Retired Stamp Love

Stamping has been a part of my life for more than twenty years. (Do I say this too often?) While I understand the need for our favorite stamp companies to retire stamps and move on to new things, it's always difficult for me to move on, leaving the sets I've come to enjoy creatively or sometimes even parting with them in order to keep my stash manageable. New designs are fun, of course, but saying goodbye-- not so much. 

So with this in mind, I'm going to do something here that I have never seen another consultant do(but how I wish they would)--I'm going to do a regular feature called *Retired Stamp Love* where I go back and create with sets that are retired but still loved. 

Why?

For the sheer love of stamping. :)  

Sometimes I'll pair up retired sets with things that are currently available. Usually retired sets can still be acquired on eBay, or through the many Facebook groups that exist for buying and selling second hand craft items. 

Today, in Retired Stamp Love, I'm playing with the stamps from the Sugar Rush Cardmaking suite by Close to my Heart. This set of stamps and matching dies was available

 Can't go wrong with cute donut stamps, right?

This is the Sugar Rush Cardmaking stamp set made by Close to my Heart back in 2016.

The Stamp images that are outlined in blue are the ones that have coordinating dies. As you can see there are several wonderful, universal sentiment images in this set--that "Happy Birthday" is a great size for making paper ribbon. More on that in a moment. 

I paired the Sugar Rush suite from last year with the Silver and Gold suite that is also retired.

--The two lighter brown donuts are created using second-generation stamped images. This is a good technique to use when you need a lighter color of ink that you don't have. (This happens to me often.) To achieve this look, simply ink up your stamp, stamp the image on cardstock, then immediately without re-inking, stamp it again. The second image will be much lighter than the first. 

Frosted donuts can be made in many color combinations. For the above card, I skipped the stamping steps and just used the dies with cardstock. I did use the sprinkles stamp to jazz it up a bit. 

I happen to think the sentiment in this set that says "Happy Birthday with sprinkles on top!" is just perfection. I really like the font that Happy Birthday is written in. It's perfectly sized for carding and can be added to any card design. 

For convenience, I performed a bit of stamp surgery on this image and separated the Happy Birthday from the rest of the sentiment. They can be now be used together as shown above or individually as shown below.

I wanted to make it easy to incorporate this Happy Birthday sentiment into some future projects, so I took just a few minutes and stamped out some paper "ribbon" strips using the Happy Birthday repetitively. Each paper ribbon is about 1/2" wide and 11" long. When I use these sentiment strips, I will add a matching colored gem or sequin in between each phrase. 

So there you have it.

Retired Stamp Love.

Until next time,

--Sarah

PS This post originally appeared on my stamping blog, which is also now being retired. All no-longer-relevant links have been removed. :) If you see a product you like, email me and I'll try to help you track it down.