Welcome to your next step on this evening’s Case-ing the Catty Sunday Challenge. Hopefully, you’ve hopped on over from the lovely Shannon’s gorgeous collection of cards this week, and make sure you keep on hopping along after this post.

And Happy Mother’s Day to all you mummas out there. Hopefully checking out this blog hop is part of your feet up relaxing time today.

This week we are focusing on our favourite retiring stamp set.

Usually, I settle on a project for Case-ing the Catty quite quickly, but this week has been so hard. With two catalogues full of beautiful cards to CASE and a long retirement list, how on earth does one possibly choose a favourite retiring stamp to showcase? I’m sure many of my crew members had the same dilemma this week. And I’m sure as I hop around and look at all their gorgeous projects there will be lots of “yes, I love that stamp set too!!” moments.

Image ©Stampin’ Up!

The stamp set I’ve chosen for tonight is one I fell hard for when I first saw it in the 2017-18 Annual Catalogue. It was in my first order for that catty and I’ve used it a lot since even creating my On Stage swaps for Melbourne in 2017 with it. So I am quite sad to see it retire now.

You see, we take coffee pretty seriously here at Hightrees House. And we have a lot of friends who like to come over for our coffee. So the sentiment in Coffee Cafe that says “happiness is a cup of coffee shared with a friend” really resonates with me.

My first card is a fairly direct CASE of the example on p 60 of the catty, but I’ve switched up the colours. At this time of year I’m also trying to use up DSP (to make room for new ones, of course) so my colour scheme is taken from this beautiful blue and yellow pattern from the Garden Impressions DSP.

My second card takes inspiration from the catty images which use repeated background stamping. I love the little bean stamp from this set, such a fun little detail. The base card is retiring Tranquil Tide and the DSP on the cup is from Nature’s Poem – a collection I really haven’t used enough.

For both cards I’ve used patterned DSP to cut the coffee cups. I was inspired to do this by all the beautiful patterned takeaway coffee cups that seem to be popular at the moment. Have you noticed them? My oldest daughter loves to collect them and use them as pencil cups on her desk. Gotta love a bit of upcycling!

These are some of my favourites. Inspiration really is everywhere, even in the humble coffee cup!

There’s plenty of options for CASE-ing this week as there are lots of retiring stamp sets, so we’d love to see your creation shared to our Facebook page. You don’t need to have a blog, just upload a picture of something you’ve made for this challenge straight to the wall, and tell us a little about it.

Next up is the wonderful Rose sharing some stamps she’s going to miss as well.

One last thing, next month I’m going to start a series of tutorial posts on taking better photos of your cards and crafty creations – why it matters and how to do it. If that sounds like something that interests you make sure you subscribe to my blog (you can find that button at the top of the sidebar on the right) so you’ll get those posts sent straight to your inbox when they happen.

Thanks for stopping by,

Siobhan.