Some highlights from Stampin'Up! Leadership

Hello there bloggie friends!  I am back from the Stampin'Up! Leadership conference and came away with so many new creative ideas to share as well as some new ideas for making my Stampin'Up! "My Way."  First, let me share some fun pics of the displays that definitely gave me fresh inspiration:

 I love how they made flowers out of the Fashionable Hearts embosslit!  So so pretty!

How about these sweet little love notes?  Such a cute idea with the card and pen holder, AND the Balloon Frame.  Do you see that heart box with chocolate in it?  We got to sample some of that chocolate and it was DELISH!!!  Home made by a Stampin'Up! employee!

Here's a broader look at the display - love the Doily banner.  Just gorgeous!

And I love the yummy ice cream cone card - not to mention those fun jelly brad embellies!

These pillows using the Dresden die are truly inspiring me to learn to sew better.  How pretty are these!

You know I LOVE me the buttons, so I just loved this display of button ideas.

And, last but not least, the gorgeous Blossom punch.  The card idea is so so fun and summery - must case or recreate in some way!!

And, here's a picture of the fun group of gals that I got to spend lots of time with - from left to right: AnnMarie, Michelle, Liz, {me}, and Norma. 

So, besides all these awesome creative displays and fun Make and Takes, Leadership was also a great source of motivation for Demos to take an introspective look at their own businesses and provide insights on areas of growth or improvement.  What I really liked was this year's theme of doing business "My Way."  Being a working mom, many of you that have been following my blog know that I'm still trying to tweak my schedule to incorporate my stamping and blogging.  So, it's really nice to know that I can create my business to suit my needs and adjust as necessary.  Of course, I'm totally motivated now about my stamping business, so I'm rejuvenated by the idea of optimizing my schedule to fit everything in that's important to me.  Let's say it'll be an active work in progress, with more regular blog posts with stamping and crafting ideas coming in the future :) 

Here are a few highlights of the classes that we got to take:

• Why Women Buy - sounds like such a simple concept, right?  Carrie Cudney shared some great insights about the buying patterns of women and what made me laugh was her example of how a woman shops at the mall vs how a man shops.  Hilarious.  Bottom line is that we women want what we want - isn't that right?
• Then, we also got to learn about our individual career plans and benefits.  Bonnie Thurber was the presenter and I just LOVE her.  She's got such a great sense of humor that made it even more fun and entertaining to learn about the great benefits at the Sr Supervisor level of being a demonstrator and gave us inspiration to shoot for the stars ;)
• As you all know, stamping and papercrafting spans across a broad demographic of women of various generations.  Amy Swartz and Paula Critchlow shared with us how to include new generations to share the love of stamping.  I couldn't agree more - the art of stamping should be shared with young and old alike, so exposing a new generation to stamping is a no brainer in my book.  And, I just love how digital stamping makes it even more accessible!  {Love me the MDS, too!}

The biggest highlight, as always, is getting to see Shelli. 

She's one of those amazing women that just never ceases to inspire. It was great seeing her and getting to chat one-on-one for a quick second, too. Thanks, Shelli!

I took so many photos - I just need a bit more time to look through and edit so I can post more card samples and conference pics to share with you all! Will do that soon. Thanks for visiting! Bye for now!!