ESAD SAB Blog Hop - Banner Punch

It's that exciting time of year again, Sale-A-Bration (SAB) is about to begin! For those new to SAB it is a wonderful time of year when you can earn beautiful Stampin' Up! products for FREE!  In Australia just spend $90 on anything from the main or occasional catalogue and you can chose something from the range of SAB products.  To get you in the spirit the Extra Special Australasian Demonstrators have made some great creations with the free items.  You may have hopped on over from Little Scraps of Paper and Delys's lovely creations, or you might be starting here - it doesn't matter, just follow the links at the bottom of each post until you have hopped around all of the blogs!

Now onto my creations ... I chose to showcase the cute little Banner Punch. I love a product that has more than one use and so I got to work looking at alternative uses for this cute little punch. 

Firstly I wanted to use it in a fairly traditional way, by making three little flags down the side of the sentiment panel. This is great if you have a bit of spare space on a card.  The background DSP, Sweet Sorbet, is also from the SAB free products and is so pretty, matching with the 2013-2015 In-colours. 

This next card I have used the Banner Punch to make longer flags for my sentiments, to do this cut strips of cardstock 1.5cm wide and insert one end into the punch, line up and then punch.  By stamping the sentiments first you can get the length of the banner just right.

The little flowers are punched from Sweet Sorbet DSP using the Petite Petals punch, which is a sneak peek from the new Occasions Catalogue also going live on 28th January.

Finally I have used the Banner Punch to make a faux banner on the front of this card.  By cutting a strip of card stock 1.5cm wide, adding a sentiment, then laying it over two banners punched from the same colour cardstock it provides some added interest to the front of a card.  I used dimensionals to pop it up slightly to add to the effect. In this card I have also used the Banner Blast stamp set to create a border along the top and bottom edges of the card, I stamped using the flat edge of the banner alternating two of the patterns.  The DSP on this card is also from Sweet Sorbet, this paper has such a lot of different looks and you will get lots of use out of it.  The centre butterfly and sentiment banner are stamped on Brushed Gold.

Thanks for stopping by, I hope you have enjoyed my creations. Now it is time to hop on over to the next blog:

Creating Cards With Andrea 

If you get lost along the way there is a full list of all the blogs at the bottom of this post, don't forget we all love it when you leave comments to let us know what you think of the things we have created - happy hopping!

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 contact me for an invitation to this wonderful group.

Narelle Hoggard
Kathryn Ruddick
Nikki Sadler
Emily Campbell
Keryn Campbell
Leonie Schroder
Chloe Evans
Amity Knight 
Alisha Watson
Ann Gerlach
Delys Cram
ME - Monique Fielder
Andrea Buckland
Paula Reid
Pauline Bennetts
Dianne Dunk
Tamsin Adams
Corina Beyer
Richelle Fletcher
Mel Sharp
Christie Kunkel
Nerida Carter
Gail Kirby
Michelle Grech
Sally Williams

Happy Stamping

Mashed Up Sneak Peek

It's Friday Mashup time again - this time the challenge was to create a birthday card and/or use twine on your card.  I chose the mashed up option and used twine on a birthday card.  Being a Stampin' Up! Demonstrator gives me the opportunity to pre-order new items, usually a month before they are available. It is currently an exciting time in the Stampin' Up! world - we are about to have Sale-A-Bration, where you can earn free products with purchases of $90, and this year at the same time the new Occasions Catalogue goes live!

Apart from cardstock this card has all new items on it - a mix of SAB and Occasions ones.  The Decorative Dots Embossing Folder was used on the So Saffron over layer, I love the gentle, random texture of this folder. 

Next is a combination of a cute stamp set called Just Sayin' a selection of speech bubbles that wonderfully come with a matching set of Word Bubbles Framelits. To get the layers just right I first used the framelit on the top layer getting the speech bubble where I wanted it.  Then I placed this over the base card (without sticking down) and used a pencil to trace the outline of the shape.  Once the top layer was lifted off I used my Stamp-A-Ma-Jig to get the stamp exactly where I wanted it, on this occasion I used Versamark and Gold embossing powder.  Erase the light pencil line and adhere the top layer with dimensionals.  I plan to complete the inside with another speech bubble with the person's age in it once I have a recipient!

Rather than try and describe how I made the flags, I thought I would take a picture. I grabbed a scrap of Whisper White cardstock and used the new Retro Fresh Washi Tape to cover it then used the SAB Banner Punch to punch out my little flags using different parts of the Washi Tape.  This is a great way to have flags that are different but also match a theme, and I didn't use much Washi Tape either. The Banner Punch also has a cute set of matching stamps that you can also earn for free.

The final new product is the very cute Gold Baker's Twine - this is so lovely in person, it has a thin thread of very shiny gold through it.  It also comes in Silver and both are just wonderful and I can see me using them a lot in the future.

Happy Stamping

Flowery Sketch

Isn't this a cute sketch from Create With Connie and Mary?  I just had to play as it let me use some of the new products available soon in the Australian/New Zealand market with both Sale-A-Bration and Occasions Catalogues, both go live on 28th January and are just bursting with great products, some you can get for free!

Onto my card, I have used a combination of new products and some existing products on this one.  The cute little flowers come from Petite Petals that have a matching Petite Petals Punch, I stamped some of the flowers on the top layer of the card and punched others out to let the Sweet Sorbet DSP show through.  I also used the little flowers from Betsy's Blossoms.  The banner is from another new stamp set Perfect Pennants which also has matching Banners Framelits which I love because I can never get the flag end of a pennant or banner to look just right, and this set has 6 different sized banners!

Happy Stamping