Oh I'm so inspired!!!

I went from stamper's block to stamping overload in 60 seconds flat!! Thursday I spent the day with my swap sisters stamping, talking, eating and playing with the BIG SHOT!! What some of you don't know what this incredible toy is??? It's a super cool die cutting machine and stampin' up is now selling it with exclusive dies. Check out the Big Shot catalog on the side of my blog. I'm in love!!

Thursday evening we had a more formal training event put on by my up up up line, Tami. She lives in California and has been a stampin' up demonstrator for 18 years (mind you this is Stampin' UP!'s 20th anniversary). She had great business ideas, class ideas and projects to share with us. I got to play with a lot of the new stuff that I hadn't seen yet, like buttons and ribbon and designer paper and brads and clippy thingys and stamps and oh yeah the BIG SHOT! I love being a demonstrator!!!

I can't wait to share some the projects with you.
this one uses the faux watercolor technique. Super easy. Stamp your image with classic ink onto watercolor paper then go over it with the aqua painter. We used the Happiness Always stamp set. The designers series paper is called Holiday Traditions and it's in the big catalog, it's really beautiful, but a few of the patterns (like this one) aren't super Christmasy.

I used a build a brad for the first time. That is the center of the flower. It's so easy to do, you simply punch a 3/4 in circle of the paper you want on the brad, then use a little glue or snail to adhere it too the brad and then stick the clear dot on top. I really liked that. (Build a Brads aren't new by the way just not something I'd played with before.)

I'll post more pic of the stuff we made later, right now I'm going to stamp!!