Angel Company - Retirement List

It's that time of year again; The Angel Company is retiring some of the stamps from their current catalogue to make way for new and fresh designs in June. All of the stamps on the list below can be purchased for 25% off their original catalogue price (the price shown in the online store is the reduced price). Click on the stamp name to see the images. Orders can be placed by adding the images to your shopping cart.

Halloween Town
Pumpkin Day
Fright Night
Halloween Greetings
All Occasion Icons
My Sunshine
Faithbooking
My Life
Fantasy Flourishes
Artsy Elements
Enchanted Florals
Butterbees and More
Blissfully Ever After
Wedding Day
The Wedding
Eclectic Swirls
Everyday Eclectic
Old World Ornaments
Starburst Florals
Ornate Swirls
Something's Fishy
Distressed Typewriter Bet
Family Fun
Floral Dingbats
Pattern Sayings
Moxi Minis
Bloom and Grow
All Season Stamps
Seasonal Cuties
Oh How
Floral Favorites

Flower Doodles
Paisley Words
Salsa Flowers
Swirly Bouquet
Loops and Swirls
Rose Garden
It's Always Springtime
Friendship Flowers
Enjoy Today
Juliette Florals
Fresh Air Favorites
Victorian Collage
The Arts
Ornamental Ribbons
Flutter By
Basic Birds
Goodness of God
Tiger Face
Mountain Scenery
African Giraffe
Charcoal Leaves
Punctuation
Floral Swirls
Our Savior
Love Doodles
Celtic Images
Blessed With
On Safari
Our Baby
Ribbon Borders
Baby On Board
Peek A Boo
Double Trouble
Twins
Kid Praises
Bold Flourishes
Retro Rovers
Funky Felines
Hoppy Frogs
Blooming Builders
Deco Designs
Floral Labels
Treasure Seeker
Pirates
Pull Up Anchor
Sail Away
Euphoric Elements
Ocean Buddies
Fun Fish
Celebrate the Seasons
Sparkle
Flourishes
Paisley Rockz
Fun Time
Heavenly Father
G is for Grattitude
Nothin' But Net
You're A Winner
Girlie Gadgets
Teacher's Helpers
All Season Athlete
Retro Tags
Keep Smilin'
Fancy Punctuation
Summer Elegance
Elegant Sentiments
Retro Journal Tags
Sassy Girl
So Girly
Kallioppe
Travel Notes
Fore

Fish Story
Twists and Twirls
My Heart Gives Thanks
Hey Chick
Celebration Invitation
Playful Pirates
Spooky Swirls
Family, Food & Friends
Count Your Blessings
Simply Christmas
Holiday Magic
Trendy Holiday Tags
Christmas Checklist
Cheery Christmas
Spirit of Christmas
'Tis The Season
Snowy Swirls
Birdy Holiday
Christmas Fun
Simple Snowflakes
Snowflakes
Whimsical Greetings
Christmas Season

Hoppity Skippity with Designer Collection

Well, I got some stamps from the new Serendipity Magalogue. They're all cut out and ready to go, so last night's Stamp With Me seemed like the perfect place to break them in. I pulled out my scrap box of papers from various Designer Collections, and the Hoppity Skippity set and played away.

My first card used yellow paper from the Gentle Beginnings Designer Collection, edged with Mango Madness VersaMagic Ink. The chick is colored with Copic markers.



The second one is the little lamb that also uses paper from the Gentle Beginnigs Designer Collection and was shadowed with Copic markers. The ink is Palette French Lilac.



The last one is my favorite. It uses patterned paper from the Brighten My Day Designer Collection. There is shading on the bunny, but it's very light and done with Copic markers. Because it was so light, it didn'g show up in the scan. The background of carrots was colored with Prismacolor pencils.

Fall Pictures with Spring Color

I've been doing a bunch of stamping, but haven't been around my computer much. Here are some scrapbook pages I made a few weeks ago to take into The Art House for framing. The Art House wants to encourage their customers to frame memorable moments and display them, rather than keep them in a book, so they're going to hang these pages in their shop. We've also decided that I'm going to offer some scrapbooking classes in their store.

Both of the pages were products of one of my Stamp With Me nights. I even got some help from some of the attendees that evening. The first page was more or less my design, with a few collaborative revisions.



This second was mostly my Mom's creation, with a few ideas of mine. She did most of the layout, and I did all of the stamping.



Both pages use pictures of my adorable niece doing fall things...hunting for pumpkins and playing in the leaves. However, since she's a "pink" girl, it seemed better to match the pictures up with paper from the Lilly Anna collection. The pastels help your eye to concentrate on her, because they mimic the colors in her clothing, and the light colors brightened up the photos, whereas more traditional fall colors would have made the pictures appear darker. The one my mom did, also used a bunch of tags from that collection. In fact, all of the patterned pieces on that page are tags.

Last Two Valentines

Well, I guess since Valentine's Day is here, the time for valentine cards is quickly running out. Too bad, since I'm without a doubt a pink, hearts and flowers kind of girl. So I thought I'd get my last hurrah in in case some of you are still looking for ideas.

The first one is the one I made for my husband with the Jerrica stamp I got from Stamp Oasis when I worked our booth at the Rubber Stamp and Scrapbook Expo last fall. When I purchased her, I specifically had her in mind for his valentine's card, and this is the first time I've played with her. I did most of the coloring with my Copic markers, except for the skin, which I used my Skin Tone Pencils for. The paper is one of the Die Cuts With a View Mat Stacks, and I added a few brads that I picked up on sale at Michaels.



The second one is one that I sent to my sister for Valentines Day. It's made with paper from the same Die Cuts With a View Mat Stack, black paper, and graduating sized scalloped heart punches. The sentiment is from the retired Valentine Mice set. I got the inspiration for it from another blog when I was surfing last week.




Happy Valentine's Day everyone!

More Valentines

O.K. I've got some more valentines ready. The first one is another card made using the retired teddy bear set I used in my last post. The bear was again colored with Copic markers. The paper is left overs from some New Year's cards, and the larger panel was run through the Cuttlebug.



The next one is a fun card that started with a pre-made Die Cuts With a View Matchbook card. I ran some of our Lilly Anna solid cardstock through the Cuttlebug to get the raised hearts design in the background. The I used some Catelynne patterned paper to make the stripe on the side, and the heart in the center. The heart was attached to another panel of Die Cuts With a View solid paper edged with brown ink. The Xs and 0s were cut from a Cuttlebug die, and the edge was embellished with a brown Winchester ribbon.



My last card is my very favorite. I started with brown cardstock, punched the bottom with a Fiskars border punch (I think it's called Running Water). Then I punched out small hearts from our Lilly Anna solid cardstock using a Martha Steward punch and glued them over all the holes in the Fiskars border. I layered on strips of Mimi patterned paper. I ran a ribbon across the middle panel. Then I layered a Mimi patterned scalloped heart on top of a larger brown scalloped heart and attached it with foam tape. The finishing touch is the I Love You from our Trendy Greetings stamp set.



I hope you enjoyed my valentine eye candy.

Teddy Bear Valentine

I've been working on Valentine's Day cards this week for one of the ladys at work. She wants one to send to her Mom, one for her daughter and son-in-law, one for her son and daughter-in-law and two for her two young grandsons.

This is the one I made for one of the grandsons.

I used The Angel Company's retired Bear My Hugs set. I colored the bear with Copic markers, and matched it up with some Catelynne patterned paper and Lilly Anna solid blue on Red cardstock. I punched out some hearts to make an accent along the bottom instead of brads.

No Reservations

Tonight, after I finished my last post, I did some blog surfing. I read Debbie Rivers' Simply Inspired Blog where she talked about Yuki's "roadtrip" speech from Escape last week. It got me thinking....and I realized that, with respect to my crafting, I rarely have any reservations about my abilities. I look at things in that part of my life, and automatically assume I can do them. Some of them may be goals that take a long time, but I generally don't worry about how long it will take, or how my final projects will turn out. And most importantly, I think, I don't worry about whether I CAN do them. I just do. And the "just doing" of them without worrying , has lead to some wonderful success.

A perfect example of this would be Ranger's Melting Pot. At my first winter retreat with TAC in San Antonio, TAC hired Suze Weinberg from Ranger to come and show us how to use her Melting Pot. I was enchanted. I'd been eyeing it in our catalogue, but didn't know what it could do, and nobody I knew, knew what it did either. But I watched Suze, and then I went home and got one as a half price item from the catalogue. I'd barely had a chance to play with it when my upline, Pat, called to tell me that Michael's was opening a store three blocks from our houses and they were looking for instructors. She was going to be teaching papercrafting, but thought I might want to go and teach the Melting Pot. So, after only an hour or two of playing with my Melting Pot, I walked into Michael's, bold as you please, and told them I could teach classes on it. I came home, made up a poster-board of samples and took it in a few days later and suddenly I was a teacher. After a test run with the product, and an hour or more of observing Suze and reading her newsletter (she now has a blog), I was confident that I could teach it. No reservations. And I stayed at Michael's as an instructor until last spring when the organization decided that it was cutting out the classroom.

Today, I went to The Art House, a local frame shop that sells my cards for me, and picked up a scrapbook page that I asked them to frame. It just so happens to be of some very dear friends of mine at their wedding that I used as one of my samples for that original Michael's Melting Pot board. Check it out for yourself. (The Art House did an incredible job of finding a mat and frame that accent the scrapbook page perfectly!)




This whole idea of not worrying about what you can and can't do, and about what will or won't happen, fits perfectly with what Yuki talked about at our event. If you told her that she was going to leave her house for 2 months and drive 9,000 miles with all the trials and tribulations that happened on her trip, she'd never have pulled out of the driveway. But then she would not have seen the United States from coast to coast and visited places she'd never seen before and had so much fun. If you look at your various journeys, crafting or otherwise, and are concerned about what might happen, or what might not, you might be keeping yourself from doing something incredible! So I say (just like Nike did several years ago) "just do it" and see how high you can fly.