Saying Good Bye to Retiring Products - May Blog Hop

Welcome to the NC Demos Blog Hop!  Did you enjoy the projects that Tracie shared with you?  She always has great cards!  It's time to say good-bye to our favorite retiring products from the 2016-17 catalog, so our May theme is all about saying farewell before we concentrate on our new catalog which premiers on June 1.

My first share in my favorites is a card made with Gorgeous Grunge and a new stamp set, Lovely Friends.  This card literally took me about 5 minutes to make!  I think it took longer to decide on what colors to use (Pacific Point, Lemon Lime and Daffodil Delight) than to make the card! Seriously!

My next favorite stamp set that is retiring is Wetlands.  I love the sea oats and the little birds in the set.  In the card below, I stamped the birds onto a piece of card stock that I did the Marbeling Technique on using shaving cream.  We did that technique in April at my stamp club and my gals loved it!

This next card is also from Wetlands but using the goose this time.  I have not used him very much but I thought this makes a good masculine card.  There is a 2 1/2" piece of window sheet on the card and I masked off a 1 1/4" strip on the inside (that you can see through the window sheet) and sponged Mint Macaron and Crumb Cake.  (Mint Macaron is a color that I am going to sorely miss!!  I am hoping it will return in the future to our color line up.)  Next I stamped the grass in Old Olive.  I also stamped a bit of the grass on the outside of the card.

Here is the card open so you can see how I made it.  You just sandwich the window sheet between the 1/2" strip and the 2 1/2" piece of the card.  We are going to do a similar card in Stamp Club next month but I will be using the Seaside Shores fish that is carrying over to the new catalog.

Another thing I will miss is some of the DSP that we had in the retiring catalog.  I need to stop hoarding all the DSP and use it up during the year.  Don't know why I do that every year - it's not like I can't just order more if I need it!  The card below uses the stamps from Seaside Shore and the corresponding DSP, By the Shore.  I love this DSP and another great one is the paper stacks.   

When I went to my daughter's house last Christmas, I made her a collage frame to hang in her guest bathroom using the By the Shore DSP.  She lives in Hawaii so this was a perfect addition to her "beachy" bathroom!

Well, I hope you have enjoyed the projects I have shared with you.  I didn't mean to put so many on this page but I just couldn't stop!  There are a lot of favorites leaving us but also a lot of new favorites coming our way!!

I know you will enjoy the rest of the stops on the blog hop!  Just follow along below.  If you are going in order, Laurie Meier will be your next stop.

Debra Ballance-Byrd  

Tamra Davis  

Jo Anne Hewins

Michelle Irinyi 

Tracie Evans Langley

Sharon Maranich  - YOU ARE HERE

Laurie Meier

Frances Wagner 

October Stamp Club Cards

For this month's Stamp Club card, I concentrated on fall and the holidays. 

If you would like to order any of the items to make these cards, please order online using my October code: 6G7GE4YW   Your order will be mailed directly to you.  You can also check out the Clearance items and include them with your order.

I used the following stamps for this card: Cookie Cutter Halloween; Goulish Grunge; Happy Scenes; Timeless Textures

l  Stamp the Brick Wall (from Ghoulish Grunge) on the white card with Smoky Slate ink.  Use the little splatter stamp (Timeless Textures) and stamp with Pumpkin Pie ink. 

l  Stamp Spider Web in corner with black ink.  

  Next the trick was to find a spider!  Finally found one on a retired set from last year, Happy Scenes.  Probably just as easy to use a marker and draw him in! 

The 3 black squares are 1 3/4" each. The Pumpkin Pie, Pear Pizazz & Wisteria Wonder square were die cut with the Squares Thinlits.

l  Next stamp creatures onto white paper & punch out w/Cookie Cutter Punch; color and adhere to the black squares.  Stamp the sentiment (again, I used a retired set called And Many More.

 The Ugly Christmas Sweater card was a big hit!  I had others to choose from but everyone picked the Christmas one.   If you Google Cable Knit Sweater Card, you will find a bunch of different sweaters with instructions.  It's really pretty simple.  Run your card stock through the Big Shot using the Cable Knit Embossing Folder.  This is a really thick folder and I found it helpful to mist the card stock with a little water before embossing.  For the white shirt underneath, this is the white card base.  I used the Circle Thinlits (or a 2" Circle Punch) to punch a circle.  The ribbing is made using a Crimper but if you do not have one of those, you can use your Score Board and score on every line.  This is a fun card to play with and come up with lots of different ideas as I did below.

 The next card uses the beautiful Petals and Paisleys!  I love the DSP, the stamp set and the framelits!  Here are my directions:

Emboss the Rich Razzleberry card stock with the Petal Burst embossing folder.

Adhere DSP to top of Razzleberry card stock.

Tie knot in Mint Macaron ribbon and adhere around Razzleberry card.

Adhere Razzleberry card to Night of Navy card.

Stamp sentiment onto Vanilla card stock and cut out.  Matte onto Night of Navy and adhere to Razzleberry card stock.

Stamp scallop circles in different colored inks; die cut with Paisley thinlits; adhere them together with dimensionals.  Adhere Candy Dot to center.

Die cut large Paisley from Copper paper and the floral pieces from Mint Macaron and Night of Navy; arrange all onto card.

 Next is the cute little scarecrow from Cookie Cutter Halloween.

Use a sponge or dauber & sponge So Saffron on bottom of white card

Sponge Soft Sky on top (use a cloud template)

Stamp wheat from Wetlands w/Delightful Dijon on bottom of card.

On scrap white, stamp Scarecrow & color.  Use Cookie Cutter Punch & punch out.

Stamp sentiment w/Dijon ink.