Tranquil Tulips and other Retiring Products
Hello Stamping Friends,
Spring has been gorgeous in Castle Rock this year! Usually our lilac buds get frozen with a spring cold front and we miss out on the beautiful blossoms. Not this year! They are fabulous and I didn’t even have to run out and cover the bushes with a sheet. We have several little yellow finch friends to entertain us as well. One flower I have never had much luck with is the tulip. The green stem will pop out of the ground but seldom produce a flower. So let’s make a paper tulip card!
These tulips have amazing art work built in to the stamps- white stripes on the blossoms, leaves with shades of green and a stamp for the middle. This set will be retired in 6 days. The little ladybug and the butterfly come from the Sharing Sweet Thoughts stamp set inside the back cover of the annual catalog. It is our last Ronald McDonald House Charity catalog set and your purchase contributes to that cause. We will be doing additional specials in the future for various charities so keep your eye out for those and purchase this last catalog RMHC stamp set now to help families in crisis stay close to each other.
I suppose with three grandsons I will get used to bugs in a jar but I would rather fill a jar with strawberries or flowers! I cased the layout of the tulips from someone on pinterest but made the bottom a flower box and added the ladybug and butterfly. I stamped the three butterflies on vellum and then rubbed the back of the circles on the butterfly’s wings with my stylus on the foam pad to make them bright white, then colored the back with my Daffodil Delight Stampin’ Blends marker. I was making six of these cards so I folded the wings of the two larger butterflies for a 3D effect like this:
I used many retiring items that you can still purchase for the next five days. The base of the card is Elegant Eggplant with a Rose Red layer. The tulips are Elegant Eggplant, Rose Red, and Perfect Plum with Wild Wasabi for leaves – all are retiring colors. Use hostess code UB6X963B if your order is under $150 and I will draw from all those purchasing and order the hostess set ‘Tranquil Tulips’ to give to the winner if we reach $150. If you don’t want to take that risk and miss out on this set, order $150 now and I will give you a $25 gift certificate to spend at my table in the upcoming craft garage sale- June 8-9- at my home in Castle Rock. The stamp set is on page 223 but the art work wasn’t quite right so here is the corrected image of the stamp set:
If you place a $150 order you will have $5 additional free products after purchasing Tranquil Tulips so let me suggest the retiring 1/4″ Stitched-edge Ribbon or the Enamel Shapes. There are many new embellishments this year but none have the hearts of the Enamel Shapes offered this year in Brights, Regals and Subtles. Hmmmm…you can’t see them very well here so I will take a close up of the greetings.
The label I used to create the stand for the Easel card is from the Label Me Pretty stamp set. The stamps and punch will be offered in the new catalog but they will not be bundled for a 10% discount.
The “Thank You” comes from another retiring set “Swan Lake” on page 142.
Check out that cute little dragonfly! This set has so much potential and makes me feel peaceful just looking at the images. Another of the ‘Label Me Pretty’ images:
The “Love You” is from the ‘Banners for You’ stamp set on page 32 and it is NOT retiring, whew…… I put a sticky note over the ‘I’ in the greeting, inked, removed the sticky and stamped. I liked the little dots on the stamp set but used a marker to make them bigger and added a few extra dots of my own. For both these greetings I punched a 1 3/4″ circle from the Wood Textures Designer Series Paper to match the flower box. Good news – for the first time that I can remember a Designer Series Paper is not retiring. You can get this paper in the new catalog but the price has gone up $1. (Just trying to save you money!) I popped up both the greeting and the circle to have a nice tall easel holder. I tried out the third stamp with all the flowers around the Happy Birthday. I first stamped and colored the image but it lost too much detail so I colored the back of my stamp with regular markers, huffed on the colored stamp, and then came up with an image with more detail that I popped up on an oval cut out in the wood:
Did you notice the Versa Mark images on the sides of the popped up greetings? I used the hearts from the Ronald McDonald set to stamp around the birthday greeting since it is going to my daughter. For the others I used tulip images from the ‘Lovely Wishes’ stamp set in the Occasions Catalog. Sadly, this set does not carry over.
I recently attended a Mile High Stamp Camp with amazing Stampin’ Up! demonstrators. I wish I remembered the name of the lady who designed this card using the ‘Lovely Wishes’ set:
I needed a sympathy card so I took her design and used the ‘Petitie Pairs’ stamp set from the past for a tiny greeting to fit between the flowers. I have the old Ovals set so I sponged the edge to get the same look as the ‘Layering Oval’ set used above.
The layering ovals, squares and circles carry over in to the new catalog. I didn’t think I wanted the ‘Ruffled Embossing Folder’ used here until I actually used it in the stamp camp. It is unique and not just for shingles on a house like I imagined and it carrys over. Five embossing folders are retiring but the one that I will miss the most is the ‘Brick Wall’ embossing folder. Remember this card from the past?
Sigh……. But wait until June when I can show you a most amazing new embossing folder called “Tufted”. For those of you who have received your catalog, check out page 223. Need a catalog? Come to my catalog launch on June 8-9 from 8-3 held in conjunction with the craft sale. If you can’t make that, order $50 from me and I will send you a catalog. Single catalogs will be available to order starting June 1 as well.
Let’s not think fall, let’s think spring and graduation! I needed a graduation card so I used the retiring ‘Marquee Messages’ set and a graduation cap stamp from a previous Paper Pumpkin. There are fun confetti products in the “other” store that you could use for the graduation caps:
This set lends itself to so many different occasions:
And if you need a unique gift box for that special graduate’s gift card, I suggest the Window Box Thinlits dies #142762 topped with a square piece of cardstock, 4″X4″ and a tassle made from our solid black baker’s twine and a 1/2″ punched black circle glued on a large brad. We have a ‘Mini Tassels Assortment’ you can purchase and then dip in a bowl of reinker to make just the right color. Yes, it is retiring as well.
You would need the longer ones for the box above but these would be cute on a card front with a punched cap.
I can’t leave today’s ultra-long post without sharing three other cards from the past that use retiring products. In the last post I showed my favorite retiring stamp set in use on an Eclipse card. Here is another card we made at a past club meeting with the ‘Awesomely Artistic’ set, page 153 and the ‘Wild About Flowers’ set on page 174 which has greetings that are so ideal for retirement or new beginnings. Both are retiring.
This is the ‘Birthday Blossoms’ set on page 80 of the catalog. Scroll down in the Recipe Box to find these cards with instructions.
‘Birthday Blooms’ , page 70, also goes away. This pull up card was fun to make at club. Go to the Recipe Box tab to be directed to the original post.
I can’t tell you how many times I have used the ‘Thoughts and Prayers’ stamp set for cards. I hoped it would be in the catalog forever but it is retiring.
To make this Easel Card:
- Base – Elegant Eggplant – 4 1/4 X 11 scored at 5 1/2 and 2 3/4
- Layer 1 – Rose Red – 5 3/8 X 4 1/8 (make 2)
- Layer 2- Whisper White – 4 X 5 1/4
- Layer 3 – Wood Textures DSP – 1 3/4 X 4 with a strip 3/8 X 4 and a scrap to punch the 1 3/4 circle for behind the greeting
- Cut Outs- top of tulips, ladybug, and greeting – Whisper White 3 X 5 1/2
- Butterfly – Vellum 1 X 1
- Ribbon – 1/4″ stitched edge Rich Razzleberry, 6″ to wrap around the flower box and 8″ to tie a bow
- Inks – Elegant Eggplant, Rose Red, Perfect Plum, Wild Wasabi, Memento Black, Versa Mark
- Stamp Sets – Tranquil Tulips, Swan Lake, Label Me Pretty, Sharing Sweet Thoughts, Lovely Wishes, Banners for You
- Enamel Shapes
- Pretty Label Punch, 1 3/4″ circle punch
- Stampin’ Blends- Daffodil Delight, Cherry Cobbler; Wild Wasabi Marker (ladybugs feet background)
Thank you for your time. I hope you won’t miss any of the retiring products and be disappointed. Thank you for choosing me as your demonstrator!
SAL, Share A Love (of all the retiring products) and use hostess code UB6X963B to be in the drawing for the Tranquil Tulips set
Karen
Awesomely Artistic Eclipse Card & Discounted Retiring Items
Hello Stamping Friends,
We have discounts on some of the retiring items! Click here for a pdf file of all the discounted products- some are 50% off!
I chose two of my retiring favorites to make an Eclipse card – the stamp set “Awesomely Artistic”, page 153 in the Annual Catalog, and the color Island Indigo. In my usual monochromatic style I did cards for Mother’s Day, thank you cards and friend cards. Her are various fronts and insides of the cards -the inside could just as easily be the outside of a card.
The Glitter Enamel Dots, #144200, matched the Island Indigo perfectly and added sparkle. (There will be Glitter Enamel Dots in the new catalog but with different colors.) The dragonfly is colored with the Wink of Stella Glitter Brush, #141897, and the flower centers are a drop of glue from our Fine-Tip Glue Pen, #138309, with Dazzling Diamonds Stampin’ Glitter, #133751, sprinkled on top. The For You greeting comes from the retiring stamp set “So Many Shells”, page 38 of the Annual Catalog.
Instead of Glitter Dots you could be a bit eclectic and use the stamp from the “Awesomely Artistic” set that has dots. The greeting, “From Across The Miles”, is a stamp in the retiring “Holly Berry Happiness” Christmas set, page 118. I used a sticky note to cover up the Christmas Wishes words on the stamp, inked the stamp, removed the sticky note and stamped. Voila- a greeting to use any time of the year.
Or just stamp the flowers a little on the edge of your front layer:
The insides of the cards were fun to customize. My daughter is expecting her first child so this is her first Mother’s Day. A greeting in the “Special Celebrations” stamp set was perfect:
The Daisy Delight stamp set on page 127 had the ideal message for the many thank you notes I needed after my father’s passing.
For dear family and friends, the Occasions Catalog “Petal Palette”, page 23, has the perfect message:
And of course Mother’s Day is coming up so I went back to the Special Celebrations stamp set for a special message:
Card Base: Whisper White 8 1/2″ X 5 1/2″ Scored at 4 1/4″
Island Indigo Layer: 5 1/4″ X 4″, Make two
Whisper White top layer: 5 X 3 3/4″, Make two
Stamping Order for the top is a bit critical so you don’t have the images running into each other:
- Stamp the greeting at the bottom
- Stamp the dragonfly
- Stamp the flowers
Color the dragonfly with Wink of Stella, then line up the Large Letters Framelits, #141712, spelling HUGS on your stamped top layer and run through the Big Shot. Adhere all your layers and then put Foam Adhesive Strips, #141825, on the back of the cut out letters and glue the letters back in their respective spaces. Helpful Hint: I adhered the letter framelits to a large sticky note and then placed the sticky noted letters on the top layer so I could use it over and over without realigning the framelits each time.
I checked Eclipse cards on Pinterest and found so many words that were used: HOPE, LOVE, YOU, WISH, BDAY, MOM, BABY, BOY, DAD, GIRL, GIVE, NOEL, (NAME), (DATE), JUST, FAITH, JOY, 4EVER, EPIC, BEST (friend). Graduation cards with dates are popular now using the retiring Large Number Framelit set, #140622. The Large Letters framelits will carryover to the new catalog but not the numbers set.
Have fun making your own Eclipse cards!
SAL, (Stamp A Lot, Smile A Little, Share A Love- and always be Salt And Light in your world)
Karen
Check the list above for discounts on retiring items and check out the Clearance Rack, new items have been added, to see if you can save on your wish list! Click on the computer image with SAL to shop. If an item is sold out you will get an error message when you enter it in your online order. Thank you for choosing me as your demonstrator!