Retirement Blues

Well, I'm not retiring. But a lot of my favourite Stampin' Up products are. This is a bittersweet time of year for Stampin' Up Demonstrators. Yes, we have to say goodbye to some of our much loved stamps, inks and embellishments ... BUT ... there are so many new and exciting things in the new catalogue!!! As a Stampin' Up Demonstrator, one of the perks is that we get to see the new stuff - and order some of it! - before anyone else does. So that's why I'm not too sad about what's retiring.

If you've just come from Stefanie's blog, you will have enjoyed her take on our Retirement Blues celebrated with style. 

For my three projects I decided to pick a favourite ink, a favourite embellishment and a favourite stamp set. My first project features ink: Baked Brown Sugar. I found myself reaching for this colour so often. It just worked for so many things. Even though it is a soft shade of brown, it's also a very rich colour and worked with so many other colours. I paired it with Very Vanilla cardstock and the retiring Hostess Set Bloom With Hope in a monochromatic colour scheme.

The sentiment is from Butterfly Basics, which is not retiring. Yay! Also Yay for the Basic Pearls not retiring. They are the perfect finishing touch to the tag which is done with the Scallop Tag punch. A bit of gold metallic Baker's Twine paired with some wisps of the natural coloured part of the Old Olive thick Baker's Twine is threaded through the top of the tag. I sponged a bit of the Baked Brown Sugar around the edges before mounting the panel onto the Baked Brown Sugar base.

Next up is Beautiful Wings Embosslits. I really am sad this is retiring. All those cute little butterflies with different embossed patterns were so often just the perfect finishing touch. And of course, they were perfect to showcase in a bigger project such as this framed project I did for our February Hop which you can see here.

This card is one that came together because of bits and pieces from previous projects that were laying on my work table. Every once in a while I have to stop creating and do some tidying up. Usually not as much fun as creating, but occasionally Serendipity happens! I had a card base cut from Hello Honey that didn't get used when I cut it, plus a piece of Crumb Cake cardstock on which I had stamped the little trio of flowers from the Painted Petals set - that didn't get carried over from the Occasions Catalogue - sigh.

I jazzed up the flowers with the Signo White Gel Pen, stamped the sentiment from Painted Petals in Blackberry Bliss to match the little butterflies cut with the Beautiful Wings Embosslit. A strip of the White Jute Ribbon brightens the whole thing up and makes a great place for the trio of butterflies to land. Each butterfly has a Basic Rhinestone for a bit of bling. The image panel is mattted with Tangelo Twist.

Finally, my favourite retiring stamp set. Well, one of my favourites. There are a few, including By the Sea with the lovely sea shells. Oh, I will miss that one too! I know I said I wasn't too sad about losing some things because of all the new ones coming up, but - I guess I'm a little sad!

So, the retiring stamp set I chose to feature is Plesant Poppies. It's actually a background stamp but I love how either the whole thing can be used or just bits of it. This card was CASED from Michelle Zindorf who is a genious with ink and stamps. I had come across a card done by her on Pinterest using Pleasant Poppies and a technique called Direct to Paper. That just means swiping an ink pad across cardstock to get some really cool designs.

Starting with a piece of Whisper White cardstock, I used So Saffron, Pear Pizzaz and Mossy Meadow ink pads and swiped them randomly across the cardstock. Then I stamped the poppies with Stazon Black ink and coloured them with Calypso Coral and Tangerine Tango markers, highlighted with the Signo White Gel pen. Oops - I should mention that after I stamped the poppies on the smeared background, I stamped them again on a plain piece of Whisper White, coloured them then fussy-cut each one - plus the little un-opened buds - and glued them onto their places on the stamped piece. A couple of the flowers extend past the white cardstock piece onto the Basic Black cardstock, which I think makes them pop.

Now, I just had to include a sneak peek from the upcoming brand new In-Colors because my pre-order arrived the very same day I was making this card! So that is Tip Top Taupe you see as the card base. It is going to be a great neutral that I know I will be using a lot.

I pondered about using a sentiment on this but couldn't decided what to use and then finally decided it didn't need anything more.

Since I am the last stop on our circular Hop, you can go back to the beginning and re-visit Kath R by clicking on the Next button or go to our home page by clicking on the Home button.