What a perfect combination of challenges, Retro Sketches and Retro Rubber. I absolutely adore the current Retro Sketch, so great for using up leftover pieces of DSPs. The colour challenge over at Retro Rubber was much more difficult for me. I'm not very good with green, but I had a nice selection of Stampin' Up DSP leftovers to use which turned out great for this challenge. Unfortunately it's impossible to take any photos in daylight these days as it's dark before I leave in the morning and dark when I get back in the evening, so the colours in the photo don't look quite as good as they do in real life. I guess I will have to wait until March or April before my photos stop being completely hopeless. In addition my iPhoto seems to have gone nuts, so I can't even edit the photos until I get the problem sorted. Sigh.
The idea behind Retro Rubber is to use your old, possibly long forgotten stamps. The stamp I chose to use is quite old, among the first stamps I bought back when I first started stamping. I haven't used it that much, but it's a pretty little stamp. A lot of the papers I used are also quite old, so they might well make the retro category. I also did a bit of stamping inside the card.
Card: Stampin' Up Very Vanilla and Crumb Cake
Stamps: Hobbycraft Clear Stamps Thistle, Paper Smooches A Little Lovin
Ink: Stampin' Up Baked Brown Sugar
Paper: Various scraps of Stampin' Up DSPs
Other: Stampin' Up Basic Pearls
The theme of the current Shopping our Stash challenge is "Oldest punch or die". I can still remember buying the Stampin' Up Chalk Talk dies back in the days when I didn't even have a die cutting machine yet. I used them for a long time just by tracing the outline with a pencil and fussy cutting the shapes. Then finally I got my beloved Big Shot, and I just love die cutting. I love the feeling of turning the handle and popping the paper out of the die. So when I saw the challenge, I knew I had to make a card with these much beloved and well used dies of mine.
I decided to make a Thank you card, as you can never have too many in your stash (ok, so looking at my box of cards you *can* in fact have too many thank you cards, but that wasn't my point). I used the die to cut out a tag and stamped the cute flowers from the Petal Parade stamp set. I matted the tag onto Baked Brown Sugar card. The background is a DSP from a set called Tea for Two. Like all other crafting stuff, I hoard DSPs like crazy, but then I'm really bad at using them. I keep thinking I want to save them for a "special occasion", but what could be more special than crafting time? And I managed to use some random cream ribbon from my stash as well, so this is truly a great stash card. I have also bought the Summer Starfruit ink pad ages ago as I thought I would use it loads, but in fact this is the first time I'm breaking it out. I really like the colour combo of Baked Brown Sugar, Blushing Bride and Summer Starfruit, it has a rather retro feel to it.
Card: Leonardo Stationery 350 gsm Smooth White Card, Stampin' Up Baked Brown Sugar, Hobbycraft 160 gsm cream card
Paper: Stampin' Up Tea for Two Designer Series Paper
Stamps: Stampin' Up Petal Parade, So Very Grateful
Inks: Stampin' Up Baked Brown Sugar, Blushing Bride and Summer Starfruit
Other: Stampin' Up Chalk Talk Framelits, cream ribbon from my stash
