The world map is one of the first stamps I bought and it was used on the first card I made for my father on Father’s Day two years ago. And I haven’t used it since. I’m not sure why. But I wanted to make another Welcome card and this stamp set called out to me. I work in IT with my brother and tomorrow one of the developers who used to work for me at my previous company is starting work where we are now, working for Martin. I’m thrilled that he’s joining us and he definitely needs a card! The Welcome Words set has come in really useful lately – I think this is the fourth welcome card so far this year. And I need a fifth because somebody just joined my (Stampin’ Up!) team.
I stamped the World Map onto watercolour paper using the archival basic black. Then, using my aquapainter, I put fairly pale washes of pacific point (I’ve recently found how perfect this colour is for skies and seas) and delightful dijon onto the paper. I matted this with a slim basic black border and then mounted it onto a pacific point card base. The Welcome is stamped in pacific point onto very vanilla which extends over the image and mat. To make the sentiment even more dramatic, I popped it up with dimensionals.
The envelope is lined using the retired backgrounds DSP brights stack in pacific point. I’m almost done with this stack and really must get the new version of it.
I’m continuing in my goal to create 20 notecards with the Watercolor Wishes kit leftovers. This one isn’t strictly using leftovers, in fact, it’s not using kit leftovers at all it IS using up ribbon from the about to retire in-colors! Also I wanted a card to send to a friend of mine and she loves orange and gold.
Actually I wanted to demonstrate that it’s possible to make very different cards with the kit and just a few extras. The stencil that I used is one of four that comes in Happy Patterns Decorative Masks and is only $6. I’m sure that the idea to do this came to me because there are a lot of stencilled card bases in the kit. So I started this card by cutting a circle in a piece of scrap and then used post it tape to anchor the circle and mask (or two masks really) and the card to my grid paper. I think a picture may be worth 1000 words here!
I used a dauber to dab on the tangelo twist ink going darker in the centre and fading towards the edges. Then I stamped the image on another piece of scrap in tangelo twist and punched it out with a 1 3/4″ punch. Since I had my circles collection out (to make the circle mask) I cut a circle of tangelo twist cardstock to mat the sentiment. Of course the circles aren’t essential – you could use any punch/framelit that you have handy. Since this card is for Jacquie, it needs some gold – and on the table right in front of me was the gold glimmer tape from Sale-a-bration. Perfect I added a piece of that to end under the circles which I then popped up with dimensionals. I’m pleased about using up some of the ribbon since not only is the ribbon retired, the colour itself has less than 2 months to go!
After I’d cleaned the mask, I looked at the envelope and decided to do more sponging!
I did the same as on the card front (but fuller strength) and then shifted the mask slightly and used it as a guide to add a rough stripe of gold using the wink of Stella. I like the shimmer this adds and I hope Jacquie does too.
I’d like to welcome my new blog follower, Tina. I appreciate you adding my post to your daily inbox.
I mentioned recently that the new catalogue is going to be available soon for demonstrators to take a sneak peek – in fact it’s in just over a week. Then in May we can do a preorder and you can be sure that I’ll be sharing some of the upcoming products with you here. If you want to see them early, it’s easy – just go to the Become a Stampin’ Up! demonstrator tab on the left and sign up. Then you can see everything early too. And get a discount on quality product.
Here are some important dates that you need to be aware of.
To celebrate the third birthday of Paper Pumpkin, next month’s kit will contain an extra stamp set which, since it’s valued at $17 (and the kit with shipping is $19.95) makes it a no brainer to sign up. Tomorrow, the 10th, is the deadline to receive this extra special kit. Just sign up now (when you’ve finished reading this post) whilst you’re thinking about it! If you just want to try a single month and then put your subscription on hold, that’s fine. There’s no obligation.
On the 18th April, the list containing the retiring stamps from the Occasions and 2015-2016 catalogue will be published. At that point, some things will sell out FAST! The most likely items are the 2015-2016 in colors – the card stock and inks will vanish so why not add those into your cart at the same time as the Paper Pumpkin subscription?
The 18th of April is notable for another change too. That is when the weekly deals will stop. Weekly deals were a small number of items put on sale at 20% off to help with excess inventory. Inventory management has improved and this isn’t as necessary now so the weekly deals will be replaced by other offers every few months. BUT what this means to you now is that until the 18th, we have two weeks of deals and there are MORE items on sale than usual. Just click on the Shop Now button over on the left, or the Learn More below to check them out.
So. What do we all need to do today?
Click on the Shop Now button on the left and check out the offerings in the weekly deals
Order any of the retiring 2015-2016 in colors items that you need (don’t forget there are some in the clearance rack)
Sign up for Paper Pumpkin so that you get next month’s kit (you can also order a prepaid item in the store rather than sign up for a subscription)
Use the current Stampin’ Rewards code (RJ6V9VRQ) if your order is under $150. If it’s over, don’t use my code, spend the Stampin’ Rewards yourself. If your order is over $50 (before tax and shipping – Paper Pumpkin counts although only $14.95 of the subscription cost counts since the rest is shipping), I’ll send you It’s My Party enamel dots for free. I can only do this if you don’t mark no contact or I can’t see who you are! This is a special offer from me to my customers.
Don’t forget to keep a tally of your order date, order number and product total as you work towards the total of $400 and therefore $40 of free product from me.
The new 2016-2017 catalogue will be revealed to demonstrators in a couple of week’s time, we’ll be able to pre-order certain items in May and the entire catalog will be available to everyone for purchase in June. If you’d like to be able to see the new catalogue early, it’s easy – just go to the “Become a Stampin’ Up! demonstrator” tab, press join and choose $125 worth of product for $99. I’m excited to see the new in colours and all the new items, including papers but that means that my current stash of paper is going to be retired. So last night I decided to focus on DSP for my card.
This DSP is from the Pretty Petals stack and I bordered it with a thin mat in old olive – taking the colour from the DSP. The other choice was calypso coral. I really like that there were more papers with very vanilla in them in this year’s catalogue, I hope this is true in the upcoming one. I stamped the sentiment and then cut it out with the die from the Rose Garden thinlits dies and then cut out another in old olive. I cut this in half – and trimmed the top and bottom so that it wouldn’t show. This enabled me to create a thin border (matching the width of the one behind the DSP) around the sentiment. I added a bow paper clip embellishment for some fun and then popped the sentiment up using dimensionals.
I encourage you to pull out your soon to be retiring DSP and have some fun!
I seem to be stuck on the Happy Home stamp set. I took a few days off and played with the set from Watercolor Wishes (although I used that again today), but the images from Happy Home have really caught my fancy. Today is Thursday and thus another challenge at CAS Colours & Sketches. This, being the first Thursday in the month, is a colour challenge and the first of Louise’s challenges. I meant to use Garden in Bloom and the bees looked adorable but I couldn’t get all the three colours to work to my satisfaction. So I went back to Happy Home!
And here’s the banner which inspired my card today
I took a piece of very vanilla and sponged it in daffodil delight. I then added some tangerine tango and finally some melon mambo. I put another layer of daffodil delight over the top. Then I stamped the image in the archival basic black. As I mentioned, the sentiment is from the Watercolor Wishes set and I stamped it in tangerine tango on the very vanilla card base. I glued the image onto the card base with fast fuse – I love this glue for serious gluing.
I hope you’ll pop over to CAS Colours & Sketches and see what the rest of the design team have made with these colours – and I hope that I’ll see your card in the gallery.
