Karen Stamps a Lot: convention

If you regularly follow Stampin' Up!, you may know that with the New catalog, comes our yearly convention in Salt Lake City. Well, sessions officially starting today, but the excitement for those attending began yesterday.
I went to convention in 2008 and loved it. I hope to get to go again...maybe next year when I can walk across the stage for my 10 year anniversary, who knows. Anyway, imagine thousands of demos invading Salt Lake City for 4 days - all crazy for stamps! Yesterday, all of the attendees start out early in the morning, standing in line to received their convention bags and several stamp sets that they will use for the stamping session. When I was there we were first in line because we met up with some gals we talked to on our flight from KC. In fact we helped this one lady finish her SWAPS. Pretty cool!
We got a chance to look at hundreds of cards, scrapbook projects and other 3-d items, made by demonstrators from all over. There is also SWAPing and Memento Mall. People sometimes bring anywhere from 50 to 500 cards that they will swap with other demonstrators, to get lots of samples of new products and ideas for various stamp sets that they may not own themselves. It is great!. Also Memento Mall is where Stampin Up has all kinds of cool logo items that convention goers can purchase. T-shirts, business items like logo pens, mini-trach cans or other cool things like a computer bag or maybe an umbrella.

They always have a theme and this year it is GROW, so everything this year is done in flowers. My kind of theme! When we went, they were announcing their partnership with Sizzix and that we'd be carrying fabric, so everything had to do with being die cut.

There was a birthday party theme display. a baby nursery with a die-cut decorated diaper cake and a shapes book, and Shelli made the most fantastic apron from die cut pieces. It is a little hard to tell, but the ruffles and the triangular yoke are all cut from the pennant die and the basket and blooms die. Really a WOW, for sure!

The most exciting was on the last day when Shelli got on stage and started talking about how much we love our "men in brown" (UPS guys) and how we stalk them when we are expecting our goodies...anyway, she was reading this delivery slip and when it got to the "who" it was going to be delivered to, She says "All of you!" Out came this UPS truck, on stage and the place just went nuts. At least 100 guys in brown came out with bags and bags of stamp sets and passed them out to everyone. We all got the Ronald McDonald stamp set for that year and UPS not only paid for us all to receive them, but also donated the $2 for each set, to the Ronald McDonald House, for everyone there. I truly think the guys were totally overwhelmed with the response. We cheered and clapped for at least 10 minutes. People went down on the floor and hugged them and even asked for their autographs. What a wrap up. I am so glad to be a Stampin' UP! demo, not only for the fun things like Convention, but for the chance to share something I love to do, maybe help spark creativity in someone else and be a part of such a great company. I miss that I was not able to go this year, but when I can go again, I would like to have my husband go and stay a few extra days to go visit a few more sites in Utah. I really loved it when I was there before, for convention and also for a vacation we took to several National Parks there.

Whew! There you go...If you would like to be part of the Stampin' Up! family and want to know more about having your own business, contact me anytime. There is a special kit available at a discounted price of $99 plus tax (shipping is included), through July. You can sign up online and have your kit on its way to you in no time!You can even customize it to suit your interest.

Until Tomorrow!