Retiring Products

This is a time of year with mixed emotions – excitement at the up-coming new catalogue and sadness at the imminent loss of the retiring products.  Two I am really sad to be losing are the decorative label and petite petal punches so I thought I’d use them for this week’s challenges.  Both are sketches this week

CAS colurs and sketches challenge #218 is

And here are my entries using some retiring colours and some that are continuing

stampinuplacylovelycircleofspringwondrouswreatframelitschristinewiddowsoncomp2

stampinuplacylovelycircleofspringwondrouswreatframelitschristinewiddowsoncomp3

The other entries are here

The Global Design Project GDP#082 was similar

I used the same supplies again and came up with these

stampinuplacylovelycircleofspringwondrouswreatframelitschristinewiddowsoncomp

stampinuplacylovelycircleofspringwondrouswreatframelitschristinewiddowsoncomp4

Other entries are here .

I hope you like my interpretations. I particularly like the combination of mint macaron (retiring) with sweet sugarplum – even better in reality than in the photos.  The backgrounds were made by inking up the retiring lovely lace embossing folder before putting it through the big shot, one using the ‘front’ and one the ‘back’, I’m always torn between which I prefer!

If you’d like to get your hands on some of these products – especially the ones that are about to retire – you can do so through my online shop above or by clicking below .

Product List

Special Reason

This week many of my fellow Stampin’ Up! demos are in Amsterdam for our convention known as On Stage. I was unable to go this time 😦 so Amy Gould and I organised our own Off Stage event for the Diamond Stamping team. We had a lovely time and made some really pretty cards and boxes.

One of the stamp sets we used was Special Reason so I thought I’d use it for this week’s challenges.

The Global design project #GDP081 is

For the free choice of colour I used pear pizazz and this was the result

stampinupspecialreasondiamondstampingchristinewiddowson2

The other entries can be seen here.

The Colour and Sketches challenge #217 used different colours

and here is my version

stampinupspecialreasondiamondstampingchristinewiddowson

the other entries are here

I hope this inspires you to look again at this really cute stamp set, As with so many, once you start playing there are loads of possibilities

If you like to come to a class to have a go with it (or any other sets, I like a challenge!) do get in touch.

The items I used are available from my online shop and are listed below:

Product List

Swirly Bird

When I first saw the Swirly Bird stamp set I thought it was really boring…it just shows you shouldn’t trust your first impressions!  I’m just amazed how versatile this stamp set is, and am basing this month’s classes on that discovery.  I thought I’d also use it for this week’s challenges.

I’ve used the colours from the Global Design Project #GDP080

and the sketch from Colours and Sketches #216

I was inspired by a card on splitcoaststampers so changed the orientation and came up with

02April2017 comp

You can find the other entries for GDP here and CAS here.

The supplies I used are listed below and can be bought via my online shop.  If you’d like other swirly bird ideas, contact me for details of my classes.

Product List