A couple of weeks ago as a Paper Pumpkin alternative card, I made a mossy meadow and very vanilla card using the stamp sets in the recent kit, All about Everything and Lovely Little Wreath. At the time, I said that I was planning to make the card in the other retiring incolors. I’ve finally got around to it and I’m not  sure which is my favourite. Here’s a photo of them all together – it’s not the best photo, but I can’t get them in my light box and get them all in the picture. If I could spare the time from card making, I’d read the instructions for using my second flash. But it’s hard to give up creativity time for instruction reading time!

Here’s a reminder of how I made the cards. I first stamped the sentiment which is from the All About Everything bonus Paper Pumpkin set last month, first working out the placement with a piece of the retired ribbon. Then I stamped the starbursts (from Lovely Little Wreath) changing the orientation of the starburst each time. Next I attached a piece of the ribbon and finally added the very vanilla enamel dots from Home for Christmas. You’ll notice that the size of the dots changed indicating that I am finishing up my embellishments! I still have all the mossy meadow dots to go.

Here’s a better look at each of the retiring incolors, first is blackberry bliss

Next up is hello honey

followed by lost lagoon

a reminder of the mossy meadow card

and finally, tangelo twist

Let me know which you like best! I can’t decide.

See you tomorrow,

Liz

Well, here’s the fourth Paper Pumpkin March 2016 Alternate and this one also uses the All About Everything set that was free in the April kit. As I mentioned the other day, I gained a new team member recently and of course I wanted to make her a card. The April kit was perfect for this. It’s definitely time to celebrate and I used the two stamp sets to make a shooting star. Seems appropriate, yes?

It’s really hard to photograph to get a good view of the shine. I rubbed the blackberry bliss card with the embossing buddy and then stamped the images from the Lovely Little Wreath and All about Everything in versamark and then sprinkled on the gold embossing powder. After my favourite part – heating with the heat gun – the images really popped. To finish off my one layer card, I stamped the greeting on the inside from Welcome Words in blackberry bliss with the second line being stamped off once. This is a really useful set (especially at the moment at work) and I’m not happy that it has been retired – grab it whilst it lasts if you need to welcome people in the near future.

I finished the envelope with a liner cut from the in colours designer series stack in blackberry bliss. I have a little more of that to use in the next month. I’m really going to miss blackberry bliss although I won’t miss what it tries to do to my Stampin’ Scrub. I tend to spray a blackberry bliss inked stamp with Stampin’ Mist on a paper towel and blot the colour off before I use it on the Scrub. Otherwise everything gets pink!

Every time that I go through the retiring list, I find more sets that I’m going to miss. I recommend that you take a look in case there’s anything that you can’t live without – some of them have a good discount on them.

See you tomorrow,

Liz