wow, that clearance rack is smokin'! & "D Is For Dog"

According to Stampin' Up! the Clearance Rack is going crazy...the servers were dragging yesterday so they had to boost the power as there was so much activity on the good deals.  I checked this afternoon and there are still tons of bargains to be had so if you haven't visited yet, go check it out.  There are far more than 5 or 6 pages, just keep scrolling to the left.  The most amazing thing I saw was the retired Watercolor Crayons (in the old configuration with some retired colors) for less than $8 a pack!  and the last time I looked they still had all of the old color families.  I keep sitting on my hands to keep from ordering just because it's such great product and such a good deal....only because I try to stick with current Stampin' Up! product only.  

In the meantime, last night I managed to get some photos taken of some recent projects....of course, I didn't set up my "usual" photography area and had to snap pics on the kitchen counter instead of setting up a "light box" but I did get pictures. 

This set is D is For Dog, item 115784, it's on page 74...not available in clear mount but the wood mount version is $15.95 so that doesn't take too big a bite out of the budget.  We have two dogs...Black Labs as it happens so I made this card as a thank you note to enclose a check for dogsitting for one of my son's buddies who dogsat for us recently.  I'm sure he thought it was pretty dorky but his Mom is a stamper so hopefully she got a kick out of it.  It was fun to make and pretty fast...I masked the dogs which gave the illusion of one  standing slightly behind the other.  To do that, you stamp the image (in this case, the dog) on a piece of thin scrap paper (not cardstock....a post it note works just fine) then cut it out, trimming a bit inside the edges of the stamped image.  Now you're ready to stamp!  With masking, you want to stamp the front image first, then cover it with the "mask" and stamp the back image second.  Of course, you can stamp more than one image behind the front but in this case we are down to 2 dogs so I stopped with 2.   Our dogs are pretty much inseparable so stamping them side by side is pretty reasonable.   After that, it was easy enough...I colored one color red and one blue to go with our dogs and scattered a few doggie footprints around before I tossed out a few bones.  I stamped the bones in Sahara Sand and then I used the "frame" from Just Believe stamped in red with "thank you" then used the "thank you" sentiment from the same set and stamped it inside the frame.  Usually that would require either lots of talent or a Stamp-a-ma-jig" stamp positioner but since I have the clear mount version of Just Believe, it was relatively easy to stamp the words inside the box. 

I neglected to photograph the inside of the card but inside I added a few more footprints tracked along the bottom since our dogs are very good at leaving footprints. ;-)  It's always nice when you can finish off the card on the inside and carry thru the theme.   


The Just Believe stamp set was one that demonstrators received  as part of our registration package at convention this year...I LOVE it!  The item number is  116948 for wood mount at $33.95 or clear mount item number 120453  for $25.95...it's on page 109 in the Stampin' Up! Catalog if you want to take a closer look.  If you decide that you can't wait another minute and need to order this online, be sure to take a few minutes and check out the Clearance Rack too.    Happy stamping!