Stampin' Up! Convention Salt Lake City July 2013

Stampin' Up! Convention in Salt Lake City 2013 started with a bang! Literally!

Fireworks went off and the theme music started - sung by someone from the American version of The Voice about whom I still unfortunately have no clue - but the American ladies sure did!  You can see from my photos that there are a LOT of people there - nearly 6000! A fun way to start the 25th anniversary celebrations - and the fun just kept on coming.

Shelli Gardner (Co-Founder and CEO) welcomed us all and we got into some stamping! The presentations were all projected onto massive screens. The detail and originality of the projects we saw in General Sessions and breakout classes was phenomenal. Lots of new trends were highlighted and the inspiration we all took home will keep us going for a very long time! There aren't enough hours in my day to make all the projects I came home excited to make.

I mentioned yesterday that Ian and I met up with Beth Stewart and her sister Kate when we got to Salt Lake City. Here we are waiting for the first General Session to start. Ian had never been to a Stampin' Up! event before - so this was a pretty big way to start! He has always been supportive of my Stampin' Up! business and I'm so glad he had the opportunity to go this time. He tells me that he's much closer to 'getting' why I love SU now. He really was a good sport - there were very few gentlemen in the mob of 6000, but he wore the t-shirt, went to the sessions and even won Prize Patrol. I'll have to tell you that story another day. 

I hope you'll all get to come along to a Stampin' Up! event with me one day and experience Prize Patrol for yourself. It's so much fun to win a bundle of Stampin' Up! products, tied up with a bow. Often they're products that are really new or maybe haven't been released yet too! Beth has been going to Stampin' Up! events in Australia for 5 years - and had to travel all the way to Utah to win her first Prize Patrol! It was a very exciting moment!!!

I was very excited to receive a bundle of products from the Holiday Mini Catalogue - look out for a project or two using these next term - I have a project up my sleeve I'm working on using what I won.

 I mentioned yesterday that some lovely Mudgee ladies came over and helped me make the swaps I took to the US convention. Jayne asked if I could show them - sorry I forgot! Here's what the front of the card looked like. 

The design uses the stamp set "Oh, Hello" from our current Catalogue and also a sentiment from the 'Wedding Words' digital stamp brush set available on My Digital Studio. The colours I've used are Crumb Cake, Whisper White and Early Espresso, with a Gumball Green and Raspberry Ripple bloom. Don't you just love Whisper White Craft ink on Crumb Cake cardstock? I don't think I'll ever get tired of it!

Do you remember I mentioned before that Ian got right in at Convention and 'wore the t-shirt'? Well he did more than that.....he also did quite a lot of swapping for me! I frequently get caught up chatting with people I swap with (it's so lovely!) and so he just dove on in! He often came back with gifts of candy given by lovely ladies who thought he was so brave to be there! 

When I started going through my Convention photos and tried to cull to what I thought might be good to show you all I ended up with nearly 40! So rather than try to show you them all in one post I'm splitting them up (I can hear you all breathe a sigh of relief!). I want to show you some photos from Shelli's stamping presentation and from the 25th Anniversary Party and after that I'm so looking forward to showing you a little bit of the fun of Grand Vacation. So stay tuned! I'll be back soon!