Thanks for stopping by my blog today! 

Today I am sitting at the front desk of the First Site Gallery in Swanston Street, Melbourne, minding the exhibition where my enormous river work is on show.

I worked on the 11 metre work during the two big lockdowns in 2021 - mostly rolled out on my driveway on sunny winter days.

I have an essay about the creation of the work which is included in the RMIT Graduate Profile which just went public online yesterday. You can read it here.

Not everyone can get into Melbourne CBD to see the calendar in real life, so I have created a Fine Art Calendar for 2023. You can have segments of the painting in your own home, to enjoy all year. To pre-order your quality A3 spiral bound calendar, please click on the image below.

Again, thanks for visiting my blog!

Talk soon,

Kathryn Ruddick

(the arty farmer - Mansfield VIC).

Welcome to another week of Stampin' Up! Colour Creations with the Art With Heart Stampin' Up! team.

This week we feature Early Espresso, a rich dark brown from our Neutrals colour family.

Early Espresso

When I looked at my stamp collection with Early Espresso in mind, the first thing I saw was what I call the "coffee and chocolate" - Nothing's Better Than stamp set. And yes, I like my coffee rich and dark.

For my first card, I cut the A4 card in half longways, so I had a 10.5cm x 29.85cm piece. I scored this in half, then cut the front panel in half vertically. The off-cut piece was turned 90 degrees and used as the horizontal panel on the front of the card. I layered up the two front layers with a patterned piece from the Sun Prints Designer Series Paper.

I used the two step stamp set to stamp bright coloured coffee cups onto Basic White card and die-cut them with the Love You More Than dies. I die-cut the word COFFEE from the same die set, in Early Espresso card. 

The text and steam from the hot cups was stamped directly onto the patterned paper in Early Espresso Ink.

For my second card, I wanted to try the Faux Step Card which I have seen several people use over the last few weeks. And I switched from coffee to chocolate - espresso flavoured chocolate, I'm thinking!

As I was preparing the photos, this card suddenly reminded me of the shelves of chocolates in a chocolate boutique like Haigh's or Koko Black. Nom nom nom!

The faux step card is a "cheat's version" of the centre step card. This card is easier to make, as you add an extra strip of card, rather than trying to cut out layers and folds from one single piece.

I deliberately didn't add anything shiny or any ribbon to these cards, to keep them more masculine. With Father's Day this weekend, I thought I might be called on for a spare card.

I can't wait to see what the other Art With Heart ladies have created using Early Espresso. If you would like to see the other creations, please click on the box below to go to my lovely friend Christine's blog.

If you find a broken link in the blog hop, which doesn't take you to the next blog, you will find the list of participants on Cathy's blog here.

Sale-a-bration finishes today, so if you haven't placed your Sale-a-bration order yet, you have just an hour or two left to claim your free SAB gifts with purchase.

I will see you tomorrow to share the September Weekly Deals!

Keep inky!!

Kathryn Ruddick

(Mansfield VIC)

Product List

Early Espresso A4 Card Stock [121686] $16.25	Early Espresso Classic Stampin' Pad [147114] $14.00	Nothing's Better Than Photopolymer Stamp Set (English) [152507] $38.00
Love You More Than Dies [152698] $53.00	Sun Prints 12” X 12” (30.5 X 30.5 Cm) Designer Series Paper [158790] $21.00	Soft Suede Classic Stampin' Pad [147115] $14.00
Crumb Cake Classic Stampin' Pad [147116] $14.00	Old Olive Classic Stampin' Pad [147090] $14.00	Pumpkin Pie Classic Stampin' Pad [147086] $14.00
Cajun Craze Classic Stampin' Pad [147085] $14.00	Basic White A4 Cardstock [159228] $18.00	Mini Stampin' Cut & Emboss Machine [150673] $110.00

Since the middle of April we have been seeing A LOT of projects with the new Bird Ballad bundle from Stampin' Up!

Demonstrators who went to On Stage events could order it early - and it seems like they ALL did! Clearly it's a much loved stamp set with beautiful coordinating Designer Series Paper.

One of my team members asked if we could make a little bird house at Team Night as she had seen some online. Definitely! Too cute!

Do you have in your stash of cutting dies, the Baker's Box Die which was in our catalogue a couple of years ago? That is what we used for the box - only we stretched to give us a taller bird house.

I would pop a piece of acetate inside the front of the box then fill it with chocolates or maybe a beautiful soy candle for someone special!

The Free as Bird Stamp set can be purchased individually, or as part of the Free as a Bird bundle with the Stitched Nested Labels Dies, or as part of the much bigger Bird Ballad Suite which has such gorgeous products in it.

July is Bonus Days month and by ordering this suite you could earn a coupon voucher for a credit to use on an August order. For every $90 you spend in July, receive a $9 voucher for August (multiples allowed).

OR if you are keen to make some of the projects I have been showing you - maybe you'd like to come along to Team Night as a member of my little stamping family?  The Stampin' Up! starter kit is only $169 - you select $280 of products for only $169, and you also get a $16 voucher the following month to apply to your first order.  And you can come to team night!

Send me a message to tee up a time for coffee and a chat about it!

Kathryn  
 

0418 361 931

Hey there papercrafters!

I promised some friends I would add a few details of my latest project here to the blog, so hopefully you can get enough information from it to give this project a try yourself.

My project inspiration came from a gorgeous album I saw on Instagram. You can see it here.

Start with Chipboard for your covers - 3 pieces, front, back and spine.

Connie's album is 9.5 x 9.5 cm. I found chipboard which was 11 x 15.4 cm so I decided my album was going to be 11 x 11 cm so I'd only have to do one cut in each piece with the steel ruler and craft knife. The off-cut of one piece then also became the spine, so there was little wasted.

I selected the piece of designer series paper which was going to form my cover  - I had a stack of 6" x 12" pieces from my team product share - and I laid the chip board pieces on it to see if it would wrap around like when you are covering school books.  It was pretty much the perfect size leaving about a 2cm fold on all four edges, with about 1/2 cm between the pieces to allow the covers to fold in. If you butt each piece of chipboard hard up against the next one the DSP will tear when you try to close the book - you need to leave a gap so it's flexible.

I applied double sided tape all over one side of each piece of chipboard then placed them sticky side down on the DSP. Then fold in the edge pieces, sticking them down as you go exactly if you were covering school books. You can see a bit of what that looks like in the photo below.

Next up was the concertina fold which forms the mechanism of the spine. The pocket pages are each attached to one of these tabs.  I made the tabs 1cm deep and 0.5cm apart.  In effect that meant scoring the Whisper White card at 4cm, 5cm, 6cm, 7cm, 7.5, 8.5, 9.5, 10, 11, 12, 12.5 . . . or at intervals 1cm, 1cm, 0.5cm, 1cm, 1cm, 0.5cm, 1cm, 1cm, 0.5cm etc until you have as many tabs as you need. I could have easily fitted one more in this spine so I had 7 pages, but I was happy having the extra 1cm on each end.

Attach this into the cover with Tombow Mono Liquid Glue or Tear'n'Tape.

I then attached 2 lengths of Poppy Parade ribbon to the inside of each cover and cut 2 squares of Poppy Parade card to cover the make sure the spine mechanism is more strongly attached to the cover. I then added a diagonal DSP pocket to each cover using that gorgeous flocked striped paper from the Santa's Workshop Designer Series Paper pack. It is such heavenly paper!

 Next step is the pages and Oh Happy Day! because I made the album covers 11cms, I could get away with cutting my A4 card stock in half lengthwise so I had two 10.5cm x 29.7cm pieces. I used Garden Green, Poppy Parade, Coastal Cabana, Crushed Curry and Gray Granite.

Score at 10.5cm, and 21.1cm, then trim off the end so you just have a 2-3cm flap for joining the piece in a loop.

The fun part was coming up with the decorating and I knew I wanted to use lots of the cute images from Santa's Workshop DSP and also from the Memories and More card pack.  Rather than trying to plan each page out one at a time, I find it easier to just cut a stack of images and coordinating papers then mix and match them.

Out comes the trusty Big Shot, because guess what!! Yes, the DSP is designed so that the images also fit the set of Santa's Signpost Framelit Dies which in turn matches the stamp set - HALLELUJAH! HALLELUJAH! HALLELUJAH!!

How Awesome is that!! Depending on how you line them up on the platform, you can cut up to 6 images at once!

I used matching pieces of patterned paper from our 6"x 6" Designer Series Paper Stacks - Crushed Curry, Poppy Parade, Coastal Cabana and Garden Green and also added a couple of ovals of Whisper White cut with the Layering Ovals Dies and the Stitched Shaped Framelits.

This shows you just how simple it can be.

Next I selected Memories and More cards to be the basis of the pull out tabs would be hidden inside each of the pocket pages, matched them up with card stock to make them 10cm x 9cm and punched a tab for each one.  I also went back over each page and insert tab to see if there were any glittery die cut stickers in the Memories and More kit that I could add to the each page to embellish it without over-doing it.

With the pages all finished it was time to attach the pockets to the spine of the album. I run a thin bead of Tombow Mono Liquid glue on each side of one tab (one at a time) and slide the pocket page over the tab, centering it vertically in the album, then hold it in place for a minute or so until the glue grabs, before moving on to the next one.

I then let is sit overnight before inserting my pull out tabs into each pocket too.

And Voila!

Last night I created a Facebook Live presentation of the finished album on my Facebook Business page. If you would like to see it, click on the photo below.

All of the products in this project are currently available through my online shop, to shoppers anywhere in Australia.  Click on the thumbnail images below to go straight to the item to order your own, or contact me if you need help. 

Product List

Santa's Workshop 12" X 12" (30.5 X 30.5 Cm) Specialty Designer Series Paper [147809] $24.25	Santa's Signpost Framelits Dies [147911] $56.00	Santa's Workshop Memories & More Card Pack [147905] $17.50
Poppy Parade A4 Cardstock [121694] $14.75	Garden Green A4 Card Stock [108605] $14.75	Card Stock A4 Crushed Curry [131288] $14.75
Card Stock A4 Coastal Cabana [131302] $14.75	Poppy Parade 1/2" (1.3 Cm) Textured Weave Ribbon [147813] $13.00	Gray Granite A4 Cardstock [147008] $14.75

Thanks for reading all this way!! Remember, if you need help with this, check out the video for a closer look, and send me a message if you need more information. Talk soon!

Kathryn

One of the exciting things that happened on our wider (local) Stampin' Up! team in the past couple of months was a Platinum promotion. Now if you are not a Stampin' Up! demonstrator, that probably means zero, zip, zilch to you. But to my fellow Stampin' Up! demonstrators, it means an awful lot.

Since our "career plan" changed in October last year, this was the very first promotion to Platinum level in Australia and it was our very own Claire Daly from Lilydale who promoted. I think this promotion is a big deal, and obviously all our Stampin' Sisters / cousins / grandmas etc across Australia thought the same, because when I suggested creating a special handmade Platinum gift for Claire to commemorate her promotion, lots of people jumped on board.

I suggested each person cut out and decorate a scallop circle and include their name and that somehow I would assemble them all into some sort of frame or album. Kathryn Mangelsdorf from Adelaide suggested we stick to a colour scheme - obviously the silver for platinum, but also Mint Macaron and Blushing Bride. Before I knew it, all sorts of gorgeous scallop circles were arriving!

I got far too many to fit into a frame, so I decided to use the Lots of Labels Framelits and make an accordion book with a black base to mount them all onto.

This "banner" ended up being 2.7 metres long! So of course it then had to have a gorgeous box to keep it in. I felt a black base, with silver lining, and an acetate lid would do just the trick. so I measured up my folded banner to see what size I would need to make, and constructed a box with separate lid.

I was heading off to Auckland for 4 days in late March, so in the end it was a real rush to pull all this together, but for such a special promotion, I was glad to spend the time and make a really special gift, and the look on Claire's face when she received it, along with a ginormous arrangement of flowers and a bottle of bubbly, was definitely worth the effort!

Congratulations again Claire for setting a benchmark and achieving your goals as a Stampin' Up! team leader and business builder!

#likeaboss #likeagirl #tickingboxes #gogetthosegoals #platinumpromotion #artwithheart #stampinup