Monthly Archives: May 2018

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