Stampin' Up regional rocked!

Well, Rhonda and I had a fabulous time in Minneapolis this past week! The Stampin' Up! regional seminar was on Friday. We drove down on Thursday night and came home on Saturday. What's the best thing about regionals? The people, of course! I got to meet and hang with my SCS peeps, which was totally awesome! This is me with Sarah (AKA Superglew). She is one of my most faithful challenge participants, and it was so great to meet her in person. She is a lot of fun! (Notice my necklace? I made it myself, and Jaron commented on how much he liked it! It's similar to this one but uses last year's SAB rub-ons.)
I also organized an SCS swap because the quality of SCS swaps is always outstanding! Thanks to all of you who participated! I'll be showing my swap cards and some others in the coming days.

SU brought 25 Big Shots for us to use! We made 2 projects using it. Here you can see the long tables where they were set up. The display boards are behind that.

Here's a view of the room. The stage is at the back of the photo between the two big screens. I'd estimate there were 300-350 people there.

This is the only project I completed while I was there. (Don't worry; I'll get the rest done soon!) This card uses Soft Summer, a set from the Occasions Mini. We used markers and the aquapainter to watercolor, and I'm now in love with this set, the technique and the card! The key is using watercolor paper so you can move the ink with the aquapainter. I just drew some lines with the marker in the area I wanted to color, and it made the shading easy!
Happy stamping!

Last 2 Regionals Projects

I finally got my last 2 Regionals projects done. They are both scrapbook pages, so I had to wait until I had my pictures. Two of the pictures were taken by my upline, Sandi.
This is a 6X6 page just as it was designed by SU. I thought the saying was just perfect for the photo of Rhonda and me stamping together! We used the Live Your Dream set with Afternoon Tea DSP.

This is a 6X6 page that I adapted from the original 12 X 12 page that SU designed. (You can see the original page in the photo below. To give you an idea of the scale, the Real Red flower, So Saffron photo mat, Soft Sky circle and Wild Wasabi square are all the same on both pages.)

This page uses the So Much stamp set that we got at Regionals. The two circle stamps make an awesome background!

Here is how I cut the photo down to fit onto the Soft Sky circle. I stamped the circle stamp onto the back of the photo and used it as a cutting guide. By holding the photo up to the light, I could see the photo so I'd know where to cut.
This is the cute little frame that Rhonda gave me at Christmas. Now I have the 2 Regionals pages back-to-back and on display in my craft room!

Tomorrow, I'll post a tutorial showing how to make the embossed dots that you see on the Wild Wasabi cardstock on my 2nd 6X6 page.

Happy stamping!

One more Regional project

Here's another project from the Milwaukee Regional last month. I like it because it's different! The base is 4 1/4 X 5 1/2 Kraft with the Pomegranate piece attached to the back and half of it folding to the front. The two main circles were cut out with the Coluzzle. I have to confess I haven't been a big Coluzzle fan because it doesn't make a complete circle; there are two places you have to snip with scissors. Tip of the day: (Courtesy of my sideline Lori) After you've cut your circle, turn the Coluzzle template slightly. Then you can use the template to cut where the two uncut areas are. Thanks, Lori! I'm looking forward to using the Coluzzle now to try out your tip.
We used the corner rounder punch to make the scallop border.
I have one more project from Regional, but I can't show you until after my workshops this month because I want it to be a surprise for my groups.
Happy stamping!

Projects from Regionals

These are 2 of the projects that we made at Regionals. Both use Live Your Dream from the Occasions Mini. I love that both of these projects used the line stamp too. The second one is a pocket card. It's made from an envelope with one end cut off. I just love it! I didn't even know SU had kraft envelopes. How dorky am I???
Tip of the day: To make it easier to remove the backing from a Stampin' Dimensional, poke your fingernail into it. You can see in this photo how that pops one edge loose. This tip came from Jaron Winder with Stampin' Up. Boy, does that little thing make a big difference!
Happy stamping!

More from Milwaukee

One of my favorite things about Regional is all of the display boards that they have. I really like that I get to see TONS of projects to get ideas from. They always have a board just for the set that you receive. This is the board for So Much. I think this set is really versatile!
Here is a display board for Live Your Dream from the Occasions Mini. Three of the projects we made used this set. I love it! I'm having a huge debate with myself over whether or not to get this with one of my SAB free sets I earned. (Feel free to give me your opinion: Should I go ahead and get Live Your Dream or wait to see if I like something better from the Preview?)
Tip of the day: Heat set whenever you use craft ink! When I was working on my second swap card, I was covering quite a few stars with craft ink. I always heat set anything that I use craft ink on, and the photo above shows why. The top half of the star has been heat set; the bottom half has not. Heat setting dries the ink on the surface of your project instead of allowing the ink to settle down into it. This means that the color is truer when you heat set. This is especially true of the Soft Subtles for some reason, but as you can see above, it works for any color.

Happy stamping!

Had a blast in Milwaukee!

Milwaukee was awesome! It took Rhonda and me about 7 hours to drive there. We stopped a couple of times along the way, and it rained most of the time. Our hotel, the Hyatt Regency, was very swank, and there was a skywalk connecting it to the convention center. We drove down on Friday. After we arrived, we ordered pizza and garlic cheese bread from a local pizza place. No dieting on this trip! LOL Here we are working hard. (I'm on the left, and Rhonda's on the right, in case you don't know us!) We saw our up-up-upline Sandi and our sideline Lori too. We sat with some really nice ladies from Illinois. The woman who sat next to me knows who I am from SCS and my blog, so now I'm famous! LOL Her SCS name is triplef; I can't remember her real name! Triplef, if you send me your address, I'll RAK you.
We did some great projects. Three of them used Live Your Dream from the Occasions Mini, which I don't have yet. It's a SU conspiracy to get me to buy it! I really like the free set we got. It's called So Much. I wouldn't have bought it before, but I think I will use it a lot.
I swapped 25 of the faux silk card, which only took about 10 minutes! The other 2 cards were for SCS swaps. We did those at lunch. It was so fun to meet some of the other SCSers in person. I met newdemo, s1itcher46, michellewilliams, and GWTW Junkie. I know there were others, but it was all a blur after a while! Kim (s1itcher46) made our nametags, and she has hosted several swaps that I have been in. I gave GWTW Junkie a Scarlett O'Hara button that I had brought along. We GWTW fans have to stick together!

Shelli Gardner wasn't there, but I did get to have my picture taken with Jaron Winder and Lori Olaveson. If you've ever been to an SU event, you know that Jaron is hilarious! I met Lori Olaveson at her first SU regional in Atlanta back in March of 2005. She remembered meeting my mom and me; how cool is that?
I took tons of pictures of the display boards. And all of the projects that we saw demonstrated were awesome! Since there was only one regional instead of the usual two, we had 4 workshop wows from demonstrators. I'm already planning things to try, and hopefully I'll get them done this week!
Saturday night, we had an SCS dinner at John Hawk's pub. Traciac was kind enough to organize it, and JustmeinIN was there along with Mary Ann (I can't remember her SCS name). On Sunday, we drove back in beautiful weather. We stopped for lunch in Eau Claire, and it was 60 degrees! We ate at Fazoli's (YUM!), and again, no dieting on this trip! It was cold and cloudy when we got back to Duluth, though.
Keep checking back for more photos, and hopefully, I'll have some things of my own to show.
Happy stamping!