Have I kept you waiting long enough???? It's been hard to find the time to unpack, sort out my convention goodies, edit pics and get a chance to blog about my fantastic trip to the 2nd Australian Stampin' Up convention! Whooo, hoooo! Think there were around 300 people in attendance for 2 days of make & takes, discussions, demos, card swaps and partying. It was so much fun and as a demonstrator, I have taken home so much information. I met loads of ladies who until now were just faces on blogs or forums. Everyone was just so wonderful and ready to swap stories, tips and information. And to top it all off, Yvonne who most of you know, is my gorgeous and ever-so-talented upline, achieved No. 15 demonstrator in the Top 25 demonstrators of the year out of 1000 or so Australian demos! How fantastic is that in her first year with S/Up! She was a little excited and so would I but amongst her other achievements, she had to go up on stage 3 other times to accept various recognition awards. Congrats Yvonne and I wouldn't be here without all your support, encouragement and sharing your fabulous talent with us. Can't wait for next year's convention which is going to be in Canberra (what the!). Would have loved to see it come to Melbourne but a trip away is a trip away and I'm a-goin' again! Oh and Yvonne was asked to do a talk on recruiting and she was quite nervous beforehand but you couldn't get her off the stage once they put a mic in her hand! She's a born natural speaker and they even got her to answer questions at the end of her session as we had a few minutes spare!
So wanna see some pics of what we got up to? Okay, first off let's show you some card swaps I made with the new 2008 In Colour range. I made around 30 and managed to swap them all. I would loved to have watercoloured but ran out of time. I made my cards from assorted In Colours as I kept running out. I used the new background stamp Polka Dot on the background and stamped it in Whisper White Craft Ink. I then used the Sprinkles set to stamp on my middle strip and then used the Level 1 Hostess stamp set A Little Bit Of Happiness on the Very Vanilla strip. I used our brand new Scallop Circle Punch and layered my label onto two sized circles with our Circle Punches. The label stamp came from Lovely Labels. Some ladies had 100+ cards in their stash to swap but I couldn't possibly have made that many! It was great to end up with load of samples to show at my demos or to take some inspiration from.
Here's the lovely Shelly Gardner who is the cofounder and CEO of Stampin' Up based in Utah. She spoke such inspirational words and welcomed anyone she met as if she'd known them for years. Very sincere and genuine. This is a shot of Shelly up on one of the 3 big giant screens up on stage.
Here's a shot of the Yvonne, me, Claire Daly and Leanne Saunders at one of our make-&-take demos. I roomed with Yvonne and Leanne.
Here's Yvonne all dressed up ready for our banquet awards night on Saturday! She's a bit of a stunner when she's all dazzled up! Heee, heee....you looked gorgeous Yvonne!
Here's the 3 roomie's posing in our finery!
Here's the whacky Madonna Dunn showing us a bit of leg with Yvonne!
Here's a shot of the slide with Yvonne & Claire's name up there in lights for their recruiting achievements.
Some shots of Claire & Yvonne on stage collecting roses, hugs from Shelly and stamp sets as their reward.
Here's a shot of Yvonne in her jammies surrounded by all her awards! Her luggage was tagged with a heavy sticker on the way up but on the way home, it was well overloaded with 9 stamp sets! Yikes!
I managed to win myself one of the door prizes which I did a swap with Yvonne for - it was the Garden Whimsy set. Throughout the weekend they had a Prize Patrol where some music from the Blues Brothers would come on and 10 names would flash up on the big screen. You had to jump up and down and make a lot of fuss if your name was up there to receive your gift! Heaps of fun. But now I'm back to reality and have a launch night here on Friday to celebrate the release of our new 2008/2009 Idea Book and then I have a workshop on Saturday to show my ladies all this new stuff!
I picked up loads of ideas from cards and projects that were on display. We all received a fun blue shoulder tote with our goodies in it for the weekend and some souvineer pins and there was a shop full of Stampin' Up merchandise so I have purchased myself a signature polo and a funky cap which I'll be sporting on Friday night! Anyhooo....I'd better be off to start some projects for my workshops so I hope I've inspired you all a little with what you can achieve by being a S/Up demo! I'm hoping to get myself a little team together so I too can walk that stage at Canberra next year!
Go check out Yvonne's blog as she's posted some more pics of our tote and all the goodies we received, the make & takes we did and a pile of her card swaps she made and received! I'm sure all the S/Up blogs will be loaded with fun pics by the end of this week!
