OnStage Event Swaps from Stampin' Up! UK Demonstrator Sarah Poulton

Happy Friday crafters.

Today I wanted to share the swaps I created for this years Stampin' Up! Convention called On Stage. I adapted one of the projects from my August Christmas Craft Day to create these altered stamped dominoes. I've hung them using Silver Corded trim so that they can be adapted for either a Christmas tree decoration or a necklace.

I used the White Christmas stamp set to create my embellished dominoes (matching the tree stamped label background).

I stamped my images in StazOn and coloured with alcohol permanent markers. Once I added Dazzling Details and embellishment I glazed with Crystal Effects.

Here are my swap instructions on the reverse.

Thank you for popping by today. Please let me know if you have any questions about Stampin' Up! or our products. I would love to help. All items can be purchased online via my shop or get in touch directly and I can order them for you to be delivered direct to your door. I'd also love to Demo for you and your friends at a crafty party. As the hostess you earn lots of lovely freebies and you all get to make a fun crafty project too (no crafting experience necessary!)

 -XXX-

Built for Free Using: My Stampin Blog

Home from Convention

Happy Monday Crafters ;0)

I am home from a crazy week away campervan-ing around Wales in the lead up to Convention in Manchester. Convention itself was crazy and HUGE. So many people to meet and chat to and swap with. I came home with the HUGEST bulging box of swaps (photos to follow very soon!). There is everything in there from wrapped chocolates to a Stampin' Up! necklace to lovely cards and cardfronts to brooches and even a paper crafted fascinator. It is always amazing to see the levels of creativity and the ideas people have. But, as I said, that's a whole post for another day......

I've come home and looked through my photos to realise I only took pictures of cards and samples. I havent a single picture of the stage, the fabulous presenters or any of my team mates. What a wally I am!! I got so caught up in the creativity that I forgot to take pictures I'd be able to share and scrapbook. I will be sharing some pictures over the upcoming days of the amazing swaps I received and share some crafty projects too. I have a super busy crafty week ahead and have lots of things to share.

It was announced that for the next 3 years Stampin' Up! Convention will be held in Brussels, Belgium. Next years event is being held from 16-18th October. I would love to welcome you to my Island Inkers team and have you join me and some current members of my team for a crazy weekend of crafty creativity. If you click on the 'Join My Team' tab above you can find out more information about joining Stampin' Up! either as a hobby demonstrator or to build yourself a creative business. I have a lovely team and we meet monthly to chat and craft. And the pic below shows the welcome pack I give to all new joiners to my team. 

And while we are chatting about exciting Stampin' Up! announcements. It was announced at Convention that Stampin' Up! are launching the FAB Undefined line in the UK (available now). If you click on the flyer below it will direct you through to my online store for more info. Undefined is a fantastic and new creative stamping product for carving your own images. The Carving Kit includes the tools and product needed to make your own stamp set. You are completely unlimited in what you carve and create.

We were given a sample kit at Convention and there was a devoted area for giving carving a go. I created a little stamp for Summer which I was actually really pleased with. And would you believe it, I cannot find it anywhere!? I'm going to have to have another look tomorrow and then I can share my stamp with you.

Please get in touch if you'd like any further information about Stampin' Up!, joining my team or the Undefined kit, please get in touch. I'd be happy to chat to you about anything crafty or Stampin' Up!: poulton_sarah@yahoo.co.uk or 01983 609249.

 If you place an online order for any Stampin' Up! products through my online store remember to add the code below and I will add your name to the draw to win the hostess benefits for the month's combined orders (with a minimum of £25 in hostess freebies):

V99TUSS2

Happy Crafting

-X-

Stampin' Up! UK Convention Swap Special

Convention is here!! Woohoo! Hopefully as you read this I will be getting ready for my first full day of Convention fun (and *fingers crossed* a few sneak peaks of upcoming new products!)

Today I wanted to share the swaps I created for my fellow Demonstrators. It is one of the highlights of Stampin' Up! events, creating a unique card or creation, to swap with other Demonstrators. It is a brilliant way to gather new ideas and meet new people.

The picture above shows my swap box full with 90 swaps ready to meet new homes in Manchester. For this years main swap I created a fridge magnet inspired by a creation on Pinterest. For this you just need a pretty patterned paper (which Stampin' Up! has in plentiful supply) and those glass beads/pebbles you find with the candles and vases in the supermarket or garden centre (I found mine in Tesco!). I purchased some super strong magnets from Ebay and borrowed my Mum's glue gun.

I used the Blossom and Pansy punches with the Gingham Garden and Winter Frost Designer Series Paper to create these layered fridge magnets. The centre pebble pulls away to be used to hold papers or photos on your fridge.

The following pics give a bit closer view of the designs.

While I was in the swap creating mood I decided to make 50 separate swaps for the larger team I am a part of, the Pinkies. I had a bit of a brainwave and sent my sister, on one of her work trips to London, to the M&M store to purchase a HUGE bag of Pink M&Ms. 

I used the M&Ms with Stampin' Up!'s thin cello bags to create these little sweetie treat swaps. I am so looking forward to getting together with the Pinkies and meeting all the new faces and chatting to all the friends I have made since joining SU 4 years ago.

I hope you've enjoyed my swap shares today. I'll be back from my Convention adventures over the weekend and look forward to sharing lots of pictures of all our crafty antics. 

Pop back Monday for an update and news from Convention.

Happy Crafting and have a lovely weekend ;0)

-X-

Stampin' Up! UK WInter Frost Card Candy Convention Swap

Good morning Thursday crafters.

As Stampin' Up!'s Convention will be kicking off this evening with lots of over excited Stampin' Up! lovers all in one room, I thought I would share my Card Candy Swaps. I organised a swap of these little card toppers amongst the Pinkie team. There are 10 of us all signed up to make a set of card candy and we will all be meeting up tomorrow ready to swap.

I had seen a lovely card on Pinterest that used this idea of lots of little winter squares. I decided to use this as my punch art inspiration for my Convention Card Candy. I loved the excuse to get our all of my punches and have a play (as well as a good reason to use lots of lovely silver glimmer paper). You can't see too clearly in the picture, but the snowflake piece is actually a mini shaker with glitter in. Our shaker frames make creating these so easily (and they fit perfectly with our circle punches too).

To create each piece I used the following items:

• Bobble Hat: Large Oval Punch, Itty Bitty Shapes Punches, Word Window Punch
• Trees: Merry Minis Punch Pack (available to order through me for £15.50)
• Snowman: I layered up various sizes of scallop and normal circles finishing with 3/4" circle for the snowman face. I hand cut the hat from Basic Black.
• Snowflake: Snowflake Soiree stamp set, Shaker frames, Dazzling Diamonds Glitter
• Coffee Cup: A Fitting Occasion stamp set, 1" Circle Punch
• Polar Bear: 1" Circle Punch, Word Window Punch

Here are all 10 waiting to be packed away and swapped.

To create the label for the title I created a customised project in My Digital Studio and used the stamps and papers within the digital software to create my little labels (that I printed on to normal office labels and cut to size and attached to my Winter Frost toppers).

I have included links to the products used for today's project either by clicking on the photos or the direct links above. If you place an online order for any Stampin' Up! products through my online store remember to add the code below and I will add your name to the draw to win the hostess benefits for the month's combined orders (with a minimum of £25 in hostess freebies):

V99TUSS2

Please get in touch if you have any questions about today's project or about placing an order or about Stampin' Up! in general. You can contact me on poulton_sarah@yahoo.co.uk or 01983 609249.

I'll be back tomorrow for the last of my Convention excitement posts. I have the last of my swaps to share tomorrow (my general swaps and the swaps especially for Pinkies).

Happy Crafting

-X-

Convention Catch Up!

Wow, where did that week go? Cannot believe i have been back from Convention a week now and I havent had a moment to update my blog with photos. I finally get a chance to schedule a post and now my photos are playing up. Hope you don't mind rotated pictures. I guess you'll get the idea!!

So I returned from Convention over a week ago now. And what a crazy couple of days we had. It was an inspiring and fun two days in Disneyland Paris surrounded by Demos and friends alike. I had a blast just catching up with team mates and meeting new people, and that was before we even began to think about crafting ;0)

I was so pleased that I chose to fly with fellow Pink Lady team mates earlier on the Thursday as it gave us all a chance to catch up and chill out before the main event got started on the Friday. We all went for a big team meal on the Thursday evening over in the Disney Village (just a hop, skip and a jump from the Sequoia Lodge where we were staying) followed by team swaps.  For some reason I must've had a total camera block as I didn't take any 'people photos' during these social meet ups. Think I was too busy chatting to think about my camera.

The main event started on Friday morning with a chance to register and pick up our fab SU craft bag (which I'll have to take a pic of for another day), start general swapping, check out all the lovely goodies for sale in Memento Mall, and just generally catch up. One of my favourite things about meeting up with fellow Demos is seeing the swaps people come up with. There was a team of German ladies all in traditional dress swapping German gingerbread biscuits (my kinda swapping!!) and there were card swaps, and chocolate swaps, card candy and 3d items. It is just a creative mash up of ideas. All of which I then had to fit into my swap box to carry home!! I'll try and get some good photos at home of some of the swaps I received. There are so many ideas and techniques used that I'll have to go through them all for inspiration for my upcoming Christmas journal (2 days and counting.....).

Anyways, enough jabbering. Here are a few Convention highlight photos. This first one is of my lovely Kala on the Convention inspiration boards. I was so pleased to see her lovely face up there. I made everyone nearby take a picture too ;0)

 The theme of this years Convention was 'Grow' so there were a lot of lovely papercraft displays of flowers and garden related items.

 One of Shelli's presentations on the main stage (she is always so well dressed!)

 A Saturday coffee break! What festive trip would be complete without a Starbucks Red Cup. The Parisian menu was different to ours at home. So I  ordered myself (or rather got a fluent French speaking Demo friend, Jenny to order) a White Chocolate Cranberry Mocha. Sounds weird. And in all honesty it was pretty strange (there was a strange jammy mixture left in the bottom!). But lovely to try something different. And another photo for my Starbucks of the World album ;0)

 And this last pic is a fun Pinkies photo taken in the New York hotel. Not sure my pregnant body was too keen on fitting in this little taxi. But fun to take time out with Sarah, Michelle and Jane.

So much more i could say about the weekend. But all in all it was just a fun weekend of Stampin' Up! related chatter and crafting. Now, how can I manage a 6 month old and my luggage to Mainz for Convention next year.... I'll have to have a think.....

-xxxx-

Convention swaps

Oh to live in sunnier climes where there is sunshine all year round for better picture opportunities.  Instead we have to battle the early evening light and flash rebound..... But you'll get the idea with my swap photos.

The first project I have to share is my Button Buddies/Nursery Nest inspired Card Candy.  The idea is to create card toppers that use punches or a particular stamp set in a variety of ways and to showcase the images. I fell in love with Button Buddies the first time I saw it. I love how Stampin' Up! create products that link with other items (such as this use of buttons within the image). I stuck with the DSP colour scheme and used several pots of Subtles Buttons to create my 10 matching sets of Card Candy.

 My second project today is my general convention swap- a shrink plastic wine glass charm. My lovely Mum sat and made these all for me as I just havent had the energy to create 87 (thats how many my wonder Mum made!! Thats a whole lot of shrinky dink plastic and jewellery wire) swaps. She is truly fab as she created her own little links for the charms and also raided her bead stash (not sure how I ended up photographing identical swaps as she used lots of different beads for these wine glass charms).  So for this Mum stamped the flower from Season of Joy onto shrink plastic and sat with a heat tool shrinking them (after cutting them all out and creating the link by punching a hole with my Crop-a-Dile). After linking the charm and beads onto the wine glass loop we mounted the whole charm onto Old Olive cardstock and finished with a small cello bag.

So these are my swap projects for 2011. I'll be back at the weekend to share some of the lovely projects I receive in return and tell you all about the Convention experience.

Happy Crafting ;0)

Home from Convention 2010

And I dont even know where to start in talking about it. There was so much happening and so many lovely crafting projects and so many lovely people. So I'll start at the beginning....

One big draw for me about convention was knowing that Stampin' Up!'s founder Shelli would be attending and speaking on stage. I've followed her blog for inspiration since I joined with the company in February. It is Shelli and her family who grace the first couple of pages of the Idea Book & Catalogue each year. Well it turns out she was the loveliest of ladies. She took time out to chat and be photographed with every and any Demo who approached her. She sat here being photographed for about 2 hours on the Thursday giving every Demo a chance to chat to her. I got in there first thing knowing i'd bottle it if I didn't get in there quick ;0) 

Stampin' Up!'s European Convention was attended by 300 Demonstrators from France, Germany and the UK and was held at Addington Palace near Croydon. The theme this year was 'Share What You Love' and we attended classes, Make and Take sessions and the Annual Awards Dinner. I loved meeting up with my upline Michelle and the other lovely ladies in our team.

 The picture above was taken during the Awards Dinner when the Top 25 UK Demos were announced (Shelli gave each of the 25 a rose as they came up onto stage). The photo shows the lovely Peg on the end celebrating No 24 and on the far left Carole celebrating 14! Go Pink Ladies!

This is Michelle and I up on stage posing for a photo yesterday. Her hardwork in recruiting and personal sales earned her several recognition awards but most importantly she is now the UK's No 1 Stampin' Up! Demonstrator.

I was in love with the stage set. I wanted to take the giant stamp in the middle of the stage home and use it as a coffee table. It would have been a real conversation starter and the perfect size ;0)

Right, I have so much more to chat about. I havent even started on the crafting and the beautiful swaps and projects I received. More on that later.

Thanks for stopping by ;0)

-XXXX-

Hellooooo from Convention

Well actually this is a scheduled post so not technically from Convention. But as I am there now I wanted to schedule a post to show you my hundreds of different swaps I made for the event.

Here is a pic of my main general swap (120+ made): 

 For this my Mum and I started collecting bits and bobs and drying them out back in September. We created a scented Christmas pot pourri using garden items such as fir cones and beech nuts. I then emptied out my spice cupboards to make the little scented gingerbread men (you can just about see him in the left of the bag). You basically add LOTS of mixed spices (ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves) in a bowl and add spoonfuls of apple sauce till you have a stiff dough. You can then roll out and cut Christmas-y shapes. You leave these to dry and you can then use them in pot pourri or as tree decorations. If you hang them near a radiator the heat makes the whole room smell like Christmas ;0)

To finish these little bags off I used the Jolly Holiday DSP and Season Of Joy Stamps (with Cherry Cobler Ink).

Here is a pic of just a small selection of each of my swaps laid out at home. Top left: Card Candy Swap. Bottom Left: Business Tool Swap. Centre: CMC 9cm square Mini LO swap (90 made!). Right: my general swap detailed above:

 Here is a close up of my card candy swap. I chose the Playful Pieces Level 3 Hostess Set as the stampset for my candy. I then themed the pieces around the Sweet & Sour DSP (Rose Red, Pumpkin Pie & Very Vanilla).

I will post more detail upon my return. But just wanted to upload a little something in my absence to show you all what has kept me so busy this past couple of months.....

Thanks for reading.

-XXXX-

A little convention make....

I'm slowly ticking off the million and one jobs that need completing before Convention on Thursday. Last night I tackled the job of making myself a bag tag! Now I knew nothing about this till I noticed a thread on In Love With Stamping. A lovely lady there (Sassy Stamper) was offering a blank Top Note cut out for us to accessorise to make into our bag tags. I was left wondering what I would need a bag tag for. Then all became clear with a bit of investigating. We are all given the same bag at registration and so everyone makes their own tag to identify theirs and ensure it doesnt get mixed up with the other 299 bags hung on chairs and hidden under tables ;0)

So here is my effort. I used some die cut letters that Paige cut ages ago when she was demoing the Cricut for me (and I've kept tucked away in my craft box knowing I'd use them one day! Thank you Mrs P for usefully cutting my name for me!). I covered them in Crystal Effects then emptied an entire pot of Rose Pink Cosmo glitter on top of that (I didnt use it all I might add, I did pour the leftovers back in the pot). Once that was dried I added another layer of Crystal Effects over the top to save me leaving a trail of glitter all over convention. I then stuck these to the top note shape (which I had covered in Sweet & Sour DSP) and blinged a bit more with jewels from my stash box ;0) I'm so pleased with the result. All things glittery are very me ;0)

Also, I wanted to share with you a lovely Halloween Treat Bag I received yesterday. I was made up as I had been admiring these over on Ladybird Ladybird over the weekend. I popped in to see Mrs P on my way back to work after lunch and she'd saved one for me ;0) I brought it back to work and photographed it straight away as I couldnt guarantee the urge to eat the choccie treats wouldnt overcome me during the afternoon (which it did ;0). Isn't it lovely? And I love the Halloween stamps. The witch is just fantastic. I wonder which company makes them?

-XXX-

4 days and counting......

Stampin' Up!'s European Convention is now only 4 days away (well technically 5 but I am travelling up to East Croydon on Thursday so I say 4) and I have been so busy getting everything ready. Hence things have been a bit quiet on the crafting/blogging/scrapbooking front. I somewhat foolishly signed myself up for several organised swaps through the website In Love With Stamping and have been feverishly busying myself along making 90 CMC swaps (which will form a lovely mini album memento of Convention), 10 Business Tools swaps, 10 Card Candy Swaps, Team Swaps and 100+ general demo swaps.  I feel like I've breathed, eaten, slept and dreamed swaps continually for the last month or so. So relieved to finally have put the finishing touches to my last swaps today. They are now all packaged up and ready to go. Goodness only knows how I'm going to get these all the way to Croydon on the train along with myself and my main bag. Think I'll have to come up with some creative packing to protect everything.....

So once Convention is over, normal crafting service will resume. I'm now 4 challenges behind with the Wight Craft Circle's Scrap With Us (which I will be catching up on asap!) and I've got workshops and demos to prepare for. So new cards/layouts will be posted soon. Along with photos of my swaps and hopefully all the lovely swaps I'll receive in return.

I cannot wait to blog again this time next week and let you all know how Convention goes ;0) I'm so excited and yet terrified at the same time (trying not to let my nerves get the better of me).

Right, off to watch X-Factor. Can hear Bon Jovi are on already and I'm missing it (love Bon Jovi! Have some fab memories of seeing them live in New Jersey many moons ago. Thank goodness for Sky+)......

-xxxx-