Whoooooaaaa - Retired Stamps!

Who doesn't know by now that the Stampin' Up! retired list came out on Tuesday, May 1st?

At first I wasn't too bothered by it, although I am a Demonstrator for Stampin' Up!, I don't do home parties or sales events. I do classes! Although I had a TON of sets that were on the list, I'll keep them because I like them and can use them in my classes. I've already done my srping cleaning and sold/traded the stamps that I didn't want to keep (surprisingly quite a few of them were on the retired list!).

I've been running craft classes out of my home for many years (long before I joined Stampin' Up!) and when I became a Demo I just encorporated the Stampin' Up! products into my classes.

My customers embraced the products at first then they were sated and now I just give them a lot of variety - which seems to keep them happy.

BUT as you may also know I LOVE TO SWAP!

Since I'm a Stampin' Up! Demo I swap mostly with other Stampin' Up! Demos. One of the criterias of swapping in this group is that you use current Stampin' Up! products so that these swaps can be used in displays to encourage sales for Demos that host workshops.

I use some of the swaps I receive for displays - especially techniques which I make into permanent display boards.

But most of my swaps I mount on card bases and use as cards to friends and family (I use the Stampin' Up! copyright stamp on the back to satisfy the Angel Policy and include the original stampers initials).

So now here's the problem...

At first glance, on paper, checking the list against my own stamp sets - it didn't dawn on me how many current "swapable" sets I'd have left.

BUT this morning I went through my list and my shelves and started "marking" them (I use the red dot Colour Coding Labels by Avery) and I'm shocked at how few current sets I have!

Pretty much everything on this shelf has retired!

I still have a few retired sets that I will be buying from the current catalogue but now I'm REALLY looking forward to receiving the new preview Fall/Winter Brochure to check out what I can buy to "replenish" my stamp stock.

Hopefully there will be a TON of new and "must have" stamps for me in there!

Afterall I LOVE TO SWAP and even a Hobby Demo's got to keep current!

The above photo shows another one of my shelves - all but the stack to the right have retired!