Making music with the Playground

 Last week, Di from Pixie's Crafty Workshop promised that there were going to be some surprises in the playground, and the first surprise is.... ME!!! 

The Snippets Playground is a fortnightly challenge where the theme is always anything goes, but your make MUST include some of your scraps and snippets - those leftover pieces of card (or fabric, or even ribbon) that were just too good to throw away and then hang around for ages looking accusingly at you whenever you open the box or basket where they live. My snippets basket is overflowing, even though I keep it right beside me and always check it first before snipping into a new sheet of card. 

Anyway, this fortnight I've donated a prize to the Snippets Playground of this stamp set: 

It's a Hunkydory set called Retro Mix Tape, and as I had a duplicate set, I'm giving away this unopened one as this fortnight's snippets prize and have used my other set to create the sample card. 

First of all I created a DL sized card. I used an A4 sheet of white card and my Universal scoring board, scoring at the one-third A4 line. I creased the card then cut off the part that stuck out, which of course was the same size as the card front, and trimmed off 1cm from one each of the long and short edges of this extra panel to use as the topper. 

Next I took a snippet of red, the same length as the trimmed piece of card, and stamped the "noise" pattern along it then trimmed it to the width of the stamped area, I stamped the cassette on a white snippet using Memento Tuxedo Black, coloured it with Promarkers and fussy cut. 

Then I put the white panel in the Misti and placed the red strip and cassette on it where I wanted them to go on the finished card, without sticking them down. I positioned the sentiment stamps while the strip and cassette were in place. This was a bit fiddly: the sentiment appears to be intended to be used to say "Rock classic" as the R has a capital but the C doesn't, but as I know so many people who say they love classic rock, I wanted to use them the other way round. I think the C is ornate enough to get away with it! Also, the word Classic is longer than the word Rock, so although I'd intended to centre the cassette, I had to move it slightly to the right for the stamping to fit. Before doing anything else, I grabbed my phone and took a snap to remind me of the exact positioning I had decided on. 

Before stamping the words with black Versafine ink, I removed the cassette and strip, knowing I could check the photo and reposition them later.  Next I took a snippet of black card, dusted it with my anti static pad and stamped and heat embossed the control buttons, using WOW! embossing pad and Opaque Bright White powder, then cut them out. 

I  stuck the red strip in place and matted the panel onto black card then onto the base card, then used foam pads to attach the cassette and control buttons. I have tried to position the control buttons to fool the eye into thinking the red strip each side of the cassette is the same length, to offset the fact I had to position the cassette slightly off-centre. 

I think this stamp set would be perfect for making masculine cards, especially for older generations.  And the cassette label is just crying out for personalisation - ideal for adding a name, age, sentiment or the title of a favourite piece of music. If you'd like a chance to add it to your stash, head over to the Playground - you have until noon on January 23rd to link up a snippets creation of your own.