycling bin! Making your own paste is WAY cheaper than buying it already done for you and is LOADS of fun. Plus it smells nice and so will your craft room afterwards!

Snippets Playground Challenge 1st - 14th October

Hi Playmates

It's Sunday morning and time for a new challenge over at the SNIPPETS PLAYGROUND with Miss Di in charge for the next fortnight.

Here's my homework: 

MATERIALS:

1. Die cut birthday sentiment: from a set of PP Craft dies (white snippet)
2. Die cut flower: Kindly sent to me by a lovely blog friend (thanks!)
3. Gelli print snippet made with acrylic paints; brayer; bubblewrap; Aall & Create reverse text stamp
4. Purple mount trimmed snippet

Now it's your turn to use up some of your own snippets so you can come and play in the Snippets Playground. Remember to leave a comment if you wish to be in the prize draw. You have until 14th October to get your homework in on time!

Happy crafting.