It's Beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

Stampin' Up! has declared this week as the Worldwide Week of Workshops.  Demonstrators around the world will be doing workshops this week.  As it turns out, I actually do have quite a few workshops booked this week and I do think it's kind of cool that I'll be saying "hello" to my hostesses while other demonstrators will be saying: "bonjour" "g'day" "hola" etc. 
I enjoyed spending today making all different kinds of Christmas cards.  I always have to make a ton of different things and then look at them all and pick what I will show at a workshop or what I will do for my class.  I made 7 different things today.  I am loving a new set I bought (new to me, old to Stampin' Up!).  It's called Many Merry Messages.  It's got all different holiday sayings. Here's a sampling of a few of the cards I made today...

Here's a close up of the wreath from the winter wishes stitched felt accents in the holiday mini.  My husband thought I actually made it using pieces of felt.  Ha Ha!

I think it's hard for you to see but the designer series paper has glimmer red dots all over it.  It is the special paper from the holly berry dsp.  The glimmer gives it that extra bling.
Making and sending your own holiday cards is a blessing.  It's not too late to sign up for my Christmas card class: $35 for 12 cards.  Just let me know ASAP and I can have the paper prepared for you.

Free digital downloads!

This was just announced: Stampin' Up is having a digital celebration on their mydigitalstudio.net website between Nov. 4th and 7th.
Make sure you go to this website on those days and see what free stuff you can snatch up!

I've been loving my digital projects lately.  Just last night I turned my digital scrapbook into a movie format with music on it.  It was just so cool!
Come over and play with my digital studio if you want to check it out.
I think the digital content can be used with other programs so even if you don't have digital studio, you should check out the website between Nov. 4-7 and see if you can download the free digital content anyway.  Hey!  If stampin' up is giving something for free, we should take it right?!

Digital Scrapbook Pages

As promised, I want to share some of my scrapbook pages from Stampin' Up! convention this past summer.  These are designer pages I purchased so pretty much all I had to do was just drop in the pictures and journal.  I made some little changes here and there but the majority of the beauty was done by those Stampin' Up! people.

I have to say, I think I might be leaning towards preferring digital scrapbooking over traditional!  Gasp! I am so behind in my traditional scrapbooking...I haven't kept up with developing my pictures but with digital I can work on it anywhere without having to lug all my paper around and I don't have to develop pictures.
I"m supposed to be going on a scrapbooking weekend in a couple of weeks so hopefully I will get caught up.

It's about fun and friends

Just thought I would share a card that I am doing this weekend at an upcoming workshop. 

Keep it fast and keep it simple.  That's my motto with workshop cards because who wants to come to a workshop to be stressed out with complicated projects?  Not me.  I'm thinking all the guests could use a sweet and simple thank you card.  It uses the punch posy set and the pocketful of posies dsp.  The sentiment comes from the short and sweet stamp set.  The colours I used are pear pizzazz, daffodil delight and night of navy.

Since I was going to be talking about workshops at our Team S.T.I.C meeting yesterday night, I used it as a team make n take too.
As well, one of my downline, prepared a fun game where we were given envelopes with random bits of paper and she put out random stamp sets and embellishment and we were supposed to make a card in 5 minutes.  It's amazing how fast five minutes goes by!  Here's what I came up with.  Excuse the crookedness...I know.  It really looks handmade!  :-)

It's not too late to take advantage of the amazing offer this month.  Join the Stampin' Up! family and get the Big Shot or $125 of whatever you want, FREE.  This promotion is only good until the end of the month.  I'd love to see you at our next team meeting!  We have FUN!

I also wanted to share with you a blog post from Shelli Gardner CEO and co-founder of Stampin' Up!
She turned 50 this month.  I actually received an e-mail from the home office asking me to send a birthday card so that they could give it to her.  Of course, I totally missed the deadline for sending the birthday card but it was fun to read her blog post about her day.
Being a part of the Stampin' Up! family is not just about stamps, it's about relationships and that's what I love.
http://www.soshelli.com/so-shelli-blog/2011/10/19/a-day-of-sweet-surprises.html

A Day of Rest?

At church over the summer, one of the pastors had shared a message about keeping the sabbath and how that was probably the most broken of the 10 commandments.  He challenged us to incorporate rest into our schedule and the value of taking a day of rest. 
I stored that challenge in my mind for the future since I knew with my busy routine, I could use the challenge to discipline myself to schedule rest into my life. 
Since mid-September, I have been trying to figure out what day should be my sabbath day.  I know people typically do Sundays but weekends have been notorious for filling up with workshops and classes.  I tried Monday but that didn't seem to work well.
I've figured out that Wednesday is really the best sabbath day for me.  It just seems to naturally make sense since I go to a program at a community church that has a crafting and tea time. It's a very calm and restful environment.  I can then use the rest of the day to do little mundane things and in the evenings all the kids go to a program so often hubby and I can go for a quick date night dinner.
Here's the question I've been wondering: what if my hobby is my work and my work is my hobby?  My "job" as a Stampin' Up! demonstrator is something I do because I enjoy stamping.  Am I not allowed to stamp on my day of rest?  But what if it's stamping that makes me feel happy and rested?  I didn't want to be too legalistic but at the same time, I didn't want to blur the definition too much so that Wednesday becomes just like any other day.
I have a workshop this weekend and I had in my mind to do a little birthday tag since apparently many of the guests are moms of young kids.  I have been really wanting to sit down to design this tag but haven't had time...until today.  My "day of rest".  Aarrgh.  Should I do it? Should I not?  Oh the delimma!  Is it work?
I decided to try to take a nap instead.  Unfortunately it wasn't one of those beautiful, long 2 hour naps.  I think I was too worried I would forget to pick up the kids after school even though I had an alarm clock on.  So then I woke up and wanted to stamp that tag but I told myself that I'm supposed to be resting.  So, since my neck/back was bugging me, I took a hot bath.  Are you getting the picture?  I was trying so hard to rest on my sabbath day, it was stressing me out that I wasn't doing what I really wanted to do which was make that tag.  I was even imagining what stamps I would use and what paper. 
I finally gave up after the bath and went and did what I really wanted to do and what would make me happy.  It took only 15 minutes of playing to get something that I was happy with.  I knew I would use that big top birthday DSP and of course fox and friends.

I think my rule for my sabbath days is to avoid doing things that will make me feel busy and rushed and stressed and instead do things that make me feel rested and closer to God.  I think stamping for fun (as opposed to stamping in stress...like I've got to come up with 5 different projects for a stamp a stack tommorrow) is allowed on my sabbath day; especially if not stamping stresses me out!  Grin.

I know I am not the only one who has a busy, crazy life.  In fact, I know many of you have a much busier life that I do.  Maybe you can consider treating yourself to a sabbath day.  A day to rest.  It is good for the soul.  And if you decide to stamp on your resting day, I won't mind.  Send me a picture! 

Texas, here I come!

The best part of today was that I registered myself for the Stampin' Up! leadership conference in San Antonio Texas.  Some of you may recall my first time experience at Leadership last January in Nashville. (if you don't check out my old blog posts from January 12-14, 2011) I met some fabulous new friends from Missouri (sp?) there so I know this year's experience will be so much fun because it will be like a reunion. 
Actually, seeing them at convention this past July was already a reunion but I am really looking forward to the more intimate, less crazy environment of leadership.  My Missouri friends said I could room with them too so I will be saving money this time around.  Plus, Stampin' Up! changed their rewards/career plan in a beneficial way so now my conference fee is free AND I"m flying using air miles.  I love a great deal!
I am currently basking in the excitement of another upcoming Stampin' Up! event and already wondering what kind of swaps I will do...I am so excited I had to share it. 
I had great fun at my stamp a stack last night and wish I had time to upload some pics of the cards we did but there's no time.  I have about a million occupational therapy reports to write so I must go but here's a picture of me and my Missouri friends, Heather and Nancy when we met up at Convention.

Arrgghhh, I have to finish my convention scrapbook before I wind up with another truck load of pictures from leadership.  Later this week I'll show you all some pictures from the digital scrapbook of convention that I've been working on.
It's fun having long distance friends.  I hope you all take time to connect with friends that you don't get to see or talk to often.  Friends always bring unexpected blessings.

Kids Can Craft!

 I just had a fun time with three girls aged 7, 8, 9.  We made 5 cute projects and the kids were awesome at following directions and completing their crafts.  I love crafting with kids because they don't have the hangups that grownups do.  They don't stress out if they glue something down a little crooked.  They branch out and try something a little different from the sample.  I should've taken more pictures.  Here's a couple of my samples.  I had to use the sweet treat cups, of course.  I filled them with goldfish crackers.  My attempt at a healthy treat.

There's my owl punch disguised as a ghost.  I used Staz On to stamp the web from the wicked cool set onto the sweet treat cup.  The stamp set is Sweet Centres.

This uses the fancy favour die and the Batty for you stamp set.  We glittered it up using the champagne glass glitter. 

Just to give you an idea of how the kids used their creativity and imagination to make their creations, here's a picture of our four different Frankensteins.  Can you guess which one the kids made and which one is mine?  Hint: mine is the most boring looking one. 

The only downside of the class was that my daughter was going to join us.  She was really looking forward to coming to one of my "Stamping Parties" but wouldn't you know she woke up with a raging fever.  It was so sad this afternoon when I told her she couldn't join the class but I promised her I would prepare everything so we could do it together another time.  She was lying on the couch in her pyjamas looking so forlorn and sick and she just nodded while little tears welled up in her eyes.  Talk about breaking her mama's heart!!
Hopefully she will be feeling better tommorrow morning and I''ll send the boys out to go halloween costume shopping and us girls can craft.

The class was such a success, we picked another date with the moms for the next class. 
Kids Can Craft: Holiday gifts  December 9th 6:00.  Check out my website on the events page to RSVP

Fast Invites

 I was whipping up some invites for my next Stampin' Up! family night which is on Oct. 30th at 7:30pm.  Whipping up cards means that I use whatever scraps I have left over from past workshops and classes.  I was so proud that I was able to make 7 cards in about 45 minutes.  This card uses the borderlines stamp set.  It is a stamp set that I never even noticed in the new catalogue but they gave it to me in one of my classes at convention and now I lOVE it.  I managed to do this card without the stamp a ma jig too.

This card probably looks familiar since it is using the same components from another card I made.  (you know, the whole using scraps thing...)  I like how the repetition stamping gives the illusion of movement for the bird.  Yeah, Elements of Style stamp set again.  You really can not go wrong with this set. 

A free big shot or $125 free product is too good a promotion to not consider so that's why I"m doing another family night.  Hope you can come! RSVP required please!  genevieve.ko@sympatico.ca

I am thankful

I received this from my son's kindergarten teacher this week.  I thought it was cute.  I pray that you are all enjoying this long weekend and remembering all there is to be thankful for.
Blessings.

An offer to "die" for!

The Big Shot offer really is to "die" for!   Purchasing the demonstrator starter kit really is a no obligation offer but it also brings with it the opportunity to purchase high quality crafting supplies at a fabulous discount as well as the chance to make money doing something fun. 
I would encourage you to come to my next Stampin' Up! family night on Oct. 30th or contact me to see how this amazing deal can work for you!
If you are ready to snatch up this offer, just click here and join now.  I'd love to have fun with you.

spooky cute!

I thought I would share some of the fun halloween cards I've been making for classes and workshops.  I have a tendency to start crafting for Christmas right after the summer and skip halloween and thanksgiving all together.  This year, I had a request for a halloween themed workshop so here's a couple of my samples.  I like the cute feel because I don't like to be spooked out too much!
Here's one card using the spider web embossing folder and the new peek a boo window die.  The ghost is actually the owl punch upside down with the feet cut off.  Isn't that the cutest?

Using the same wicked cool set, here's a fast and simple card.  You could change up the colour and the stamp set and make it a christmas card too.

A free big shot!

Okay, there's not much more to say.  Buy the demonstrator starter kit for $215 no tax, no shipping and get the big shot free.  Don't worry if you already have the big shot.  Just add $125 free product.
That's it.  Contact me at genevieve.ko@sympatico.ca or go to my website at  http://genevieve.stampinup.net and get started.

Shake it up!

I can't remember if I posted this fun card.  I demonstrated it at my holiday showcase last month.  I wanted to show how easy it was to use the new shaker frames that are in the holiday mini catalogue.  This is my version of a shaker card using the Tags Till Christmas set.  The sentiment is from the Snow swirled set.  I love the colours: pear pizzazz and cajun craze.  I never thought those two colours would work together but the colour coach told me it would so I did. A little bit of Mica flakes and dazzling diamonds makes the fun shaker element.  If you want to see how easy it is to make a shaker card, book a private class with me and your friends and I'd be happy to demonstrate for you!