Hi there!

Exciting time in Stampin' Up! land today with our regular new catalogue Blog Hop. Welcome, if you came to me from Kylie Clemmence's blog.

If you are just starting here, and you have half an hour or more to fill, a very warm welcome to you, and please feel free to click through to all the blogs to see what products are being show-cased today.

I'm going to show you a super-fun new Simply Created Kit from Stampin' Up! for making gorgeous party decor.

Doesn't that look interesting?

But before I get into that - if you're just starting here, you might be wondering WHAT IS ESAD??

ESAD stands for "Extra Special Australasian Demonstrators" and it is an on-line group just for Australian and New Zealand Stampin' Up! demonstrators.

We love what we do & love to share with our customers, friends, and wonderful blog visitors. We also share what we love in our ESAD Demonstrator community, through swaps, challenges, sharing knowledge, ideas & friendship, and we're always there to help and support each other.

So if you are a Stampin' Up! demonstrator located in Australia or New Zealand, then please feel free to leave me a comment with your Email address and I'll contact you with information on how to join our wonderful group.

Back to this fun new product - what is it and what can it do?

The Simply Created Build A Banner kit consists of 18 canvas pennants complete with Antique Brass Rings, Jute, 3 x background image stencils, 26 individual letter stencils, 1 background mask stencil and a Stampin' Spritzer.

It's designed to make cheerful banners, and in the new Holiday Catalogue starting today, you can also purchase accessory kits to help make funky Christmas or Halloween banners.

I've got a special occasion coming up this weekend. The official opening of my new Stampin' room, and I've combined it with a Daffodil Day Garden Party, so I decided to make a great big flowery Daffodil Day Banner.

I daubered the pennants in Crushed Curry, Pear Pizzazz, Pumpkin Pie & Summer Starfruit inks, using the background templates for funky patterns.

Then daubered all the letters with Daffodil Delight Ink.

This is really fun and fresh on it's own, but, you know me! I like lots of texture and layers, so I had to step it up a bit. For me that meant die cutting lots of flowers, and stamping and punching lots of butterflies.

And of course sponging around the edges of them all!

The flowers were then assembled to create these :

Next step was to lay all the pieces out and decide which way they looked best. I'm loving how the finished project came up.

Better give you a couple of close-ups!

I know some of you are coming to my Daffodil Day Garden Party on Saturday - I can't wait to show you the banner in real life!

For now, I better let you all go onto the next person in the blog hop!  Please leave a comment for me below - I'd love to know what you think, and what colours you would pick to do a banner in?

The next blog to check out is that of the effervescent Libby Dyson! Go see what she's created!

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Hey! Let's get Stampin'!!!!!

Simply Fabulous

Hey everyone, hope you're well?

Did I happen to mention I've scheduled some Christmas Ornament Classes over the coming weeks.

The first one is this coming Monday 26th August 11am until 2pm. Bring sandwich for lunch if desired. Tea & Coffee provided.

These stunning Christmas Decorations make an exquisite gift for that special someone who is impossible to buy for.  Class covers all the stamping, cutting and assembling techniques. There will be a variety of samples on display to inspire you.

This class is an intermediate class - stamping and die-cutting experience required.

BYO all tools & adhesives including Die-Cutting machine if owned. 

Only cardstock, inkpads & embellishments provided in materials kit.

Class fee $20.00

If you don't have the stamps, framelits or a die cutting machine, an additional hire fee of $15 will allow you to borrow mine for the duration of the class.  Please r.s.v.p. by calling me on 0418 361 931. Only two spaces left for Monday 26th and also Wednesday 18th September.

Later dates are : Saturday 5th October 2pm until 5pm

Friday 8th November 7pm until 10pm

Classes are limited to four people each so book early.

On Saturday, my lovely mum Jenny Wren, and I were at our little casual kiosk at the local shopping centre and as usual, apart from talking to so many lovely people who stopped to chat and see what we were doing, I was also keeping busy making some cards.

I took along the gorgeous Simply Sent Kit - Simply Fabulous from page 161 of our Annual Catalogue and was having a lovely time mixing it with the two delicious new colours, Smoky Slate and Pistachio Pudding.

This is a very simple kit, with just a couple of extremely gorgeous elements in it that you can't buy anywhere else. It's designed for quick, easy, very elegant cards - and you can do that, or you can do what I did, and add extra layers of card, and other stamp sets to get several different looks for a variety of occasions.

You've likely already seen the too cute baby card I created by adding the giraffe from Zoo Babies stamp set (page 54) and the sentiment from Sweetest Gift stamp set (page 57). I posted a pic of this card on my Facebook business page on Saturday.

But, what else can you do with this kit?

A fabulous 40 Birthday Card - with a couple of sneak peak items from the Holiday Catalogue . . . see if you can guess what they are!

A sweet Thinking of You card - with a colour change! Notice I have switched Pistachio Pudding out for Midnight Muse on this one!

A word of kindness for a dear stamping friend, using the very popular hostess stamp set, Simply Sketched.

And another Sympathy card using Chalk Talk and Petite Pairs stamp sets.

As you can see, this Simply Sent Kit is - SIMPLY FABULOUS!

I'm off to order another one, as I've loved using it so much! See you soon!

Kathryn Ruddick

Well, it's time to get that new stamping room busy, so I can earn next year's incentive trip - a Caribbean Cruise out of Fort Lauderdale . . . nice!!

Christmas Ornament Class. See my Class page for all the details, but here's the dates.

Monday 26th August 11am until 2pm. Bring sandwich for lunch if desired. Tea & Coffee provided.

Wednesday 18th September 11am until 2pm.

Saturday 5th October 2pm until 5pm

Friday 8th November 7pm until 10pm

Classes are limited to four people each so book early.

One of the exciting parts of preparing to go to Utah for the Stampin' Up! Grand Vacation, was preparing some swaps - knowing that I would be getting swaps back from some of the world's TOP demonstrators! Whilst the swaps had to be travel friendly, they also had to be a bit special!

I posted several sneak peaks on my Facebook page but I couldn't post the finished item until they had been received by the ladies in Utah. And, since I didn't take my laptop away with me, I've had to make you wait forever!

Just love our refreshed colour range and how the new colours go together so nicely. Here I've used a 4"x 12" piece of Soft Sky card as the base (you get three cards from one piece then!!), and teamed it with Pool Party, Bermuda Bay & Island Indigo.

I've used the Creative Elements and Papillon Potpourri Stamp Sets, and the Bigz Lattice Die. Finishing touches include some Rhinestone Basic Jewels and our gorgeous Organza Ribbon.

I need to send a huge thank you to Kim Willis from Ringwood East, for her amazing help with all the cutting out - if it wasn't for her, I would not have taken swaps at all . . . thanks Kim, you are a very sweet person!

See you again soon,

Kathryn Ruddick

The Stampin' Up! 25th Anniversary US Convention was something else! So many activities on offer and things to do!

At the Opening Night Party, one of the highlights (besides the karaoke!!) was a Guiness World Record attempt to post the most cards from a single location. Of course, knowing what Stampin' Up! Demonstrators are like, we blitzed it!!

I took four cards to post - here's me purchasing my postage stamps (as opposed to rubber stamps LOL) from the US Postal Services team at the event.  (p.s. they only counted one card per person!!).

LOL, I didn't know how hard it was going to be in the first few hours after landing in the USA, in a dimly lit room to work out which US coins were what!! Who still has one & two cent pieces anyway??  To be honest, I think even at the end of the trip I was still peering at the coins questioningly to try and work out what they were!

After getting my postage stamps, I did a quick pose with the Postal Service delivery guy - I bet his van was chock full after this event!

I just LOVED how everyone in attendance was so enthusiastic to participate in this event!  The queue to have your cards counted looped around the ginormous room and ladies waited for over an hour for their turn to have their envelopes checked and their photo with the official from Guiness.  Here's the Official Report.

What a lot of fun and what a great idea Stampin' Up!

Oh, and what card did I make?  I used the new Six Sided Sampler & Gorgeous Grunge Stamp Sets and some lovely new colours to make these cute, note sized cards:

Love both these stamp sets to death!! You will be seeing lots more of them!

Back later with more US Trip highlights.

Kathryn Ruddick

Hi Everyone!

Well, boy has it been a long time! Did you wonder where I was? 

No, of course not! Those of you who came to my team's totally awesome New Catalogue Parties at the start of July know that first week or so in July were terrifically busy, and those of you who follow my Facebook page will have seen some of the photos from our amazing, exciting, wonderful three week trip to the US, thanks to the generousity of a truly special company called Stampin' Up!

If you've only recently found me, you might be wondering what this trip was all about?

Every year, Stampin' Up! Demonstrators can work towards a benchmark, acquiring points for sales and team leadership, and anyone reaching the benchmark (54,000 points) qualifies for the Annual Stampin' Up! Incentive Trip (or Grand Vacation). This year's trip was very popular with lots of lovely ladies working hard to achieve it. Why?

Because Stampin' Up! took us, and our guest to Salt Lake City, Utah, USA so we could opt to attend the SU! 25th Anniversary Convention in Salt Lake City and then spend 6 days being totally spoilt at a gorgeous mountain resort at Deer Valley, outside Salt Lake City. Even better - it's summer over there!!!

Hubby and I added on a few more days so we could check out the lights of Vegas and see what all the fuss is about, and we also did a three day camping trip to some very well known canyons.  It sure was a Grand Vacation!

I have tonnes of photos to share with you, but I might just pop them over in the albums on the right hand side, so they don't fill every blog post for the next six weeks!  But here's one to get you started.

Salt Lake City really turned it on for us, everywhere you looked there were signs and banners welcoming the Stampin' Up! Demonstrators to the city for the 25th Anniversary "Be The Difference" Convention.

Here's hubby picking up a map outside the City Creek Centre, so we could find the foodcourt a couple of hours after we arrived in Salt Lake City.  By the way, this photo was taken around 7.30pm - see how sunny it was!!

I've got lots of catching up to do. My gorgeous new Craftroom is almost finished - just a little more electrical work to do and then I need to fill some shelves and start holding some classes in there! The space is so light and bright and SPACIOUS!!

I've got some new classes planned, as well as Kathryn's Craft Room Christening - which I am combining with a Daffodil Day Garden Party.  Be sure to check out my updated Classes and Events Page as well as my Special Events page, and book yourself in.

We've got a couple of big craft shows coming up later this year, as well as our regular days at Chirnside Park Shopping Centre on the casual kiosk - the next of those is just next Saturday 17th August, so be sure to pop in and say "Hi".

I'll be running some product shares from the new Annual Catalogue, and will put the details up shortly. I already have some takers for shares, so if you are keen to get small samples of ribbon and paper, be sure to check it out earlier rather than later so you don't miss out.

Tony & I are definitely planning on being on the next Grand Vacation - a Caribbean Cruise out of Fort Lauderdale, so I am planning to have a very busy Stampin' Up! year with lots of fun creative events packed into it.

If you've ever considered joining the Stampin' Up! family, or hosting a fun, free party, or attending a class - NOW'S THE TIME!!

JUMP ON BOARD!

Well, I've got albums to create, class schedules to lock in and shelves to stack in my new room! So, hope to see you soon with ink on your fingers!

Kathryn Ruddick

Senior Manager

Aussie Inkpressionists Stampin' Up! Team

Yarra Valley Papercrafters.