Aug 30, 2009 | Uncategorized |
Hi everyone,
Gosh I can’t believe how long it’s been since I blogged. I was doing much better at this before I went to Noosa!
The trip was AMAZING, one of the most memorable 5 days of my life. It was so fantastic to meet all the other incentive trip achievers and their guests, meet one of my blog stalkers (Hi Helen, come on, post a comment!) and spend quality time with my hubby – and I came home feeling so pampered, relaxed and inspired! Can you imagine sitting in a glorious outdoor area at a table with talented ladies like Ngaire Anderson, Marelle Taylor and Jayne Mercer, and have Ngaire break out into song? A couple of us joined in, and then Ngaire made up her own lyrics to sing a song all about Stampin’ Up!. Wow is she clever or what?! I’ve never experienced a make n take session quite like that, I loved it!! (Hmm those of you who have booked upcoming workshops with me – what are your singing voices like?!).
Stampin’ Up! are so generous and showered us with gifts (I’ve shown them to some of my fellow demonstrators this weekend, and there were shrieks over the packaging everything was in, let alone the actual gifts!). Sitting next to Shelli Gardner on the final night at the farewell dinner I had this immense feeling of how lucky I was – as the group was small compared to the huge US/Canadian incentive trips we all got to have 1:1 time with Shelli. There are US demonstrators who would have their teeth pulled to sit next to Shelli at dinner as I did, I’m sure!
I was in awe of Janiel and Angie’s organisational abilities and how they’d thought of everything, from getting us all from our home towns to the venue at the same time, down to the gorgeous tags all of our gifts were labelled with. They had one of their US designers beautifully hand-write our names onto handmade tags, and shipped those over to label our places at the dinner table with, can you believe that? Most companies would have had the hotel print them onto cards or something, that would have been easier, but not as pretty! I brought all of those little touches home with me where I could, as I will treasure them always, so will share them with you later. Oh, Janiel and Angie are the Special Events organisers for Stampin’ Up! and they do an incredible job!
Anyway, one of the reasons I’ve been absent from blogging for over a week is that I got home on the Sunday night, unpacked and crawled into bed – and pretty much stayed there for two days. One of my problems is that I’m on the go all the time, so when I relax, my body thinks it’s time to fall over and I invariably get sick. I’m not sure whether it was the flu or a bad head cold that I had, but I was achy and had that tell-tale Rudolph look with my nose. Pity I don’t have shares in a tissue company, is all I can say!
I am in the process of downloading my photos from my camera at the moment so will try and share some of those in the coming week, along with other highlights of the trip. But in the meantime here’s a card that I demonstrated at Laurinda’s workshop a number of weeks ago, and I don’t think I’ve shown it to you on here yet. I hope you can see that I’ve used a number of the fabulous new products in our Spring Mini – I got some acetate and stamped on it with the Good Friend stamp set, using Stazon white ink. I’m so happy that Stampin’ Up! finally gave us that to use – love the effect of stamping on acetate! The key thing with doing this is that you have to be really steady and stamp straight down and lift straight up. If you wobble, you’ll smudge it! But, if you’re quick, you can take a tissue (rats, where are those shares!) and wipe off your smudged ink before it dries, and stamp it again.
I also used the new DSP we have – Walk in the Park, using two strips of it on top of the acetate. The butterfly was inked up in Pretty in Pink and then Riding Hood Red inks, while that gorgeous frame was stamped in Kiwi Kiss with the sentiment in Riding Hood Red. I cut both out by hand and adhered them on top of the acetate, curling the butterfly a little so that the wings stood up from the card, although you can’t really see it here. And for an extra fun touch, do you see that brad? It’s one of the new white ones from the Spring Mini – but to decorate it, I added a rub on flower from the Summer Love Rub-ons. How cute does that altered brad look now?!
The problem with acetate is that adhesive shows through it, so I used my snail adhesive only underneath the frame, butterfly and strips of DSP. That was another reason for the DSP, to give me somewhere to stick the acetate to the card base! Which is Baja Breeze cardstock by the way, and stamped in the same colour. One of my favourite in-colours this year!
I’ll try and be back soon… I’m trying to finish 50 swaps for this coming Saturday, and it’s a busy week at work this week, so bear with me! As always, if you need to order anything, or you just have a question, drop me a line (click
here).
Happy stamping!
Aug 20, 2009 | Uncategorized |
Hi everyone,
Just checking in with you all, I am having an absolute ball over here in Noosa! It’s hot, gorgeously sunny during the day, and Stampin’ Up! have done an amazing job organising the holiday for us. I don’t have pictures to share here yet (I have taken lots though!) as I have no way of downloading them. But I will share lots with you when I get home.
The flight over yesterday was uneventful and fun; we had an enjoyable coach ride up from Brisbane airport to Noosa Heads where we are staying. We stopped part way and had lunch at a famous pub (I can’t remember how to spell the name so will tell you later!) and arrived to a warm welcome at the Sheraton hotel. Shelli Gardner (co-founder and CEO of Stampin’ Up!) was there to meet us, and wow she remembered me from Convention! That was so lovely as I know she meets thousands of Demonstrators every year and for her to remember my name was so touching and sweet! She is an amazing lady.
I hit the spa soon after arriving and that was incredible; so relaxing I nearly fell asleep, just like I predicted earlier! Patrice and I really enjoyed ourselves, it was totally worth it and got our holiday off to a wonderful start. We had a gorgeous dinner last night here at the Sheraton, unfortunately I forgot to take my camera and take photos of the food (I’m serious!) as the dessert selection was amazing. Hopefully one of the other demonstrators here will share photos of that later.
Today we were taken by ferry to Ricky’s restaurant and were split into teams to prepare the food for our lunch, 6 different amazing courses, it was just divine! And they gave us the recipes too – I suggested to hubby that he could reproduce them for me when we get home but strangely he didn’t seem too enthused about that! There’s definitely a food theme to my post here I know, but as a trained Food Techie I can’t help myself!
This afternoon a few of us went shopping at a local mall which was fun, I picked up a few things for my little girl at home. Tomorrow morning we’re doing our swap and some make n takes which is exciting – a couple of days with no stamping has started to bring on withdrawl – you all know I love to stamp! On Saturday we’re hoping to go on a fabulous touristy trip hand feeding wild dolphins and lots of other things, I’m really looking forward to that. And of course there will be the farewell dinner that night which I am told is a real highlight of the Incentive trip. That’s all a big secret as to what we are doing so that adds to the excitement!
Oh and you should see the gifts that Stampin’ Up! has so generously given us so far (I say so far as there are more to come – we spin a prize wheel every day and they have been leaving gifts in our rooms every night!). I now have a cute apron and a chef’s hat (embellished with SU buttons!), I have won some Ski Slope DSP and corduroy buttons on the prize wheel (woo hoo!), and tonight they gave us a gift box containing lots of ink pads, some marker pens, a new stamp set (WOW) and a new punch that we don’t yet have in NZ. I’m SO excited about this punch as I’m guessing it means we’ll be getting this one in a future mini or main catalogue (or both) and I get to play with it now!! My poor husband has had to put up with me shrieking when I open the gifts from SU as it is so exciting to get all these wonderful things. Thanks SO much to Stampin’ Up! for spoiling me rotten, and a huge thanks too, to all my wonderful customers and team members, without you I wouldn’t be here in the first place.
Hopefully I’ll be back again to share more news with you before we head home on Sunday. I’ll definitely post photos when I get home as I’m sure you’re all keen to see the goodies!
Inky hugs to everyone!
Aug 18, 2009 | Uncategorized |
Hi everyone,
Well the last couple of days haven’t exactly gone according to my grand plan. Aside from going to work, I had all these fabulous ideas for projects to make, challenges to enter, and blog posts to put on here. But it’s just not meant to be!
I have been frantically busy in the last week, making swaps for the Stampin’ Up! incentive trip to Noosa that hubby and I are going on. I even had him play “factory” with me tonight and had him cut up the supply lists I’d printed, but alas, they are still not finished! So I will be busy on the plane in the morning, lol!
In the meantime, here’s a wee Christmas card that I had as a make & take for Laurinda’s workshop a little while ago. I also made lots of these for a team swap, which went down well. They’re quick and easy to make, and again I took the colours from the DSP I used – Ski Slope, from the Spring Mini. I hadn’t planned on buying the Tree Trimmings set until Stampin’ Up! gave me an offer I just couldn’t pass up (an extra discount on top of my normal Demonstrator discount!) and I’m rather glad now that I did get this set.
Must get some sleep for a few hours… I think I might be falling asleep during my facial at the Spa tomorrow afternoon. Oh well, I can think of worse places to fall asleep!
Take care and I’ll be back soon to tell you all about my fabulous trip! (I know it will be fabulous, because Stampin’ Up! have organised it!).
Aug 12, 2009 | Uncategorized |
Morning everyone!
Here’s my second take on
Karen’s Sweet Sunday Sketch Challenge #30. Quite a different look to the first card I posted up yesterday, isn’t it? (See it
here). For this one, I thought it was about time that I mounted my Circle Circus set that I got at Convention back in May, gosh time has flown since then! I must say that I wasn’t so excited about this set when I first saw it, but it’s slowly growing on me.
The colour inspiration for this card was the Washington Apple DSP, I am working with that at the moment for other projects, so I took the colours from that. That’s another great tip for when you’re stuck for a colour combination, just use the colours from your favourite DSP, whether or not you actually use any of the DSP itself. So I’ve used Riding Hood Red, Pumpkin Pie, So Saffron and Bashful Blue for this card. The greeting comes from the Occasional Greetings set, it’s a set of 12 stamps for $71.95. So it’s an investment set – at the higher end of the range, but so versatile, I get a lot of use out of it. I’m sure I’ll be pulling it out again soon for Father’s Day cards!
I think the rest of the card is pretty self-explanatory, but if you have any questions, click
here to email me.
Have a great day!
Aug 11, 2009 | Uncategorized |
Morning everyone!
Sorry for my little absence there, I did promise I’d be putting up another project from a recent workshop, didn’t I? Well, this is not it (sorry Laurinda!), I’ll post that up some other time. I just had to play along with Karen’s Sweet Sunday sketch for this week. I have a couple of cards I needed to make, urgently, to send to my wonderful nieces over in the USA, whom I see very rarely :-(. I am very late for their birthdays this year, ahem…
So anyway, Karen’s sketch was perfect for one of the cards I wanted to make. Now I must tell you that the particular niece this is going to, is into bright pink, and very girly stuff. I haven’t really used the Bold Brights colours as a dominant colour (except maybe Real Red, for Christmas projects) in a while as I am so into the new in-colours right now. But Pixie Pink had to come out of hiding!
This is another example of how to use some strong colours together but not have them smack you in the face – like my tip in a previous post, use lots of a neutral colour and allow some empty (“white”) space to give your viewer’s eyes a place to rest. In this case I used both Whisper White and Kraft cardstock to break up the Pixie Pink and Orchid Opulence. The green colour is Certainly Celery, which helps to tone it down a fraction. This colour combination is straight from the Colour Coach – if you have one, go check it out!
The stamp set I’ve used here is Great Friend, from the Spring Mini. Probably my favourite set from there, although I like lots of them! And I’ve used the new scallop oval punch too. I love how Stampin’ Up! punches nest like this (this one works well with the large and small oval punches) and make it so easy to add your own embellishments. This card took me less than half an hour to make, and that included messing around with colour and stamp image choices. Those of you who know me, know that I have a lot to choose from, so that can take a while!
It’d be a good one for making several at a time to give as a set. Three silver brads finish off this simple card, it kind of looked a bit empty before I added them. I’ve spaced them out evenly by using the mat pack to get the holes for the brads where I wanted them, all nice and straight in a line. (I’m picky like that). If you don’t have the supplies I’ve used, just e-mail me (click here) to place your order.
Come back and visit soon as I have another entry to the Sweet Sunday challenge to show you! I know, two entries to one challenge – I’m as shocked as anyone!
Thanks Karen, for another fabulous challenge!
