Back from Convention with Undefined Stamp Carving Kit

I’m back from Convention and  wow! What a Convention it was – the best one yet! We had lots more flexibility this year and could choose the classes most appropriate to our business, which was great. And there was a fabulous hands-on area for us to try various products, including this brand new line called… Undefined!

If you visit US blogs you may already have seen this exciting line of products.

If you have always wanted a particular stamp but been unable to find it, this product is for you. If you like trying new things, this product is for you. If you have an inner artist just waiting to break out, this product is for you.

Take a look at the video to see how it works, then check out these two photos of the stamps carved at Convention and see if you can work out which one was mine! I’ll give you the answer in a few days.

My friend/downline Alison was lucky enough to win a full Undefined set at Convention, so I can’t wait to see what she creates with it.

The great news is that you can now purchase this kit – and an add-on set with extra rubber – and start carving your own stamps in time for Christmas! Wouldn’t a carved stamp, unique to your friend, make a fabulous little Christmas gift?

Undefined Stamp Carving Kit – 133402 - £17.95

Two carving tools

7.6 x 10.2 cm rubber

7.6 x 10.2 cm foam

Four wood blocks (various sizes)

One Island Indigo Stampin’ Write Marker

Three postcards

Instruction sheet

Stamp image templates

Undefined Refill Kit – 134808- £8.95

7.6 x 10.2 cm rubber

7.6 x 10.2 cm foam

Four wood blocks (various sizes)

Clear-Mount Cling Foam – 124236 - £9.95

This is an option which will allow you to create your own clear-mount stamps. Mounting your stamps on the cling foam allows you to make stamps any size you want, not just what will fit on the blocks in the kit.

And there’s more! When you’ve purchased the kit and carved your stamp, Stampin’ Up!® would love to see what you’ve made, so you can email photo of your stamp and any projects you’ve made with it to undefined@stampinup.com so they can pin your photos to the Undefined Pinterest board!

Team gifts for Convention - wood-mount cases

Don’t forget you have until noon on Friday, 6th December to enter my Mystery Hostess Draw. All you have to do is place an online order using the following code:

These are the gifts I made for my team members who attended Convention. It’s a simple idea which can be adapted for any small gift – or a larger gift if you use the full-sized boxes.

The challenge was making them all different – and all the notepads and pens different, too – so that they could be easily identified and not mixed up!

Cover inserts are easy to make for these boxes as they just slide into the plastic cover. Inside the box was a little trickier – mainly because of all the things I wanted to fit in.

The note pads fit almost perfectly and slide into a flap so that they don’t drop out but can be removed if necessary. I decorated the fronts very simply (well I did have to make nine of them!) and topped with this year’s Convention logo, cut out with the die from my new Label Card Thinlits.  To get the right size of notepad at the right price I had to buy 50 of them, so expect to see those at a future event – my Spring/Summer Catalogue and SAB launch perhaps?

The pen just nestles down the side – and each pen is decorated with a tiny piece of DSP inside the barrel. I use Zebra pens for this sort of thing, so was excited to find small ones.

At the top of each case, I stuck a calendar – handy for all those Convention announcements of dates for Sale-a-Bration, new catalogues, next year’s Convention, etc!

Below that is a tiny envelope containing a sewing kit. This was my son’s idea – not sure if that was because he thought a sewing kit could come in handy or if he knew that I had dozens of them stashed away!

And this was, in fact. the trickiest bit of all because there are no measurements for making an envelope for a tiny sewing kit on the Envelope Punch Board! But I was determined not to be defeated and, about 12 pieces of scrap paper later, I finally came up with the goods. I’ve stored the template and measurements with my stash of sewing kits so expect to see those cropping up at a future event!

Stamps: Morning Post Alphabet

Cardstock: Various – Midnight Muse, Melon Mambo, Pumpkin Pie, Island Indigo, Pool Party shown

Paper: Gingham Garden, Quatrefancy

Ink: Various – Midnight Muse, Melon Mambo shown

Accessories: Gingham Garden washi tape, Label Card Thinlits, 1 3/8” circle punch, scallop circle punch, wood-mount cases (half-size)

Convention gifts - Mosaic Madness clouds

When my team members reach Bronze 2, they all receive a keyring with a bead on it. As they progress through the SU ranks, or attend SU events, I award them extra beads. Convention is an extra special event, however, so I try to give them a charm which relates to the destination.

Paris was easy – the Eiffel Tower. Frankfurt was really hard and I ended up with a not too attractive eagle, the official bird of Germany. Manchester? I admit I was a bit stumped for a while but then I remembered the British obsession with the weather and settled on these rather cute umbrella charms.

I really love the card design, with its contradictory weather of sunshine and rain on it – should have added a snowy background, too! I totally borrowed this idea from Emma Fuge, a hugely talented stamper from Wales. Hope she doesn’t mind! My version is slightly different, to adapt to the supplies I had, but I loved the way she stamped clouds using the Mosaic Madness stamp and made a fab sun with circle punches and paper snips. Clever lady!

To make the raindrops, I mixed a tiny drop of Soft Sky reinker with some Crystal Effects and applied it to the cardstock using a cocktail stick. Not all went well!

Stamps: Chalk Talk, Mosaic Madness

Cardstock: Baked Brown Sugar, Whisper White, Crushed Curry, Gumball Green

Ink: Soft Sky, Crushed Curry

Accessories: Chalk Talk Framelits, 1¾” circle punch, 1 3/8” circle punch, Whisper White Baker’s Twine, Chalk Marker, Crystal Effects, Soft Sky reinker

And don’t forget...

Convention swap - Chalk Talk and Honeycomb folder

Now this is a much simpler swap – although I have to admit that, again, assembly was all done by my very helpful downline, Patsy.

For this design, I started with one of my favourite colours – Summer Starfruit – and “stamped” on it using the Honeycomb Embossing Folder. This is easy to do with a brayer and an ink pad – you just have to remember that the look you are aiming for is shabby chic so it doesn’t matter if your stamping doesn’t quite hit the mark. In fact, imperfect is perfect in this case.

I kept things simple by adding a die-cut greeting, a Midnight Muse banner and a few blingy stars. I think this would work for a man or a teenage boy… but I’d like to receive it, too.

I’m due home today but please don’t expect any Convention news for a while, as I am sure to be exhausted and very busy!

Stamps: Chalk Talk

Cardstock: Summer Starfruit, Whisper White, Midnight Muse, Champagne Glimmer Paper

Ink: Midnight Muse

Accessories: Chalk Talk Framelits, Honeycomb Embossing Folder, Linen Thread, Merry Minis Punch Pack, Brayer

And don’t forget...

Caturday: black kittens!

Why do I look so fed up? Take a look inside...

Yes it’s Convention, but it’s still Caturday... and look what turned up at the shelter last week!

Inititally it was thought that it was a tabby mother and four black kittens, all of which looked alarmingly pregnant.

But once they’d all settled down and could be inspected properly, it turned out that the tabby was a male, one of the black “kittens” was a very small mother, and the other three were all males. Worms are the likely culprit but treatment had, by then, already been administered, so things should settle down soon.

See? I'm being pushed out of bed by my brother!

One lucky black kitten has already been packed off to his new home. At the time of writing there were still two more and the mother, as well as the tabby male, looking for homes.

And don’t forget...

Convention swap - watercolour Wetlands

All being well, and if this post has turned up on the right day, I’m currently at Convention in Manchester, getting ready for the first session of the day. 

So I thought this would be a good time to show you one of my swap projects. As I keep telling my team, swaps should be simple, easy to reproduce and not use too many resources. So what on earth possessed me to make this for Convention? A moment of madness perhaps?

I enjoyed making the tags, sitting in the sunshine this summer creating the watercolour background using clear blocks. Normally I’d ink the clear block then spritz it with water before pressing onto the cardstock, but I was using watercolour paper and it didn’t go to plan. So I tried a different method – I spritzed the watercolour paper and then pressed the clear block into it. It worked a treat and I whipped up the tags in a jiffy.

The silver glimmer paper is sprayed with Coastal Cabana reinker mixed with some alcohol. The lower section of Pool Party is Core’dinations cardstock, embossed and sanded.

I admit there are way too many steps on this card for mass production, so the pieces sat around in a shoebox for months on end, before one of my team threw me a lifeline and kindly offered to finish them for me. Thanks, Patsy!

I took these along to the Silver 2 reception at Convention – this is an exclusive event for demonstrators who have reached certain sales and recruiting goals. I’ll tell you more about this event when I get back!

Stamps: Wetlands, Sweet Essentials

Cardstock: Pool Party, Core’dinations Pool Party, Crumb Cake, Whisper White, So Saffron, Silver Glimmer Paper

Ink: Pool Party, Coastal Cabana, So Saffron, Basic Gray

Accessories: Naturals Twine, Chalk Talk Framelits, Scallop Edge Punch, Fancy Fan Embossing Folder

And don’t forget...

Mystery hostess draw

Well today’s the big day, when I and nine of my team head off to Manchester for Stampin’ Up!® Convention 2013. We’re all very excited and I am sure I will have lots to tell you when I get back.

Meanwhile, don’t go away because I have daily blog posts scheduled for my absence, of all my swaps and team gifts.

And, phone connection/wifi permitting, I’ll try to post live updates on my Twitter account, @helenstamps. Now could be a good time to join Twitter! (You don’t have to tweet, you can just read if you like.)

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, here’s an opportunity for anybody to become a hostess and get free products!

All you have to do is place an order through my online store at www.helenread.stampinup.net (sorry, Blogger isn't letting me post a link) between now and noon on Friday, 6^th December and, if the total reaches £150, there will be £25 of freebies for a hostess picked at random. You can choose from the exclusive hostess items from either catalogue – or any current product!

Shipping costs £4.95 and you can have it sent direct to your home, or your workplace if it’s more convenient.

To take part in this draw, at the bottom of your shopping bag, please paste the following hostess code into the box provided:

RBRCKRGK

Any size order will do, although if you have a £150 order, please ignore that hostess code and claim the freebies for yourself!

That’s all for now – better go and tackle the job list!

Simply Pressed clay fridge magnets

For the past two days I’ve been busy with last-minute Convention preparations and making these… excuse the poor photos. I don’t know if you've noticed but it’s not getting light at the moment!

Every month my Virtual Hostess Club members get a little gift from me. Sometimes it’s a kit to make something, sometimes it’s something I’ve made, and occasionally it’s a little sample of something new.

This time I thought I’d made some little fridge magnets, with some frighteningly powerful magnets I bought online. After several aborted attempts to attach them to clay flowers with glue, I settled on embedding the tiny magnets inside the clay. The trick is to use something I lack: patience. Because if you test these out on your fridge before the clay is fully dry, the magnets will be ripped from the clay as you remove them.

To package them, I’ve used the flowers as an embellishment on a card, cunningly hiding a piece of magnetic photo paper (from the Pound Shop!) between the Whisper White and Smoky Slate layers. The magnets don’t grip to this particularly well so I’ve packaged them in cello bags to prevent them from going astray.

The flowers are coloured with Cherry Cobbler ink, which didn’t go quite as well as I’d hoped. I needed to use LOADS of ink, which made the clay very soft and increased drying time. I recommend sticking to paler shades, as the addition of white clay will inevitably have an effect.

For the rest of the customers at the party, I made thank you cards along the same lines but with a simple glimmer heart in place of the flowers. The silver glimmer paper is sprayed with Coastal Cabana ink mixed with alcohol, to dye it this lovely pale aqua shade. You’ll be seeing lots of this as I somehow ended up with a bit too much!

I die-cut 18 of the “Thankful” words, this time using proper waxed paper. What a difference! It made a tricky job into something simple, so I definitely recommend that. You simply sandwich the waxed paper between the die and the cardstock you wish to cut.

The party/club order is due to arrive today – I am anxiously awaiting the UPS man as I know it’s going to take me quite a while to sort it all out… and it’s always fun having a nosey through everything people have bought!

While I’m waiting, I think I had better go and have another look for my posh shoes for the Awards Night at Convention. They are currently nowhere to be found... 

Stamps: Off the Grid

Cardstock: Smoky Slate, Whisper White, Primrose Petals Core’dinations cardstock

Paper: Quatrefancy

Ink: Smoky Slate ink pad, Cherry Cobbler reinker

Accessories: Epic Day washi tape, Expressions Thinlits, Simply Pressed Clay

Other: Tiny magnets, magnetic photo sheets 

Caturday: Car Park Attendant

First of all, massive thanks to last night’s hostess, Kate, whose party reached a whopping £670! Kate and I are both very grateful to everyone who contributed towards this wonderful total.

The guests were very taken with the new Envelope Punch Board and this was added to quite a few orders!

Now it’s Caturday, and it’s time to meet the Car Park Attendant (although I thought I had introduced you before). I believe her real name is Pippa, but she’ll always be Car Park Attendant to us as, in warmer months, she tends to greet us in the drive when we arrive at the cat shelter.

I heard a rumour that Jane from the cat shelter is due on Radio Derby this morning - 10.30am I believe. So tune in, or listen again on the iPlayer.

Floating pop-up card with Owl punch

Today is Children in Need day and they’ve all been packed off to school in various levels of fancy costume, so I thought a children’s project would be apt.

I found this cool idea on Pinterest (of course) and traced it back to Julie Davison, who has a handy video tutorial. We actually made a Christmas version of the Mosaic Madness card at a Crafty Friday a couple of months ago but I don’t think I ever took a pic.

Here is my owl version, made to accommodate a gift card inside, tucked between the two grassy layers. 

The card is a lot simpler than it looks. It’s just two pieces of cardstock, sandwiched together with strips of acetate (only one strip in this case) in between. The important thing to remember is that you’ll need to punch doubles of everything you want to be “floating”, so I punched two owl bodies, to encase the strip of acetate.

Stamps: Remembering Your Birthday

Cardstock: Melon Mambo, Old Olive, Elegant Eggplant, Daffodil Delight, Pumpkin Pie, Crumb Cake

Paper: Mosaic Madness

Ink: Old Olive

Punches: Owl, Bird, Itty Bitty Punch Pack, Scallop Edge

Accessories: Basic Pearls

To donate to Children in Need, click here.