Swaps from Convention

Hi there

Well, I think I have just about caught up on my lack of sleep over the weekend.  But I cant believe that Convention has been and gone :-(

Whilst I was away, my hubby decided to sort out a problem we had with our shower.  We had noticed a couple of months ago that the cubicle may have been leaking as there were some strange marks developing on the landing wall so he decided to investigate whilst I was in France.

He was right, we had a massive problem which resulted in having to remove the wall between the bathroom and the landing!  He has been so busy sorting it out, but were getting there now and have replaced the shower with a bath (which I prefer anyway) and have a separate bathroom & landing again!!!

Anyway, enough of real life, back to Convention!  Here's a photo of the one I made - thank you Sara! (I had a problem with the photos I took and Sara rescued me last night by taking some for me LOL).

To start, I had a play with a technique that I really don't do enough.  I'm not really sure what its called but I used a non stick craft sheet and swiped ink pads (Riding Hood Red, So Saffron & More Mustard) onto the mat and then spritzed the sheet with water.  Then you put your card onto the sheet (this is quite messy, but you get some great results).  You then use a heat gun to dry the card and repeat the inking if needed.

Now, one thing with Whisper White is that it DOES NOT LIKE GETTING WET!!!  It is designed to be really absorbent to soak up ink and if it gets too wet it goes all bubbly and the fibres can come off.  However, I found out that even thought this happened on a couple of the sheets after getting it too wet, once it dried the texture it left was really nice.

Once all the sheets were dry, I ran them through the Big Shot using the Leaves #2 die.  This gave me leaf shapes in mottled coloured card.  To make the leaf toppers, I ran some Riding Hood Red cardstock through the BS again with the Leaves die to give me the same leaf shapes and glued them, slightly off set, to the mottled leaves, adding some Linen Thread, tied around the stems.  The 'Paris' image was stamped in Riding Hood Red ink onto So Saffron card and then punched out using the 3/4 circle punch.  It was glued onto the leaf and then covered in Crystal Effects.

I made my own backing paper using sheets of Whisper White card and randomly stamped all over the sheet with images from French Foliage using the Baby Wipe technique (inks used were Riding Hood Red, So Saffron & More Mustard).

Then I cut strips of the backing paper and mounted them onto a mat of Riding Hood Red, scoring lines, really close to the edges (not sure if you can see it though).

The card blank was So Saffron and I stamped the En Francais background stamp on one corner (masking off the rest of the card blank) and then used the 'splashes' image from French Foliage to the rest of the card front.

To finish, the strip with the backing paper was adhered to the bottom section of the card blank and the leaf topper added.  I didn't put a sentiment on them as I thought that if the ladies wanted to use them at a later date, they could add their own making them specific to the event.

Thank you for stopping by, I will be posting some photos of the Card Candy swap in the next day or two

Cats & Dogs (and not just the weather today!)

The weather today is horrible isnt it?!

I thought I would post the pictures of my own Convention swaps today.  The set I used is called Long Fellows and I had one of those "oh, I have to have that set" moments when I first saw the new catalogue.

When I was thinking of what to make for my Convention swaps I couldnt decide wether to use the cat or dog image from this Level 2 Hostess Set.  In the end I used them both so people could decide which one they wanted.  They went down a storm and I even had a couple of people come to find me to swap (not easy when there are hundreds of people in the room!!

Heres the cat (which seemed more popular than the dog for some reason?)

And heres the dog.

I used the P is for Paw wheel on Whisper White card, trimmed this down to 3" square and matted onto a 4" square of Basic Black card. 

Then I punched out the sentiment using the word window punch and put to one side to be used later.  The cats and dogs were then water coloured using reinkers and aqua paint brushes and cut out really close to the image.

Once I had cut them all out I put them through my crimper.  Not only did this shorten them and give great texture, but I noticed that they could then be curved - so they ended up in lots of different positions!

Heres a few of them all ready to be swapped

As you can see the cats & dogs were then mounted along with the sentiment onto the card

Recipe

Stamps - Long Fellows, P is for Paw Wheel
Cardstock - Basic Black, Basic Gray (Textured), Whisper White
Ink - Basic Gray
Reinkers - Pumpkin Pie (cat), So Saffron (dog)
Punches - Word Window, Modern Label Extra Large, Photo Corners
Accessories - Aqua Painter & Crimper


The swaps I receieved back are beautiful and some of them must have taken hours to make.  So a massive THANK YOU to every one - I cant wait to show them to my lovely ladies.

Hope you have a great day!
Jan
X

More Convention Pics

As promised, here are some more photos of the Annual Stampin' Up! European Convention.  It was held at Addington Palace which is a stunning venue near London.

Swapping on the coach from the hotel to the venue.

Here are the banners on the approach to the Palace.

Addington Palace is a beautiful building (sorry, I was so engrossed in all the excitement, I forgot to take any photos of the inside of the building!).

Entrance to the event.

Queing to register took a while, but we did meet Blackie the Palace cat, who was so freindly - and not a bit daunted by all the people there.  I made a little tag for my bag using some feathers (we all got a free 'laptop' style bag) and made tags so we could easily see which was our own bag).  Blackie wanted to keep it so I had to wressle it away which was hilarious!

Here we are queing to pick up our bags --- which had our two free stamp sets inside!!!

The main hall was inside a massive marque in the grounds of the palace.  The lighting in the marque made the photos really dark so I havent got many pics of the classes or make and takes that I can post here.  This is one of the few decent ones - with Monica and Paula dancing.  How Paula did this in her massively high heels I have no idea!

There was so much crammed in to the event we didnt get any time to really relax other than the awards night on Friday when we all dressed up in our posh frocks. 

Sara's and my upline, Joanne Friend, got to go up on stage to pick up her award for Demonstrator of the Year and also got a free stamp set plus a pack of Designer Series Paper during Prize Patrol - names are put up on screen and you have to check the screens to see if your name comes up then stand up and clap.  Well done Joanne!

There was lots and lots of swapping with UK, German and French Demonstrators.  The ideas and inspiration from everyone will definately keep me inspired until the next Convention!

And what else can I tell you about Convention? 

Well, there were a few announcements including -
- information about NEXT YEARS Convention.  Its at Disneyland, Paris (wooohooo!!!) in November.
- details of the absolutley GORGIOUS Sale-A-Bration promotion which is on in January & Feb 2011.
- info on an eagerly awaited item coming in the Mini Catalogue in April 2011.
And we also got an additional FREE stamp set (yes, we ALL got one).

Sorry, but I cant share the Sale-A-Bration info until it is officially announced, only demos at the convention have been given the details.  No other demos have the info, even those in the US!

When I originally became a Demo, I would never have dreampt that everything I was told about Stampin' Up! was true - but it is.  The benefits of being a demonstrator are absolutely incredible, I never intended to run my own business when I became a demo (all I wanted was the discounted products!).  But the training, support, free/discounted products and exclusive previews of new items, quickly encouraged me to try and I feel so privilidged to be part of such a fantastic company.

Thanks for bobing over to see me!  I will put some pictures of the swaps on my blog in the next few days.

Jan X