My First Stampin' Up! On Stage Live (Convention)

Wow! What an exciting and fun time.

See, I have this hobby of paper crafting. I mean I love it. I like the paper, the stamps, the ribbon. I remember making my own paper dolls and notebooks as a kid with paper, tape, and scissors. I love being crafty and I especially love being crafty, quick. When I found Stampin' Up! as an adult, it made me very happy. I became a demonstrator for the discount (I mean who doesn't love at least 20% savings?) then, being a yoga teacher reminded me how I love to share what I love, so I decided I needed to share my love of paper crafting. And if you love paper crafting, you will love Stampin' Up. The quality of their supplies are the BEST. And everything coordinates.

So, as I'm throwing myself out into the world as a Stampin' Up demo, sharing what I love, I decided to attend the big SU On Stage event out in Salt Lake City, Utah. My husband had some airline points so I got a free plane ticket (thanks honey!). I paid for the event and I "met" some ladies in one of my stamping groups online who invited me join them in their room. This all probably sounds like enough adventure, but there's more! I saw an invitation on the SU demo site to apply to be a display stamper. If accepted, they would send you a box with some free new products and I would get to create some samples to be displayed at the event to help inspire other demos. And after the event a gift certificate for some free product. I applied (see the blog post called A Few of My Favorite Things) and I was accepted! I'll be posting those projects soon.

So today I'm sharing my photo story of my first SU convention. Enjoy!

On Wednesday, I flew in and met one of my new display stamper friends for lunch at a very fancy mall right near the SLC convention center. Then we met up with another display stamper and we went on a tour of the Stampin' Up home office. That's the office building (which is super beautiful) in the background and this is me by the entry at the SU rock.

This was my favorite part. This is the distribution center where the boxes are packed with the super awesome SU product.

Once the boxes are packed, they go up this conveyor belt to be shipped.

This is what happens when you're an east coast girl out in Utah on mountain time, sleeping in a hotel room with three new friends. You get up at 5am and go for a walk around the city. Which was probably a good thing as there was a lot of good eating later (I may have brought home a few extra pounds which weren't prize patrol stamps).

Here are many of the display stampers after we put our samples on the boards.

And here I am pointing to a few of my samples. This is one of my favorite new in colors, Peekaboo Peach.

Here I am waiting with my new friends to go into the room for the on stage presentations. 

Shelli and Sara (the co founder and CEOs of Stampin' Up) did a presentation of a few of their favorite new stamp sets. That's Tom in the corner, he films the samples up close so we can see them on the big TVs.

This is me having a quick meet and greet with Shelli and Sara. They were super nice. It was like being at Disney World, waiting in line to see the Princesses of Stamping.

After the event, a few of us walked around Temple Square to look at all the beautiful Spring flowers.

I figured out how to take a selfie with the Mormon Temple (I'm not yet the most experienced selfie taker, so I was pretty happy with this pic). After this I  went with a few of my roomies to the movies, and out to a last dinner together. Then Sunday we all got up early for plane rides back home.

 I also want to mention that I had a wonderful dinner with my nieces and nephews that live in the Salt Lake area. I don't often get to see them as we live far away, but I'm so thankful they could take a quick break from their busy college lives to have dinner with their Auntie. And I'm a tiny bit sad we forgot to take a picture, but we sure had a fun time sharing our stories.

This sums up my first convention adventure. Thanks for reading. Stay tuned for crafty inspiration.
Audra