Simply Soft - Try It Thursday

One of the things that Stampin' Up has pleasantly changed is the hostess stamp sets that were only available if you were to host a qualifying workshop. This hostess benefits program used a chart that included a combination of exclusive hostess products and free merchandise based on the order total. But with the new Hostess Dollars program is all about simplicity, flexibility, and giving hostesses exactly what they want! Whether online, through a workshop, or even just a personal order, if you have a merchandise total of $200 or more, you get Hostess Dollars to spend on anything in any of the current catalogues. How awesome is that?

With the new Hostess Dollars program, you earn Hostess Dollars to spend with any order of $200 or more (merchandise total before tax & shipping). Orders of $200-$264 earn $35 Hostess Dollars, orders of $265-$329.99 earn $40 Hostess Dollars, and so on. No complicated charts to worry about. Plus, once your order total reaches $525, you also earn an item at 50% off! (More on that below). So what do you do with your Hostess Dollars? You get to spend them on anything in any current catalogue. Yes, anything! You can shop from both the Idea Book & Catalogue and the current Mini Catalogue. And, you can still choose from exclusive hostess products.

Stampin' Up has just improved the choices and value that you receive. With the new Hostess Dollars program, the exclusive hostess products are given a Hostess Dollar price and you can use your Hostess Dollars to purchase any exclusive hostess product you want with no more levels to worry about. The exclusive hostess products are specially priced at a discount so you get extra value when you choose them. Even though the hostess products have a regular dollar value listed, they can only be purchased with Hostess Dollars. Exclusive hostess products are available for as little as $10 Hostess Dollars and even the largest set is only $26 for wood-mount and $18 for clear-mount! So, with the smallest workshop order of $200 you could get the highest value exclusive hostess product and still have $9 left to buy some ribbon, ink, or embellishments. You choose if you want to spend all your Hostess Dollars on exclusive hostess products, on regular catalogue merchandise, or a combination of both.

With the dynamics of that arrangement explained, let's get on to this week's Try It! Thursday. I wanted to use the new Hostess stamp set called Simply Soft which is absolutely gorgeous. To showcase how pretty it is, I decided to use the Faux Silk technique. That's when you stamp an image on a piece of tissue paper and then crumple it up and very carefully smooth it out. It should have wrinkles and creases and this is a good thing! You're going to take your glue stick and use it to adhere this stamped image on a piece of Whisper White cardstock and then you can go ahead with finishing the card. I wanted to play around with my In Colours so I used a piece of Calypso Coral as the card base as well as using the same colour in ink and then a piece of Lucky Limeade to mat the image. I know I have said it many times but I really love the In Colours this year.

Let me know what you think!