Stampin’ Up! Convention 2013 Day 3

Posted on July 21, 2013 by mauistamper

Crystal and I were very privileged this morning to participate in a “You Crew” event. Demonstrators are selected at random for exclusive, up close and personal convention experiences and we were invited to meet with a Stampin’ Up! illustrator early this morning.

Kathy Pitt has been a Stampin’ Up! illustrator for 23 years! She shared such interesting and insightful information about how stamps are designed and selected for the catalog, and a little bit of history too. She also shared some scrumptious cupcakes!

As an extra bonus, after our You Crew experience we were escorted into the General Session and given fabulous seats in the second row! With almost 6000 demonstrators in attendance, that was a real treat.

The morning sessions were filled with lots of product demonstrations. Stampin’ Up! does not disappoint when it comes to projects! I have loads of photos but it is going to take a little time to organize them, and then I will share. I did find pictures of Shelli’s cards made with the newly announced Flip Card thinlets:

There are two sets of thinlets – one makes a circle flip, the other a label shape. They will be available August 1 (I think – there were so many announcements and dates that my head is spinning more than usual.)

We had really informative classes this afternoon, and then the final general session of the day. I’m heading home with loads of loot!

It was a great day. We finished up with the Pioneer Day concert at the LDS Conference Center, a truly lovely and revitalizing experience. Late night dinner at the La Jolla Grove and then a couple of hours of organizing and packing! We are two pooped pineapples but we wouldn’t have it any other way.

Convention 2013 Day 2

Posted on July 19, 2013 by mauistamper

It’s late, the hotel wifi is really slow, and we have been going 110 mph with our hair on fire!! So much to tell – check back and I will try to update more over the weekend when I have more time.

First off is a very very cool new product available NOW. Undefined is a carve-your-own stamp kit. I made one – a pineapple – and once I got past my initial fear of starting it was fun and very rewarding! Check out the video! You can order NOW – the kit is #133402 for $19.95 and the rubber/block refill is #134808 for $9.95.

Draw your design, transfer it to the rubber (pencil transfer), and cut it out!

Don’t you love my pineapple?? I do!!

Shelli also demonstrated two new thinlets for creating swing cards. I don’t have a picture of a card right now but I do have one of a booklet she made. Look for the circles that seem to flip in mid-card. VERY exciting!!

Lots more swapping today, more free product, more opportunities to learn. Stampin’ Up! does an awesome job of providing resources for the demonstrators and Convention is where they shine.

This is one of the Dress Framelits cards – cover and inside – that Shelli demonstrated online. Please forgive the extraneous hands, cameras, etc – EVERYONE wanted photos!

Don’t have the cover of this one but love this moose card!! Haven’t seen a moose on Maui for, well, EVER, but the card is fun.

I participated in 4 organized swaps and some general floor swaps – be prepared for some INCREDIBLE projects in the next few weeks! Swappers are busy people!

The evening ended with a 80’s cover band, lots of entertainment, and dessert: mousse, brownies, cupcakes, you name it!! There was also a Washi Tape giveaway (almost as sweet as the dessert!!) and the opportunity to view more creative projects. So much to tell!! So much to show!! So ready for bed!!!

Convention Day 1

Posted on July 18, 2013 by mauistamper

Day One was full of adventure, Stampin’ Up! and otherwise! I have lots of fun photos to give you a feeling for our day.

We were up pretty late last night, so we skipped the super-early call and headed over to the convention center about 9am to pick up our convention tee shirts and do some swapping. TONS of demonstrators – Crystal met someone who turned out to be the cousin of a co-worker, and I met a fan of the Maui Stamper!

We visited but I have forgotten your name!! Please leave me a comment and remind me of your name. 🙂

We left the convention center and headed out to complete yesterday’s unfinished business, namely a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc. We got out to the wine store only to discover that THEY WERE STILL CLOSED.

Please don’t think I am a pathetic paper bag wino. We are eating our main mean at lunchtime (European style) and are having a little snack in the evening, and a glass of wine is a lovely companion to fresh berries, a baguette and some cheese. Oh, and perhaps a little chocolate. Anyway, we are standing outside the store with 25 minutes to go and it’s about 195 degrees outside. Crystal looks across the street and sees the next best thing to the State Wine Store:

Gourmandise provided a divine cappucino, beautiful air conditioning and lovely, warm service along with my scrumptious chocolate meringue. (Crystal had a rum ball, and she shared a little taste – also divine.)

The neon “Open” light went on across the street. Third time was the charm and we accomplished our task and then headed to Trader Joe’s. This is what people from Hawaii DO when we come to the Mainland because in spite of the fact that everything about TJ’s looks like the islands, they don’t have stores there.

Let me tell you something about walking around Salt Lake at high noon when it is 195 degrees outside. It will turn you into a crazy person in no time! You start standing in the shadow of the stoplight while you wait for the “WALK” sign to turn green. You consider opening the bottle of Sauvignon Blanc in your bag and swigging it right there on the sidewalk. And then you make the excellent decision to take TRAX out to the Red Iguana for lunch (which was actually the plan all along.)

I have never had a bad meal – or a bad Margarita – at this restaurant. Today’s choice was the Mole Negro and it was delicioso! Once we were happily fed it was back to the hotel for a quick break before the Opening Session.

There are 5800 demonstrators and guests attending convention this year and it took a while to get inside. We found a couple of seats and quickly learned that our companions were from North Queensland! LOVED sharing Opening Session with our beautiful Aussie friends!! (Dearest Aussies, please let me know how to contact you so that I can send you a copy of this photo.)

Shelli shared some Stampin’ Up! history, we heard from Ronald McDonald himself about the impact Stampin’ Up! has made on Ronald McDonald House, and Pam Morgan shared some great stampin’ projects with us. We also got our bags!! Don’t know where my Convention Bag photo is now – I’ll share it tomorrow – but we have been assured that we will be heading home with plenty of convention swag. There were TWO Prize Patrols and then Shelli closed the session with an All Attendee Giveaway of new stamps from the Holiday Catalog.

Next stop was the Expo with 5,800 of our best friends! It was a little squishy at first, but things settled down a bit and we had the chance to see some great products and talk to some very knowledgable SU staff. Fabulous new stuff coming in the Holiday catalog!

I was one of the very last people to add my card to the Guinness World Record Smashing effort – 2,984 greeting cards mailed from a single location! And there’s that bag – a gorgeous backpack with beautiful Stampin’ Up! style.

It was a fabulous first day and I look forward to sharing more with you! Check my Facebook page for updates during the day tomorrow and I hope to hear from you soon!

Convention: the day before

Posted on July 17, 2013 by mauistamper

Crystal and I left Maui on Monday night headed for Salt Lake. It’s a long trip no matter how you look at it, but we are excited to be here and we’ve had a great first day. (Convention officially begins tomorrow – today is the “travel recovery” day.) Downtown Salt Lake is swarming with Stampin’ Up demonstrators, and I’m sure the regular shopkeepers are used to it but the newbies must be wondering what the heck is going on. We’ve done our part to enrich the local economy – it’s the least we can do!

While we waited to board the plane on Maui we worked on some swaps. Crystal did most of the work, I just pretended to help. If you see us around convention, check and see if we have any left – they feature the exclusive Macadamia Nut Hershey Kisses!

Our upline, Janet Wakeland, sponsored a guided tour of the Great Salt Lake for about 30 demonstrators this afternoon. We learned a lot about the lake – including the fact that the entire Salt Lake area was once under 850 – 1000 feet of salt water! There was a chance to float in the lake, and many did so, but to be honest the combination of the brine shrimp (aka Sea Monkeys) and the briny water “dampened” our spirits for a float. Instead we wandered over to the dock where one of our tour guides was catching brine shrimp and pointing out the spiders that eat the flies that come to feed on the brine shrimp stinkiness. There were a LOT of spiders. I am a firm believer in spiders as long as they stay outside where they belong. These spiders were outside. So was I. It was a very delicate balance and I was extremely grateful that the spiders stayed on their side of the weeds. Because there were a LOT of them (did I already say that?)

These are NOT spiders, they are the RemARKables!

This is how we ended the day. Crystal put the finishing touches on the Hershey Macnut Swaps and I called room service. Because this is a very very strange town. I had hoped to order a glass of wine with our late lunch, but the restaurant did not serve. When we finished our shopping we headed to a well known grocery store, but grocery stores only sell beer. The sympathetic clerk directed me to a liquor store just a few blocks away (it was 6 blocks – and Salt Lake City blocks are 1/4 mile). The liquor store was closed. I got back to the hotel just in time for our first organized swap and then headed upstairs to Maui Stamper Central (aka our hotel room) and called room service. This is what my bed looked like:

I’m not going to tell you how much we paid for this but it was worth it. And all that hauling around downtown brought my daily Active Link Activity Points Plus earned for the day to a grand total of 9.

I win.

Convention begins tomorrow afternoon, and I’ll do my best to share all that I can with you. Wish you were here!

Strawberry Crumb Cake

Posted on May 30, 2013 by mauistamper

Doesn’t that sound delicious? I think I’m going to create a Stampin’ Up! cookbook using color names!

Chalk Talk stamp set
Strawberry Slush and Crumb Cake FFIP (Firm Foam Ink Pad)
Very Vanilla, Pool Party, and Crumb Cake card stock
Quatrefancy Foil Specialty DSP
Tea Lace Paper Doilies
Big Shot and Lattice TIEF
Pool Party Seam Binding
Rhinestone Jewels
Stampin’ Sponge

I’m a little late to the Doily bandwagon but I’m on board now! Once I realized how easy it is to add some color with a Stampin’ Sponge I was sold on this flirty embellishments.

This is another card we’ll be making on Saturday (June 1st!!) after the “Out with the Old, In with the New” Open House at the Maui Masonic Lodge.

Sale begins at 9am, class is at 11am. Come see for yourself!

Puddin’ Pistachio on the Pumpkin

Posted on May 28, 2013 by mauistamper

Well, the Maui Stamper is clearly in a silly mood, isn’t she?

The 2013-2015 In Color Collection has such mouth-watering names for each color that I don’t see how I’ll make it through the next two years without gaining at least 10 pounds! Fortunately, these colors are just as yummy looking as they sound, so we’ll have lots of ways to enjoy them.

This card is one of five that Crystal and I are offering at a class to follow our “Out With the Old, In With the New” Open House on Saturday, June 1 at the Maui Masonic Lodge. If you’ll be on the Valley Isle this Saturday, I encourage you to stop by for great deals on retired products, the chance to experience a variety of new products and pick up a new catalog, and a generally great time! Doors open for the sale at 9am sharp and the class begins at 11am. Availability for the class is very limited at this time so check with me if you are interested.

The stamps used on this card include Summer Silhouettes (which will be in the 2013-2014 annual catalog, hooray!), Best of Butterflies 25th Anniversary set and the stamps included in the introductory kit for My Paper Pumpkin. Sign up for your Pumpkin subscription by June 10 and the introductory kit will be on the way to your doorstep in June!

My color palette includes Pistachio Pudding, Early Espresso and Whisper White, and along with a couple of punches and some dimensionals, that’s all it took to put together this card! Hope you’ll stop by on Saturday.

Sale-a-bration ENDS TODAY!!

Posted on March 24, 2013 by mauistamper

Time flies when products are free! Today is the last day for a 2013 Sale-a-bration order – and Maui folks, that’s on Utah time so don’t get caught! Your order needs to be in by 7:50pm HST!

The Sale-a-bration exclusives have been awesome this year but I think the Sycamore Street Designer Series paper was my favorite. I have a couple of packages stashed, so I decided to make another clothespin wreath with my extra pieces.

These wreaths are not hard to make. It takes a LOT of time to prepare the pieces, and it takes a little while to put it all together too. But putting the strips on the clothes pins takes no thinking at all, and scrunching up the flower papers is just plain fun!

That brad in the middle of the Island Indigo flower is a treasure I have been hoarding – they were available for only a month about a year ago and I have been very, very stingy using them!

However, I think this wreath is a perfect class – so I’m offering it on Saturday, April 6 at 1 pm. This will be LIMITED enrollment and first-come-first served so that everyone has enough space. Cost is $25 and includes everything you’ll need except for Tombo – and I highly recommend you use Tombo for this project. I’ll have it here if you need a fresh bottle.

Don’t wait to RSVP! We’ll have a lot of fun with this one 🙂 If you can’t make Saturday mornings and would be interested in a week day or evening, please let me know and I’ll see if there is enough interest.

Quick tags

Posted on December 1, 2012 by mauistamper

This time of year I have a lot of fun making tags. I always need a bunch of them, they can be just about any shape and size, and they generally go together pretty quickly. Here are a couple of the tags we’ll be making in class next week:

Both of these tags used the Two Tags Bigz die. Want to join us making tags? Contact me to register for class Sunday December 9 or Monday December 10.

Craftin’ for the Maui Stampers

Posted on November 16, 2012 by mauistamper

SO BUSY this week – and SO EXCITED – because the Maui Stampers are holding our FIRST EVER CRAFT FAIR!! (Enough caps for ya? Yeah, I’m shouting!!)

Just a few of the things I’ve been working on – stop by and say hello! We’ll have all kinds goodies for you including food and drink. Bring a friend, or come and make a friend!

Sunday, November 18, 2012
Maui Masonic Lodge, 190 West Kamehameha Street, Kahului
9 am until 2 pm

And as if that wasn’t enough, Stampin’ Up! is literally BOMBARDING us (sorry, I’m shouting again) with new goodies and promotions. They’re all fabulous but mark your calendars NOW for the Online Extravaganza! Big Shot on sale Monday the 19th only!! Clear blocks on sale Wednesday the 28th only!! My Digital Studio on sale HALF OFF the ENTIRE TIME!!! (I am really sorry, I just can’t help myself!!) Loads more – mark your calendars – check it out Monday morning (or Sunday night – Maui Standard Time!)

And if you want to give yourself a fabulous Christmas gift, contact me to find out how you can save even more – and get a free set of Classic Firm Foam Ink pads – by joining the Maui Stampers team of Stampin’ Up! demonstrators. The best $99 you might ever spend.

Pillow Gifts from Hilton Head

Posted on October 26, 2012 by mauistamper

The Stampin’ Up! Hilton Head Incentive Trip was last month. Although I earned the trip, I didn’t attend as it conflicted with my God-daughter’s wedding in California. (It was a FABULOUS weekend and I absolutely made the right decision!!) Stampin’ Up! is generous, though, and I received a lovely cash bonus. I’d forgotten that I would also be getting the pillow gifts until an unexpected box arrived last week:

Yes, it’s a Lands’ End bag! It’s big, too – it will hold my 15″ laptop! Gorgeous, isn’t it? And that’s our Polka Dot fabric too – can’t wait to make a few more of these myself.