I have some important Stampin' Up! news that I need to share with you. Actually, there are two separate items that you need to know about.
First – the Blendabilities product line has been permanently removed from availability. Stampin' Up! initially removed the product late in February while they worked with the manufacturer on a rather large volume of quality issues that were encountered with these markers. They had hoped that they would be able to fix the problems that led to the issues, but in working with the manufacturer they jointly determined that it was due to a design and manufacturing flaw that could not be rectified in the short term. So, to protect us from dissatisfaction with the products, they have made the tough call to eliminate the product line.
Second – the My Digital Studio (MDS) product line will no longer be available after this calendar year ends on May 31st. Before that date, please make sure that you have downloaded (and backed up) any software or other media that you have purchased for this product line. After that date, we will no longer be able to download these items, purchase new items, order print products from the Stampin' Up! print service or get support for the software. Additionally, the MyDigitalStudio.net web site will be taken offline.
I admit that I have delayed a little bit in sharing this news with you because I had to deal with my emotions to figure out how to present it in a coherent/non-freaked-out manner. I am very sad that I won't be able to teach you awesome ways to use your Blendabilities, and you won't have a chance to get to know and love them. But, and this is a very BIG but, I am very proud of Stampin' Up! for making this very hard decision. I'm sure that this has big implications for them, and I am very grateful that they made this tough call to protect us as consumers from having quality problems with this product. As to MDS, this piece of news wasn't as much of a shock as the Blendabilities announcement. The company has been reducing the number and frequency of new downloads for a while now. It seems that the market for digital products has been shifting and Stampin' Up! has decided to opt out. My take (and this is not based on anything official from Stampin' Up!) is that the product line hasn't been profitable enough to warrant the expense of creating new products, updating the software and maintaining the web sites necessary for the digital line. The up side is that even without these products, Stampin' Up! still has some amazing stamps, inks, papers and accessories. We can still have lots of fun paper crafting!
Now to share something fun – this is a card that I created with some of our awesome Sale-A-Bration products. The Lotus Blossom stamps are my favorite stamp set out of all of the SAB sets, in fact, I think it is my favorite SAB product overall. This card was a quick and pretty card that features 3 different SAB products – can you identify them?
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