Grab a Greeting!

From now until 31 July, you can get 25% off selected greeting stamps - Petite Pairs, Sassy Salutations and Sweet Essentials.  Greeting stamps are great for finishing off cards and these sets feature some very useful words.
You can view the images here:
http://www3.stampinup.com/ECWeb/ItemList.aspx?categoryid=744

More Specials!

Ok, well there is certainly a lot happening with Stampin' Up! lately as far as specials and new products go.  If you would like to be kept more up to date the best place to look is my demonstrator business page at http://www.gailkirby.stampinup.net where the latest and greatest announcements are magically updated by the Stampin' Up! fairies - quite often without me being aware!

The first special is the release of the Best Of sets. These are special sets put together that feature favourite images of stamps from the past 25 years - some of which will never have been seen in Australia before. A new set will be released each month. Note that these sets are only available in clear mount. 

The first set is the Best of Flowers set.  

This set costs $25.95 

Next are some really cute SINGLE stamps 

BASIC LABEL CLEAR-MOUNT STAMP SET Price: $11.95	BOUTIQUE BLOSSOM CLEAR-MOUNT STAMP SET Price: $13.95	HELLO, HELLO CLEAR-MOUNT STAMP SET Price: $13.95	SUNSHINE CLEAR-MOUNT STAMP SET Price: $9.95
WOO HOO! CLEAR-MOUNT STAMP SET Price: $11.95

All products are available to order online 24/7 in your pyjamas with your cat/pug sitting on your lap via my webstore at 

 http://www3.stampinup.com/ECWeb/default.aspx?email=kirbygail%40hotmail.com&phone=0402683325

or by emailing me or calling on 0402683325  I LOVE the hello hello stamp!

Retirement Lists

Hi,

I am back from convention and had started typing up a post but lost it :-(  The photos were taking ages to upload so I will try again on the weekend when our broadband is renewed. Heaps of things to share and some great photos.  I also have a lot of blurred ones because I was laughing so much at times I couldn't hold the camera straight! Throw in the odd Ibis, some stress balls and a belly dancer and what happens on convention stays on convention!

In the meantime, the retirement lists will be up tomorrow on the Stampin' Up! website www.stampinup.com  It will be on the main page when you log on with a link to the lists. Stocks are while they last but this year with online ordering you may get a better chance of getting what you want early! Some items will be discounted but I have no idea what as I also have to wait until tomorrow to see it! Just go to www.gailkirby.stampinup.net and click on the shop now button and put in your item codes for any retirement items you would like to order. You can also combine them with regular items as well.  Your order will be delivered directly to your door and you will pay the min shipping charge of $5.95 on orders up to $119 and then 5% of the order total after that. When you consider that the small 500g red satchels from Aust Post are now nearly $8 this is exceptional value.

Will be back soon with more convention news and photos!

ESAD Blog Hop

Time for another ESAD Blog Hop!  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 so love what we do and not only do we love to share it with our customers, friends, and wonderful blog visitors, but we share our love for what we do with each other as demonstrators. We run swaps, challenges, tutorials, product know-how, and cyberstamps, and we are always there to help and support each other when it is needed.

So if you are a Stampin' Up! demonstrator located in Australia or New Zealand, then please feel free to click here to join our wonderful group.

The blog hop this time is showcasing projects from the current Seasonal catalogue which runs to 30th June this year. There are some wonderful products in it as you will see!

You will have arrived here via Jessica Williams and her amazing crepe filter paper project but if not that's ok just keep on hopping like the Easter bunny around all of our blogs!

For my project I have chosen to use the Pop N Cuts dress form die and base which you use in the Big Shot machine. The base cuts the card base and puts the tabs and notches in but doesn't score a line (there are marks for the middle line though so easy to work out) so you can use the base by itself scoring fold lines wherever you like as I have done here:

I have made a gift pocket by folding and scoring in various places to make the gusseted pocket which is very handy for putting in a gift card, chocolates, money or a tube of handcream as I've done here. I also ran it through the Big Shot with one of the embossing folders and spritzed it with shimmer paint mixed with isocol rubbing alcohol. The sides are joined with sticky strip. Very quick to make and so effective. Here is another version

I've added one of the tulle trim roses to this one. These are great you get a whole roll of them for $11.95 and being very vanilla to start with you can colour them with reinkers or inkpads to any colour you like. They are all joined and you just cut off as many as you need.

Finally here is the card base with the dress form die added. This is quite a basic one as I am very new to it but you can dress them up using anything. You can add mirrors or frames behind and cut off the dress form part so you have just the "table" and add flowers etc so it is a very versatile product. You can also cut the dress out of material which I had planned to do but have had a crazy week. There is a set of framelits and matching stamp set that I have also used.

Thanks for stopping by. Please now visit Richelle Fletcher who's done something wonderful with the honeycomb embossing folder......

Updates

Wow just gone in now to set this up and I haven't posted since the last blog hop! Had lots of stuff going on. We have sold our cafe and what was meant to be a quick sale ended up getting dragged out for 3 months! Well it's all done and dusted now as of Thursday but it very nearly didn't happen then either :-(   Now that I will have more free time I am hoping to concentrate more on Stampin' Up! including updating this blog more frequently!!!  I am also in the process of setting up a facebook business page. There are lots of new developments with Stampin' Up!  You can now order online 24/7 - go to my business website to place orders anytime you like! We also now have MDS - My Digital Software. This is the digital scrapping program. There is a free trial available or you can buy the full version for only $24.95 - both are digital downloads. You can get both via my website. I haven't tried it yet but have got it installing right this moment and will be taking it away with my next week - better than trying to work out which stamping and scrapping supplies to pack :-)  I might finally get through all my millions of photos :-)

ESAD BLOG HOP!

Apologies that this post didn't load when it was scheduled to :-( 

Well Sale-a-Bration is now upon us and to start us off, ESAD an online group of Australian Stampin' Up! demonstrators which I belong to has organised a blog hop.

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 so love what we do and not only do we love to share it with our customers, friends, and wonderful blog visitors, but we share our love for what we do with each other as demonstrators. We run swaps, challenges, tutorials, product know-how, and cyberstamps, and we are always there to help and support each other when it is needed.

So if you are a Stampin' Up! demonstrator located in Australia or New Zealand, then please feel free to click here to join our wonderful group.

My first project is a very simple card using the Pretty Petites stamp set and matching punch. The punch is being carried over to the next main annual catalogue and a new stamp set that matches the punch will be available in the next seasonal catalogue which starts on 1 Feb.

When I was putting this set together I realised that the sheet of rubber left over from popping out the dies would be very useful for making a reverse mask. I placed the rubber over the cardstock and used sponge daubers and ink pads to fill in the spaces with colour. I then highlighted a few of the images with stamped and punched out pieces popped up with dimensionals. A very quick and easy card!

The next project is a scrapbooking page showing a few of the papers in the Sycamore St DSP pack. You get 12 sheets of doubled sided 12 x 12 paper - 2 sheets of 6 different designs. The ribbon and buttons are also from the same suite - 3 rolls of ribbon and buttons that match the paper are also available as a SAB item as well as a matching stamp set and embossing folder. All of these items are available with a $100 order and if you have a $600 order/workshop you will receive the paper, ribbon and buttons and stamp set for free!

My poor little pug Buffy was recently under the weather after getting into a garbage bag. She is always doing stuff like this so I was quite worried when she started showing signs of being unwell. The vet did blood tests and they came back showing she has pancreatitis which he said in 50% of cases is caused by a "dietary indiscretion", such as getting into the garbage, but I think it is more likely all her past dietary indiscretions have caught up with her. So now she will have to be on a very strict, plain food diet. She's been on a supposedly strict prescription weight loss diet for about 18 months but she is very good at finding extra food which will now have to stop. The family have been warned about leaving things out where she can get hold of them as anything forbidden could cause her to become extremely ill needing hospitalisation. No more scurrying out of the left open pantry with a packet of potato chips in her mouth for example! I am having to be very careful when preparing food as she literally sits on my feet waiting for anything to drop off the bench. We will get there and she might even lose a couple of kilos!

Thank you for visiting my blog. The next blog on your journey is my lovely friend Michelle Grech at www.stampmeshell.wordpress.com - Enjoy!

SALE-A-BRATION IS HERE!

The biggest promotion of the Stampin' Up! year is now  upon us!  Sale-a-bration - where for every $100 you spend you can choose a free item out of the special SAB catalogue. SAB runs from 22 Jan to 22 March.  This year, being SU's 25th anniversary it is bigger than ever with 19 products to choose from!  Click on the link here to view the brochure or email/call me and I will pop one into the post for you.  Note that the brochure does contain a lot of information - the hard copy is definately easier to follow! There are lots of other benefits too - if you join you will get an extra 25% in your starter kit so for $169 you can choose $294 of product (anything you like) and if you place a $600 order or have a workshop (get your friends to help you get to the $600 *g*) you will receive the Sycamore Street bundle of 12 x 12 papers, coordinating stamp set and ribbon and button pack for FREE as well as a pack of silver glimmer paper! On top of this there is also the normal hostess benefits of $100 of free product and any catalogue item for half price.

Check back here tomorrow from 10am to see what I have created for the ESAD blog hop (and for those of you thinking yeah right it will be done at 3am tomorrow morning I actually finished it this morning at 2am and have scheduled it to post tomorrow lol!)