Yesterday was the first day of Stampin’ Up!s Virtual Card Making Retreat. The cards are awesome. It got off to a rocky start with some sound problems so ended up being about 30 minutes late, but the cards were well worth waiting for.

If you missed purchasing the kit for the live event, you can still purchase it and watch the recorded videos. To be honest, I think that it would be easier to make the cards while watching the recordings rather than the live stream. My internet wasn’t keeping up so I missed a few crucial instructions. Some of my cards will look a bit different than most, lol.

This card was a tri-fold and was probably one of the most involved to make. The greeting is from the Forever Florals stamp set which is part of this kit, but will also be available to purchase separately OnLine in March. The kit includes a second stamp set, 2026 Virtual Card Making Retreat, which is only available in the kit.

All of the cards are decorated on the inside and the envelopes all have something on them as well.

This card used a few techniques that although not new to me, I don’t use much. The flowers were colored with a Blending Brush and the gems on the front were colored with a Stampin’ Blend Marker. The card base is a piece of designer paper, that’s something that I would never think of doing, but it turned out really nice.

This card is so pretty. I missed part of the instructions about attaching the thread so I’m not quite sure that it’s done correctly, lol. I loved the way we stamped the small words background stamp onto the flowered designer paper. One thing that we did on several of these cards was use colored inks and then color with Stampin’ Blend Markers. I’ve never done that before. The inks do tend to bleed but it didn’t look unpleasant.

If you notice the fuzziness around the small flowers this is the type of bleeding that occurs when using the regular Stampin’ Up! inks with the Stampin’ Blend Markers. I usually use the Tuxedo Black ink, but this does add some fun color to the flower outlines. What do you think?

For this card we added the little green flowers onto the circles on the designer paper. We also used the kissing technique on the flowers. I think that my Berry Burst ink pad might have been a bit juicy for this technique to really show on the tiny flowers. It gives them a bit of an antique look. The Crumb Cake label on the edge is actually a latch that hold the card closed.

Here you can see the flowers on the inside of the card and the inside of the latch. The latch is adhered to the back of the card base.

I really thought long and hard about spending $165 for this kit and the class, but remember that if you opt in to the rewards you will get $16.50 to use on your next order. Plus, if you are a demonstrator (or join) you get 20% off the price. Plus, not until Feb 2 you also get a $5 Bonus Coupon for each $50 purchase. That’s another $15 off the price.

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