All At Sea

Today was Stampin' Up! Regional Training Day at Weetwood Hall, Leeds.  I collected Caroline and we arrived just before 10am.  We had been asked to bring along either a card front or a 6" x 6" scrapbook layout, made using products from the new Stampin' Up! Summer mini and other current products.  This layout was made using the gorgeous The Open Sea stamp set, some Linen Thread and crumb cake and very vanilla cardstock and stampin up classic stamp pads.  The title was made using letters I printed from Word and cut out and inked.  The photo is a tall ship that does cruises along the coast from Portimau in the Algarve.  The layouts or card fronts were stuck on a huge board in the conference room the event was held in and everyone took photos to use as inspiration. 

The training day was a mix of new product demonstrations and motivational talks about building your business, improving your sales, adding value and promoting your business.  We got a lovely free stamp set and three projects to make including a 12" x 12" scrapbook page and two cards.  At one point they read out the names of the newest and longest serving demonstrators in the room and apparently the newest  was me, how embarrassed was I?  Especially as we had been talking earlier to a lady who had only just become a demonstrator that week but was too late to register for the event but had been given a cancellation place so she deserved the round of applause and embarrassment, not me.  I hid my head in my hands and kept my head down near the table whilst everyone clapped, I was red for the next hour at least and Caroline was laughing her head off.  There were prizes given out and lucky me won a lovely set of papers from the next Summer mini, a full roll of ruffled ribbon, a pack of baker's twine and some Twitterpated material, which I might see if I can make into a lovely owl or two.  Lunch was a sandwich, crisps, chocolate, fruit and water and there were plenty of packets of biscuits around the room. 

A lot of the ladies did swaps of things they had designed, some card fronts, some tags, some little boxes and some little boxes with sweeties in.  I hadn't done any as I just didn't have the time, some ladies did seventy and some of the ladies who had spares were very kind and gave me one of theirs with just a thank you in return.  I met some lovely ladies there today and thoroughly enjoyed myself and soaked up lots of ideas and inspiration.