Hello Peeps,

A while ago my upline placed a challenge on her team Facbook page. We were to make something with Christmas products that was NOT A CHRISTMAS CREATION. For this we were allowed to use Christmas products from the Annual Cataloque or from the Autumn/Winter catalogue which will be current as of September 5th 2018. As a Demonstrator we get to pre-order and I took advantage of that opportunity this month by ordering 2 Christmas stamp sets.

Pre-order

The first set is called Making Every Day Bright. It incluedes lots of cute lamps and is obviously intended for year round use. The other is called So Santa. It is a funny set that has 3 images of santa with matching sentiments. I was instantly smitten with the stamp showing santa with a surfboard. It was just begging to be combined with the Tropical Escape suite from the Annual catalogue. I took a careful look at the stamp. At santa with a cocktail in his hand and his toes in the sand. Hey, that rhymes. And all of a sudden a wave of inspiration washed over me, the genius a-ha moment. He’s RETIRED and now he can do as he pleases. After putting that in 2 bits of rhyme, the idea for the card was born.

Retirement Card

After stampint the image on to Whisper White cardstock using Memento Tuxedo Black ink, I coloured him using alcohol markers. I decided it would be fun to attach him to the inside of the card and cut out a shope from the front so you can see him peeking throught. Using the Layering Ovals Framelits dies I cut a window, which I traced around my santa with a light pencil line. I coloured the background of the santa image up to that line. I also drew some lines to guide my writing of the poem. After first drawing in the letters in pencil, I traced the letters with a black fineliner pen. I decorated the outside of the card with a scalloped edge around my window in a similar colour of cardstock as santa’s trunks. Finally I cut some leaves from coloured cardstock with the Tropical Thinlits Dies.  I stamped the flowers from the Tropical Chic stamp set and cut them out using the Tropical Thinlits Dies too.

And now we wait….

As soon as I had finished the card, I photographed it and uploaded it to enter the challenge. There are quite a few creative entries already. We have until September 7th to enter after which we will choose the winner of the most fun/original creation through a poll. It’s not going to be easy.

See you soon,

Leonie

Independant Stampin’ Up! demonstrator in Eindhoven and surrounding area