Susan Harwood MissQsCraftingContinuum

 Hi Crafting Friend, Well, here it is, the last week before the new annual catalog goes live on May 2nd! It's exciting and sad at the same time. Exciting because of all the new colors, stamps, dies, embellishments, etc. that we will have to play with; sad because so many favorites are retiring.  All this month I have been trying to feature projects that use the soon to be retired products I have so you can have some more inspiration to draw from. I hope you have been enjoying them. This week I used Hand Penned Petals  2-step stamps and the coordinating Penned Flowers dies. The card isn't difficult, but it is fiddly. I do love how it turned out though, so it was totally worth it! The product list with links to shop, if you're so inclined, is below the photo. I started with a Very Vanilla card base (5.5 X 8.5, scored on the long side at 4.25) Using Memento ink and the largest floral image, I stamped off once each time I inked the stamp and randomly covered the front of the

 Hi Crafting Friend, I don't know about you, but I always seem to run out of thank you cards so that's what today's card is. I pulled out Mint Macaron & Pale Papaya, two colors that are soon to retire, to start my creative juices flowing. They made me think of spring and flowers so I chose a floral set that will soon be retiring, then I looked for a DSP that would coordinate. What resulted is what you see in the pictures below. The only stamping was the greeting (added after I had determined the placement of the focal floral arrangement), the foliage and some "texture" under the floral focal point that came from an old favorite retired set. (its Gorgeous Grunge, I put it in the product list at the very end in case you have it & want to use it) I added a little color with sponge daubers too. As you may have noticed if you've seen many of my cards, most of the time I'm a fan of simple cards, and this one is pretty simple. The Mint Macaron card base i

 Hi Crafting Friend, We're on the final countdown before the new catalog launches so I am going to try to feature mostly products that will be retiring to give you some more inspiration before they leave. This week I combined the beautiful artwork of the Pretty Birds stamps set and Birdhouse dies with a sentiment from the Peekaboo Farm stamp set . I used retiring DSP and colors that I love and will miss for creating my feature projects.  To make this card you need a standard size A2 card base (a half sheet of cardstock scored and folded in half to a final size of 4.25 X 5.5) of Soft Succulent . The Texture Chic DSP layer is 4 X 5.25 and I used the Layering Diorama dies to cut out the hole. I backed it with a piece of Basic White cut to 4.125 X 5.375 and  stamped the branch in Soft Suede  ink for the bird inside the cage to perch on. To make the cage look antiqued, I die-cut it and coated it with   Versamark ink , then with gold embossing powder and heat embossed it. I did this