Farewell A Nice Cuppa

I intended blogging about these cards before I went away, but fate had other ideas. When I went to photograph them I found one of my lights was no longer working properly, making it hard to take good photos. I ordered a new light, not expecting it to arrive before I headed off to OnStage in Sydney, but I was caught out by great service and the light arrived days before I left... and I didn't get an opportunity to take the photos in the mayhem of getting organised to go away.

However, things have probably worked out for the best as now I can point out the retired product that I used on them! A Nice Cuppa and the coordinating Cups & Kettle dies will not be carrying over to the new Stampin' Up! main catalogue. I'm quite sad about that and a little surprised by it - I know I'm not alone in enjoying a cuppa! Designer Series Paper usually retires, so the Timeless Eelgance DSP retiring wasn't a shock, but I wasn't expecting the metalic Baker's Twine to retire - indeed I had only just ordered it a few weeks ago (after forgetting for months on end!). I really like the metallic Baker's Twine as a non-white option with a twist of bling.

I didn't have much of a plan when I sat down to make these cards, I just wanted something quite simple so flicked through my patterened papers to pick something I thought would work well with the tea cups. I then cut a bunch of tea cups out of a few different papers from the pack and started thinking about the layout, working with large pieces of the paper in the background.

The Timeless Elegance paper was such a great choice, and well named! I managed to keep the Wink Of Stella brush away from these cards, instead just a touch of bling in the pearls and silver metallic Baker's Twine.

I often have stretches of every card being in this landscape orientation, and I have noticed I haven't done that for a while, so mixed it up a bit with one design this way.

It can be tricky to attach vellum to a card so you won't have adhesive showing through the vellum. For the "steam" on these cards I left the exposed vellum unattached, and the little bit that is behind the die cut tea cup is the only spot where it is stuck to anything.

While I used a number of different papers from the Timeless Elegance pack, I didn't use any with Sahra Sand on them. Instead I added Basic Gray and Smoky Slate to the mix.

A Nice Cuppa stamp set & Cups & Kettles framelit dies 141074, Basic Black A4 cardstock 121688, Basic Gray A4 cardstock 121689, Smoky Slate A4 cardstock 131291, Very Vanilla A4 cardstock 106550, vellum A4 cardstock 106584, Timeless Elegance designer series paper 138444, Basic Gray archival stamp pad 140932, Smoky Slate stamp pad 131179, Lots Of Labels framelits 138281, Pearl Basic Jewels 119247, silver metallic Baker's Twine 132976, dimensionals 104430