Blogging Friends Blog Hop – Retiring Items

Welcome to this month’s “Blogging Friends Blog Hop!”

Who are the ‘Blogging Friends’? We are Stampin’ Up! demonstrators all across the U.S. and Canada. Most of us haven’t met in person, but love Stampin’ Up and want to share with you! Please join us on the 1st of every month to see what wonderful things we have created!  Each month we’ll have a different theme; this month it is Retiring items!

WOW..There are so many retiring items each year – which makes me sad to see them go, but excited for the new products that will take their place! With so many to choose from, I’ve decided to show a few items here that are special to me.

This first one was from the Occasions catalog. It’s using the stamp set Chase Your Dreams. You may recall I used this one on a previous card with a sunset, for the sentiment. This time I’ve used the stamp that was my whole reason for buying it! The castle! 🙂

As soon as I saw this I knew I had to get it, well, because I’ve been there! This is Neuschwanstein Castle in Germany. It truly is the fairy tale castle. So, I’ve made it a simple card, focusing on the castle itself, and added some shading with sparkle around it.

I am definitely sorry to see this go, but will also be making sure to make lots more cards with this set!  For this particular card, I used Smokey Slate and Cherry Cobbler, and then blender pens with the ink pads to color it in. There’s also a bit of Crushed Curry, and Soft Sky is sponged in the background.

This next one I want to share because it went with the sunset card. They both used retiring items and used the same technique to create them… A lot of sponging! It’s sometimes called the galaxy technique, and in this card, I actually made a galaxy!

Starting out with lots of bright colors… just start sponging. Overlap, leave gaps.. doesn’t matter. The proceed with a darker color, like Night of Navy. Fill in some of the gaps and overlap the colors. To get the stars, I’ve used one of my favorite retiring sets, Gorgeous Grunge. I’m not sure what I’ll do without it! I inked the dots in white ink, then stamped all over the card. I finished it off by flicking an Aqua Painter on it (just plain water), along with some Wink of Stella. The sentiment, very appropriate, comes from Over the Rainbow (also retiring). It’s embossed in white, then finished off with more Stella.

I hope these inspire you to get creating!
The retiring items are going fast, some are as supplies last! If you need anything off your wish list, just give me a call, or shop my online store <click here> using the current Hostess Code: 6PYCBX7J, or click the image below:

Thanks for stopping by!
Mak

Now…. Please take the time to hop on through the rest of the Blog Hop today, you will be heading over to Tammy, and I hope you have fun looking through all their projects, too!

In case you’ve never ‘done’ a blog hop before, it’s really easy!
Click on the image below, and you’ll be taken directly to Tammy’s post, the next blog in the hop. Keep clicking on that image at the bottom of each blog post, and you’ll hop through all of the participating blogs, back to where you started!  If you’d prefer to hop about at your leisure, you can click on the individual links for each blog. Happy Hopping!

Participating Blogging Friends, in order of appearance:

Crystal Komara
Libby Fens
Mary Blocher
Danica Ferrante
Jodi Skrip Horsley
Leanne Johnson
Michelle Clark
Lorene Yoshimura-Tanigawa
Mary Ann Rossiter (StampinMak) – You are here!
Tammy Gill
Rick Adkins
Lisa Harvey Reber