Sale-a-bration DSP is only available for a short time and it’s exclusive to the promotion – it won’t be turning up on the clearance rack later on. Some of us seem to collect DSP. I like to take it out of my 12 by 12 file folders and look at it, consider making a card and then put it back. So I haven’t bought any of this year’s SAB or Occasions new DSP because I am getting quite a stash! I wasn’t a demo during Sale-a-bration last year (I wasn’t even making cards) but my sister joined towards the end and had an extra Sweet Sorbet pack which she gave to me.

I tried to make a card with DSP for a friend’s birthday at the end of January but there was something missing. Caro, after viewing it on Skype, gave me an evil grin and suggested ribbon. I don’t use ribbon either – but I do like to look at it and put it back! –  so the thought of DSP and ribbon was causing her quite a lot of mirth. I played with the design some more and did in fact incorporate ribbon and DSP – I’ll show it after his birthday.  As Susan Itell says, once you have a keeper of a layout, why reinvent the wheel. Good point. So I decided to make another card with the same sort of design but in different colours, different DSP and different shapes and that was Caro’s birthday card from Tuesday which I really loved. Actually the only similarities, as you’ll see at the end of the month, is that there is DSP for the background, there’s a matted shape on the right and there’s ribbon on the left. I was so pleased with Caro’s card that I decided to make another variant.

The base is crisp cantaloupe with a piece of the sweet sorbet DSP on top. Before adhering the DSP, I wrapped a piece of the crisp cantaloupe baker’s twine around the DSP, just long enough to tuck behind the DSP and be glued down with glue dots. I then used stampin’ dimensionals to ensure that the DSP wasn’t lumpy where it was over the twine. After that it was a simple matter of cutting another small piece of twine and tying a bow around the first piece of twine. I stamped the image also in crisp cantaloupe from the Stampin’ Up! Embellished Events stamp set and cut it out using the second windows frames die and matted it on a piece of crisp cantaloupe cut with the third one. I then glued the matted image to the DSP. Although it would’ve been easier to glue the image before popping up the DSP, it made it easier for the placement of the image once the twine was in place.

Now that I’ve used some DSP, I think I can let myself buy some of the new packs. And they are beautiful!