Farewell to Lovely As A Tree Part 1

I didn't think I'd ever see the day! **Lovely As A Tree is finally retiring! I wanted to give this iconic Stampin' Up! stamp set a proper send off since it has been in Stampin' Up! catalogues an unprecedented 18 years, since 2001! Do you have it in your collection? If not, you only have three more weeks to take care of that! To be honest, I thought maybe it was going last year, when they brought out Rooted in Nature and Winter Woods complete with coordinating dies. I thought, "Oh, yeah, those are replacements for **Lovely As A Tree!", but I was wrong, so I thought it was immortal! Turns out I was just off by a year.

**These products will be retiring and no longer available in the 2019 - 2020 Annual Catalogue starting June 4, 2019.
***These products are no longer available from Stampin' Up!

What are your favourite cards that you've made with this stamp set? This week, I'm going to feature three new ones that I've created for my technique night classes and post a few oldies from my archives.

The first new design is a masculine card that would be great for Father's Day or a masculine birthday:

• It features the old oak tree image embossed in Copper Stampin' Emboss Powder on a layered circular panel that's the focal point. It also uses the **Wood Textures Designer Series Paper that will be retiring as well at the end of this month and a strip of 5/8" Burlap Ribbon.
• The sentiment is from the Rooted in Nature stamp set that is a bit of a replacement for **Lovely as a Tree. It's stamped in Cajun Craze here. I used Soft Suede, Sahara Sand and Cajun Craze for my palette.
• The dies I used for the center panels were the Layering Circles Dies and the Stitched Shapes Dies.

**These products will be retiring and no longer available in the 2019 - 2020 Annual Catalogue starting June 4, 2019.
***These products are no longer available from Stampin' Up!

Here are some blasts from the past with **Lovely as a Tree:

 Always great for Christmas cards!

 

And Christmas tags!

   

                          

A Fall - Themed Birthday Card

Sometimes in the background...

Northern Lights Technique

Table Decor


And maybe my favourite:

My take on that silly music video by Ylvis!

See how versatile this stamp set is! No wonder it has been around for so long. It's kind of timeless.

Anyway, back on Wednesday with another design with **Lovely As A Tree!

Click on the links below to take you to my On-Line Store, where you can read about, look at, and purchase if you wish, the products used to make this card today.

Product List

**Lovely As A Tree Clear-Mount Stamp Set [127793] $27.00	**Lovely As A Tree Wood-Mount Stamp Set [128655] $38.00	Rooted In Nature Clear-Mount Stamp Set [146482] $57.00	Rooted In Nature Wood-Mount Stamp Set [146479] $75.00	Rooted In Nature Clear-Mount Bundle [148353] $99.00
Rooted In Nature Wood-Mount Bundle [148352] $115.00	**Wood Textures Designer Series Paper Stack [144177] $15.00	Soft Suede 8-1/2" X 11" Card Stock [115318] $11.50	Cajun Craze 8-1/2" X 11" Card Stock [119684] $11.50	Sahara Sand 8-1/2" X 11" Card Stock [121043] $11.50
Cajun Craze Classic Stampin' Pad [147085] $10.25	Versamark Pad [102283] $12.25	Copper Stampin' Emboss Powder [141636] $6.75	5/8" (1.6 Cm) Burlap Ribbon [141487] $9.50	Embossing Buddy [103083] $8.25
Heat Tool [129053] $41.00	Layering Circle Framelits Dies [141705] $48.00	Stitched Shapes Framelits Dies [145372] $41.00	**Big Shot [143263] $150.00	Liquid Multipurpose Glue [110755] $5.50
***Fast Fuse Adhesive [129026] $13.50	Stampin' Dimensionals [104430] $5.50

**These products will be retiring and no longer available in the 2019 - 2020 Annual Catalogue starting June 4, 2019.
***These products are no longer available from Stampin' Up!

September's Paper Pumpkin and Something Glorious Coming Soon!

Having just returned home last night from a late fall camping trip to visit my daughter on her birthday and have some fun times with my two little grandsons, I didn't have a lot of time to create for my blog post today, so it was a perfect time to get out my September Paper Pumpkin kit and see what I could do with it. It is such a gorgeous kit this time, with gobs of opportunities for alternatives, but I only got a couple of different ideas happening last night. I'll show you some more later. I think the quality of these Paper Pumpkin kits just keeps getting better all the time! What I really liked about this one was the embossed kraft cardstock that the card bases and the pillow boxes are made of. I loved the texture those created, and ended up cutting up a pillow box, since I probably won't be using it, and using it as a panel on a larger 5 1/2" x 4 1/4" card.

First, I'll share with you how they are supposed to go together, with the official video from Paper Pumpkin:


             


Here's a closer look at my projects now. Can you spot the differences?

• Instead of stamping my big leaf just in Cajun Craze ink, I also heat embossed some of them in Copper Stampin' Emboss Powder. That looks just stunning, especially against that kraft cardstock.

• I embossed some of the greetings in Copper Stampin' Emboss Powder as well and added an edge of copper around the circular tag.
• I cut up one of the pillow boxes to use as an embossed kraft panel on a larger standard sized card. The base is Crushed Curry with a panel of Painted Autumn Designer Series Paper backed with Cajun Craze cardstock.

• If you would like to subscribe to Paper Pumpkin, make sure that you go to PaperPumpkin.com and click on subscribe before October 10, because the October and November kits are coordinated holiday projects designed to help you with your gift and greeting card needs at this time of year. You can have fun creating and meet practical needs at the same time!

As always, it was a lot of fun to do, without a lot of planning and designing which takes a lot of time.

And I promised that I would share with you that something glorious is coming soon! While there is not a definite release date yet for customers, from Oct. 1 -15, demonstrators are going to be able to order Stampin' Up's newest release - Stampin' Blends - a collection of alcohol markers for perfect blends when you are colouring and shading! I'm so excited about this because I've been missing our Blendabilities so much since they were taken off the market. The problems surrounding them were remedied and the new offering has had extensive testing and has passed SU's rigorous requirements and now Stampin' Up! Demonstrators can buy them between the above dates.

But it won't be long before customers will be able to get them as well, and you will be among the first to know as soon as a release date has been given! Mine are already ordered and I will begin to use them for projects soon.

If you don't want to wait, I suggest that you sign up as a demonstrator and purchase the markers as part of your starter kit! It would be well worth it! If you want to do that, click on Join My Team in the top menu and follow the prompts. Let me know ahead of time and I can give you the catalogue number to use to order the markers as part of your kit.

Faux Metal Impressions for Freshly Made Sketches

Stampin' Up! recently did a video tutorial on the Faux Metal Impressions technique and it's one that I haven't used for a long time, so I was reminded about it by the video and was anxious to use it again. I was particularly excited to use it with Copper Stampin' Emboss Powder, which we didn't have back when I first tried this technique out. Copper embossing powder makes such a warm, rich metallic finish that's perfect for fall cards.

The sketch from this week's challenge at Freshly Made Sketches was perfect to use with this idea. Here's their banner:

And I brought the Paisleys & Posies stamp set out after a long hiatus to do the honours. I don't know about you, but I normally find this to be a really hard stamp set to use effectively. It was, however, absolutely perfect for this card, because of all the detail inside the large paisley design. Here's how it turned out:

• To do this technique involves heat embossing with a metallic embossing powder (I chose Copper Stampin' Emboss Powder) on a piece of cardstock, doing it over and over until you have several layers. I completed 4 layers for this one. The last time you use your Versamark-coated stamps to stamp right into the hot, soft embossing powder layers. When it cools, you can easily remove your stamps and they leave impressions behind. It doesn't leave any embossing powder on the stamps, or melt the stamps at all. They are as good as new, or at least as good as the condition they were in before you stamped!
• I used two different patterns from the Foil Frenzy Specialty Designer Series Paper for the background panels. This is another product that I have found difficult to use in the past, but which works out perfectly for this project. The rich foil colours on the kraft background add to the warmth and richness of this card.
• The matte layer is the Copper Foil sheet. I fell in love with this foil the moment I saw it in last year's Holiday Catalogue and the love affair has continued this year. The card base is Fresh Fig.

• The sentiment is from the Painted Harvest stamp set, and here I heat embossed it in Copper Stampin' Emboss Powder on Very Vanilla cardstock and die cut it with a banner framelit from the Bunch of Banners Framelits set. I die cut a piece of Copper Foil Sheet with that same banner die to get the copper frame for the sentiment. I adhered both the frame and sentiment middle on another scrap piece of Very Vanilla cardstock to give it the strength it needed to stay together, then mounted it on Dimensionals on the card front.

On Saturday, I held a very successful Holiday Catalogue Launch. Although much of the decor you see here was cased from the Holiday Catalogue, it was still fun and effective in giving my guests a clear idea of what the catalogue holds. 

We played a game of Stampamon Go, where I place stickers with QR Codes matching several different new products from the Holiday Catalogue around my house and the guests had to find the stickers, scan them to find out what products they represented and then write down the location of the sticker they found for the product listed on the page they had. Everyone really enjoyed that.

There was great food and lots of door prizes and tons of good food for everyone.

If you live in the area, you'll have to come out for my next one! Guaranteed good time!

Click on the links below to take you to my On-Line Store, where you can read about, look at, and purchase if you wish, the products used to make this card today.

Product List

Paisleys & Posies Photopolymer Stamp Set [142196]	Painted Harvest Photopolymer Stamp Set [144783]	Foil Frenzy Specialty Designer Series Paper [144125]	Copper Foil Sheets [142020]	Fresh Fig 8-1/2" X 11" Cardstock [144242]
Very Vanilla 8-1/2" X 11" Card Stock [101650]	Versamark Pad [102283]	Copper Stampin' Emboss Powder [141636]	Embossing Buddy [103083]	Heat Tool [129053]
Bunch Of Banners Framelits Dies [141488]	Big Shot [143263]	Fast Fuse Adhesive [129026]	Stampin' Dimensionals [104430]