It’s that time of year again, and I can hardly believe it!

Yes, the list of retiring Stampin’ Up! stamp sets and accessories has been released! There are LOADS going, and some are my absolute favourites to use….. but it’s time for some fresh sets too! (Read : I have everything I want from the current catalogue, and need new stuff to spend my money on, and feed my addiction. :P )

I had to make a baby card for one of the girls at work who just had a baby girl on Valentine’s Day (awwwww), so it was the perfect time to pull out the Jumbo Stampin’ Around Wheel, ‘Wash Time’, while I still can. It’s such a cute wheel!

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The colours are the same as in the previous post - Regal Rose, Bashful Blue, Apricot Appeal, Almost Amethyst, with a smidge of Certainly Celery (well the grass had to be green!!). It looks so different though!

This one also uses the Paisley Background which is NOT retiring (hoopla!). I’ve paper pierced the Apricot band, and all the edges of everything is sponged. There’s a teensy bit of light blue gingham, and some regal rose grosgrain (dyed with a reinker) tied through a clear button, and adhered with a pop up glue dot.

The retiring stamp sets I’ve used in this card are…

• Wash Day Jumbo Stampin’ Around Wheel;
• Whimsical Alphabet Lowercase; and
• All Year Cheer I.

There are already some items on the retiring list which are SOLD OUT, so please get your orders in early so you’re not disappointed! To see the list for yourself, contact your demonstrator, or if you don’t have one, I’d be happy to send one to you - just as I have for my customers.

Hope you like the card!

My Ikea tray is working! This was an image I stamped out a while ago, and found again after my cleanup to fit in my Ikea storage stuff…. it’s a Stem Silhouette image, in Regal Rose.

What I did, was check out the Colour Coach wheel for inspiration, and these are all the colours suggested for Regal Rose! How easy is that! I probably don’t have them in the right proportion (that’s something I need to work on quite frankly ) but I think it’s ok.

The image had gotten a little bit scruffy while it was shunted around my desk over the past months, so I screwed it up completely ( the cardstock that is ), flattened it out with my hand, and then used a dauber to highlight the creases with Regal Rose ink. 

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The other colours are Almost Amethyst, Bashful Blue, and Apricot Appeal. On the base card is the Weathered background, and a bit of Print Pattern towards the bottom. Everything has been swiped or scruffed within an inch of it’s life, then the card is finished with a small knot of light blue gingham.

Hope you like it, thanks for looking!!

I can’t believe Sale-A-Bration is nearly over already!

I thought I should put this one up now, before it’s too late - once these Sale-A-Bration sets are gone, they’re GONE! (And it would be mean to put up a card using a set you couldn’t get now, wouldn’t it?? ;;)

I made this a couple of weeks ago during an impromptu stamping Cyber Night with my Stampin’ Up! team - the challenge was to choose a card from the current Idea Book & Catalogue, and replicate it - exchanging the stamp set for a Sale-A-Bration set or Hostess set.

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This is one of the cards on page 43 of the Idea Book & Catalogue. I substituted the set used in the catalogue for the Sale-A-Bration set “Merci”, and coloured the butterfly image with an Aqua Painter and inkpads. The colours are Vintage Violet, Marigold Morning and Old Olive.

I think I’m going to miss this one!

A quick reminder of what Sale-A-Bration is about - all you need to do is spend $100 on Stampin’ Up! product, and you earn a FREE Sale-A-Bration set! There are four to choose from, which you can see online here. Time is running out though, Sale-A-Bration ends on February 29th!!

Last weekend, we took a trip to IKEA - I lured David there by telling him we were going merely to take advantage of the $2 cooked breakfast which is so delish :^O . Naturally this led to a buying bonanza, mostly for storage idea’s for my stamping room ;)) .

I will soon have a new camera to share my ’stuff’ with you, so I can’t show you yet, but in the big clean up that followed, I got all my stamped images together and on top of the new ‘in tray’ thing I bought, and vowed to actually use some of them now that I can see them sitting there…. and making me feel guilty about their existence. 

So here is a card I made with the Stampin’ Up! Summer Mini set ‘Big Blooms’, once again using images I stamped an age ago by borrowing Yvonne’s set.

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I started out quite simply, but it took on a life of it’s own - the base card has French Script and Print Pattern stamped in Bashful Blue, on Bashful Blue cardstock. The flower images are stamped in Bashful Blue and Pale Plum, trimmed with scissors and sponged around the edges to give them some definition. That green is Sage Shadow, I really like that colour! To finish off, there is light blue gingham ribbon and ivory organdy ribbon secured with a Bashful Blue brad. There’s a lot of sponging, distressing and inkpad swiping as well!

Hope you like it!

Muahahahaaaaa my little plan of using David’s work camera has succeeded, so here is his Valentine’s card from me….

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It’s very simple - just the stamp set Dream Come True, with the heart images embossed in gold. There is gold cord wrapped around the rectangular love image, and I’ve used the paper piercer to go around the edge of the vanilla piece, then joined the dots with my Ruby Red marker to make it look stitched. I saw this recently on someone’s blog but I cannot for the life of me think who it was, so if it was you, let me know and I can credit you here.

The colours are Ruby Red and Very Vanilla.

Hope you enjoy this more than reading Number 7 below :-*

A temporary one at least! It just came to me while I was in the shower (where I do my best thinking) that my husband works as a real estate agent! I know it seems like a revelation I should have had about 5 years ago when he started this job, but stick with me, this is going somewhere….. now seeing as he sells houses, and designs advertisements and sales boards with PHOTO’S on them…… he must have a camera at his disposal!

OHO! Now you see where I’m going with this! I can put my little card doodah into his camera at work, and take some noice shots of my cards, then pop home and UPLOAD THEM HERE!!!!! \:D/

Not today though. I have to go to work - I’m thinking Thursday looks like a good day!

So in the meantime, here are 7 things you may not know about me, and probably never wanted to either…

1. I have gone out with a total of 4 David’s in my quest for a good one…. when I started going out with the fourth, my Dad used to call him Mark IV which went down like a tonne of bricks. 
2. I married Mark IV in Vanuatu on the beach of Erakor Island, on 9/9/99.
3. I like to eat things in odd numbers ie. seven peas in a forkful, or a biscuit in five bites. (my sister had the gall to say I was a freak for this - turns out she likes to eat things in EVEN numbers. Weirdo.)
4. When I was 23 I drove as far as Gladstone Qld, from Woodend Vic, by myself over a month - I spent a fantastic weekend on Heron Island pretending to be the cousin of one of my sister’s friends so I could get the staff discount. It was the best holiday - I stopped where/when I wanted and did what I liked, without having to consult anyone else. Bliss.
5. When my youngest sister was small, she had a blankie which had a sort of chiffony, organza type covering that she used to rub between her fingers, and the sound would set all my hair on end - I still cringe when I use our Stampin’ Up! organdy ribbons on my cards! Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.
6. In high school I tried to brew alcohol under my bed using an icecream container filled with sugar, water, lemon skins and sultana’s. I should have known Mr Mills the woodwork teacher was just having us on with that one.
7. Finally number 7 hooray! I am more boring than I first thought - this is hard! OK this is a gross one - when I was pregnant with my third child (thankyou Quinn), not only did I have hives for the last 6 weeks - I also became intimately acquainted with my cervix, which chose to pop out and say hello at regular intervals. Too much infomation? :-? I think that may have influenced my decision to stop having children at three. That and the fact that I was going INSANE.

Well, that’s me for today - see you on Thursday with any luck!

(Number 7 should make those who have been asking for a blog update think twice before asking again ) 

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My darling son has broken my camera! I haven’t had it that long, and I’m really surprised at how lost I feel without it . And of course it’s very frustrating not being able to take photo’s of my creations to share here either.

So. I have been trawling through my already uploaded images, to find something, anything, to share today - and I found the layout I mentioned some time ago - this is the one I still need to finish with some journalling and a title, but I’ll get there eventually!

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There’s another 12 x 12 page that goes with it (yes! a double layout, taking my total layouts ever made to 6 I think!), but the photo is even worse than this one, so it’ll have to wait.

I started this one by copying the photo frame in the Summer Mini Catalogue, on page 8, and then thought how easy it would be to convert to a 12 x 12. The colours I’ve used are Tempting Turquoise, Old Olive, More Mustard, Chocolate Chip, and Rose Red just like in the catalogue. The stamp set is Big Blooms. The pattern on the bottom of the layout is a jumbo Stampin’ Around wheel called Watercolour Vine, which I love! I stamped it first in Tempting Turquoise, and then again with Whisper White, but rolled it just slightly ‘off’ the turquoise pattern, to give it that shadowed effect. There is also a touch of the Au Chocolat double sided paper in there (also from the Summer Mini).

Well I think that’s it for today, I really should get in the shower and go and get the cement etc for our new BBQ area David is making - I have to drive the car with the trailer attached though, and that’s a bit scary! Well the driving is not so scary, it’s the ‘trying to reverse up the driveway in the daylight when all the neighbours can snigger behind their curtains at my feeble attempts’ bit that I don’t look forward to!

I hope I either a) get a new camera, or b) get the old one fixed. It’s either that, or I’m going to have to resort to actually thinking of 7 things about myself that you don’t know, and do the Tag’s I’ve been getting lately and pushing to the end of the ‘to do’ list…. :”>