StampsNWhatnot

More from the Stampin Up 2013 Convention

It seems like a blur now.  Convention.  Stampin Up's biggest party of the year.  Instead of babbling about how much fun we had, I thought I would share some more photos with you with quick blurbs about them.

 

Here's me and Becky again outside of the Gathering Place before we went into the Demonstrator Resource Center.  This is just a sampling of that we saw and yet another reason we love Stampin Up!

 

Isn't it so nice that everything coordinates?  Takes the guess work out of it and everything so easy!

These are just a small sampling of what was there.  Unfortunatly, a lot of my photos weren't in focus.  Ugh!  Once the afternoon was over, we went for our Croppin Queens team dinner at Buca di Beppo.  It was wonderful food, wonderful times, spent with wonderful women!

 

Tres bella!

Stampin' Up! Convention 2013 - Day 1

Day 1 of Convention was jam packed with activity!  The day started out with us going to breakfast at the hotel (man!  was their bacon tasty), then catching TRAX over to the Salt Palace and meeting up with some of our friends. We swapped, had photos taken, chatted and laughed.  We met up with some team mates in the Gathering Place and had a few photos taken.  In this photo is one of my uplines - Janet and one of my bff's Becky in the orange shirt. 

 

Afterwards, I went to the Shilo for a quick bite, swap and class. Here is a snapshot of part of the group where we were taking the class.  My team mates who were there are on the same side of the table as me.  Andrea, Diane and Linda.

 

We also participated in a swap.  My roomie Marjie made these bags.  Aren't they the cutest!?!  They lined the entire bar and then some!

 

After this was over, we went back over to the Salt Palace to get in line for opening session.  Convention didn't really start until 5:30, but the doors were going to open at 5PM.  So we got in line and waited.  Once we got inside and found our seats, the anticipation grew.  The opening song was preformed by Ryan Innes of The Voice fame.  He was amazing and we LOVED the song!

 

 

We received our convention bags - a glorious white backpack with silver accents FULL of stamp sets & make & takes.  It's so roomy with lots of pockets to hold all kinds of stamping tools, sets catalogs, and well, all that we ladies put in our bags!  Here's a photo of the staff wheeling them out to give to us.

 

 

Now THAT'S a lot of bags!

 

We had a visit from Ronald McDonald who shared with us all of the good this wonderful charity has done for families who stay at their houses.  This years stamp set is called Tag It and for every stamp set sold, Stampin Up will donate $3 to the charity.  We have donated over a million dollars over the last decade.  

 

 

Stay tuned for a Stamp Class featuring this fun set!

 

After General Session, we all went over to the Demonstraor Resource Center for the Opening Social.  There was LOTS to do there.  Just to name a few things, there was the My Paper Pumpkin booth, we broke the Guiness Book of World Records for sending the most cards from a single place, a service project to help children who are sick by making birthday kits for the Primary Children's Medical Center of Salt Lake City, lots of photo ops, free products, demonstrations, learning labs, display boards and the 25 year museum.  There was also a Product Showcase, Product Playground and of course a place to meet Ronald McDonald himself!  Needless to say, there wasn't enough time to see and do everything, so we picked and choose what we wanted to see the most.

 

Now don't freak out with this next photo, but here is a pic of all 6000 of us moving from General Session over to the Demonstrator Resource Center.  Can you find me?  I'm in there somewhere!

 

 

 

The Day Before Convention Started

Convention is loaded with inspiration but so is the happenings leading up to it.  As I said in an earlier post, I participated in three, count em, three shoebox swaps and Wednesday evening, I had the other 2 of them!

 

Some of team mates from my group of Croppin Queens participated in this swap.  We hopped from one card to another and managed to get them all done.  Wish I had a photo of all of us at a table, but we moved too darn fast!

 

After our swap, we went to a wonderful restaurant to grab a bite to eat called Blue Lemon at City Creek.  All I can say is we need one in Virginia!

 

 

Talk about some beautiful and delicious food!  Take a look.

 

 

 

Okay, so back to stamping!  After dinner, I went back to the swap for my last round of shoebox swaps.  This one ran from 7-11PM.  I got all of these done as well.  That's a lot of cards!

 

 

As you can see, there were a lot of us participating!

 

This is the swap I did for this round.  It uses the very cute Animal Talk stamp set. We also made this card at my last Stamp Camp Saturday.

 

 

What really made this card is that I popped the frog up. 

 

It was just a little bit of fussy cutting. 

Here's the stamp set:

ANIMAL TALK

# 126392 (clear mount) $18.95

# 132569 (wood mount) $26.95

 

 

 

So you now have 2 days of activity.  Tomorrow, we move to Day 1 of the Stampin' Up! 2013 Convention!

See you then!

Jeannette

 

Pre Stampin' Up! Convention Shoebox Swaps

Hi There!  I had full intentions to post while I was away at Stampin' Up!'s 25th Anniversary Convention, but to be honest, it was so jam packed with activity that there just wasn't time.  I'll start this series of posts with a couple days before it all started. 

I flew into Salt Lake City on Tuesday in order to participate in one of my very favorite activities.  A Shoebox Swap!  Okay, it was the first of three that I signed up for.  We did this first on from 7-11PM.  The other two were on Wednesday.  What is a shoebox swap you ask?  I'll tell you!  It was a 49 card swap.  That's a lot of cards!  What we did was make 25 full cards, then have the other 24 cut and ready to stamp and assemble.  We were assigned either group A or B (I was in A) and while we're creating our cards, the swap hostess is swapping the completed cards (from group B) for us so we get all 49 designs.  My first card was shown on my last post.  It's the one where I used the Chalk Talk set.

 

 

 

It was so much fun!  Not just because I was stamping, which you know is a blast, but because I got to met some incredible stampers.  We stamp, laugh, learn, and get to know each other.  That's just the way stamping is.  A fantastic way to create feed our creative souls while building friendships at the same time! 

 

Here's my friend Susan working on a card.  (Hi Susan!) I met her in January when we did the same type shoebox swap when we attended Stampin' Up's Leadership Conference in Orlando.  We'll spend many future dates stamping together I'm sure. We finished all of the swaps.  All 24 of them.  Not bad for running on 3 hours sleep, eh?

 

 

On Wednesday morning, I met Susan and her team for breakfast.   We met at the Lamb's Grill, the oldest restaurant in Salt Lake City.  It's a beautiful restaurant, rich with polished wood and high ceilings.  Breakfast was yummy too.

 

We exchanged business ideas, brainstormed and had a wonderful relaxing time.  More friends, more good times!

 

Tune in tomorrow for more of the happenings in Salt Lake City.