Retiring Set Blog Hop: Turtle and Co.

There's a month left to purchase your favorite stamps sets yet unbought before they retire! It's my job to make you drool and want them all over again! My demo friends from Stampin' Addicts have joined together again for a review of our favorite stamp sets retiring from the 2011-2012 Idea Book and Catalog on May 31. I'm officially the first blog on the hop (an honor I am quite proud of, even if it's just because my stamp set is first in the catalog). You can visit the last stamper Paula with Borderlines and go backwards back to here or you can go forward from my blog to Lisa Young's to see her work with I Heart Hearts-- As always, you can click below to comment on a thread at Stampin' Addicts, check out the forums and galleries, and see the whole list of stops on the hop!

Without further adieu, my stamp set is....

TURTLE AND CO. , the Ronald McDonald House Charities stamp set. Stampin' Up! donates $3.00 to the Ronald McDonald House Charities nationally, which will add to our total of more than a $100,000,000 to RMHC to date!
My first project to show in detail is the turtle birthday card:

 I used the Just Add Cake Designer Series Paper as my background by cutting out 1 1/4" squares with my punch and placing them in a purposefully random pattern. The turtle is embossed in Wild Wasabi Embossing Powder and colored with Markers. I added a scallop with the retiring Scallops 2 Bigz Die and used my 2 1/2" Circle Punch for the turtle. There were too many presents to fit, so I fussy cut them out and added the message. I'm usually late on Birthdays, so this card is perfect for me.

My second card features those frogs:

Aren't they cute? I used a Mojo Monday Sketch for my idea of multiple frogs. I stamped the frogs in Basic Black on the Wild Wasabi Polka Dot sheet from the Just Add Cake Designer Series Paper. I cut them out and placed them on the Marina Mist and Poppy Parade nested circles. The scallop border added a little more Poppy Parade (which is retiring as an In Color). The eyes were too light, so I used my signo gel pen to add white to them and then used my (retiring) black journaler to put new pupils inside. I also used the signo pen to free-hand dots along the top for a little extra detail.

My final project is in honor of Teacher Appreciation Week coming up. I thought about making bookmarks for my colleagues---

These might work! I used Wild Wasabi Embossing powder to outline the little guys and then colored with markers. A few scallop punches and circle punches layered together made the top and bottom of the book mark. The idea is that the top hangs out. I used the colors in the Just Add Cake paper--Wild Wasabi, Poppy Parade, Baja Breeze, So Saffron, and Peach Parfait for my images. I love markers. The ribbon is the blue denim ribbon, which I thought just looked right. Not sure why.

Well, that's all I have for you. Time to bounce to Lisa's blog "Add Ink and Stamp," and see her beautiful work with I Heart Hearts. 

Happy Stamping!