Hi All!

Welcome to the Thailand Incentive Trip Achievers Blog Hop for November.

This hop is with top demonstrators from around the world who have achieved the amazing Stampin’ Up!® Incentive trip. Those hopping today are all Stampin’ Up!® Demonstrators from all around the world who have met the requirements, and earned the amazing Stampin’ Up! Incentive trip – while everyone can try, only a limited number of demos (less than 1% of all demonstrators) reach the level required to earn the trip each year.

You may just be starting the blog hop here at my blog – JACKIE NOBLE – or may have come from the person previous to me in the list. If you get off track at any time, the full lineup below will help you move along from blog to blog so you see all the projects. 

This month our theme is the “Onstage Highlights”.

November and April are both special months in the Stampin’ Up! calendar as that’s when On Stage is held.

What is On Stage I hear you say? It’s the gathering of Stampin’ Up! demonstrators and staff around the world where we craft, talk business, share ideas, celebrate achievements and launch new catalogues. Getting to go to On Stage is definitely one of the best “perks” of being a demonstrator – they’re not open to anyone else! If you’re keen to get to the next one in six months time, talk to me about how! I’d love to have you in my thINK Creative Team and join me at On Stage Local next year in Auckland – April!

The three-day On Stage Live event was held in Brisbane form 3 -5 November and for the first time at one of these events my family was coming along – mostly for a holiday – but also as support.

Stampin’ Up! events are always welcoming, professional, educational and fun! It’s great to see ‘old’ friends and meet new ones too! And On Stage Live 2016 was no exception.

There’s lots to share – but today I’m only going to share two of my highlights – recognition and a presentation. Remember – next time you’ll just have to be there in person!  I’ll cover some of the other fabulous things in my upcoming posts but these first two were pretty amazing for me personally!

While On Stage formally started on Thursday morning – mine began on Wednesday afternoon with a rehearsal! I’d been asked to be a Showcase Stamper and present live – on the main stage – in front of more than 600 people! Here’s the set-up back stage before I head out.

Rehearsal in the huge auditorium with just the sound & technical crew and an audience of three was a little strange but I was pleased to get that out of the way.

Thursday saw many fabulous presentations, announcements and the first round of recognitions.

When we first arrived and collected our On Stage bag & name tags on Thursday there were also ribbons for those who had reached set milestones in the areas of Sales, Recruiting, Leadership and Flex Points. These awards were known before we got to On Stage & I was delighted to gain Level 1 awards for Sales and Leadership, and Level 2 awards in Recruiting and Flex Points. Level 2 in Flex Points is required to earn the Incentive Trip and my Thailand pin was in my registration pack!

I’m honoured to be one of only four New Zealander’s who earned this and will be going to Thailand next year.

After a full day of presentations, I attended the Leadership dinner accompanied by Roy. It was great to be able to share the evening with him. More about this evening in a future post.

Friday saw more presentations – including mine!

I was fortunate to be assigned an amazing new Stamp set to showcase – Beautiful You. This is not yet available to order but will be on 4 January for the public – and even earlier for Demonstrators – from the 1st December. This early access to new products is another a great reason to sign up as a demo!

Our brief was to make some samples and describe how we might use our set in our set in our business. As I do several different types of classes each month I made several samples to illustrate how I could use the set.

Here are the stamped images – 3 sketches of girls/women, 2 brush stroke images and 8 sentiments. A stunning set that lends itself to many different uses and techniques.

First up a scrapbook page using one of the brushstrokes as a background image – here’s a shot of the big screeen!

The set also coordinates with several of her stamp sets – including the sentiments of Layering Love from the annual catalogue. “Umbrella Girl” is a stunning image all on her own!

Next up, a product based class pairing the Beautiful You stamp set with products from the Playful Palette product suite.

That background brush stroke from the scrapbook page is really designed to fit one of the dresses (see images on left of photo). I watercoloured the dresses in the set of tags (top) with an aqua painter –  though I’m really looking forward to getting my hands on another new product – watercolour pencils! There is also a card featuring stamping on DSP and fussy cutting the image (right). The 4th project in my Product Based Class is  a 3D item (bottom) – a mini treat box containing 4 tiny tags showcasing washi tape and several of the sentiments stamps inked with markers to get the words required. I will be offering this as a “Class to Go” when the new Occasions Catalogue goes live. Classes to Go for some currently available sets will be announced soon – so join my Newsletter to find out all the details as soon as they are available! (Click the button over to the right!)

Here’s another shot of my big screen action!

The third class sample is for my card class where I usually do two cards – one showing a technique. As soon as I saw the sketch of the girl dancing I thought she looked as if she was about to do a cartwheel and that got me a thinking…

I used a Stamp-a-ma-jig to align each image and masked the stamped images each time I added a new one. Quite fiddly but so worth it.

I then shared a way of using the Beautiful You set in a Technique Class. As you can see from the above samples, there are lots of techniques that the set is good for, but for my presentation, I chose the Reflection or Mirror Technique.

That umbrella-holding girl was crying out to be walking through a puddle which had her reflection in it!

The last class I made a sample for, was a Fancy Fold Class. The pop-up twist card provides a perfect format to showcase all three sketches images together and I’ve used the stamping on DSP technique again.

Beautiful You is a stunning and versatile set that I believe is going to be very popular!

If you are in New Zealand and wish to purchase the set as soon as it is available – contact me. I will be providing a pdf tutorial for everyone that purchases the set from me as well as having some Classes to Go options.

My presentation went without a hitch and was well received. Thanks to everyone who took the time to talk to me after I’d presented –  I did appreciate your comments.

I didn’t think the day could get much better after the presentation – but it did!

One of my business goals for the year was to make the top five demonstrators in New Zealand in at least one of the three categories – Sales, Recruiting or Leadership –  and to make it into the overall Top 10 Demonstrators in New Zealand. I’d set the bar pretty high but have enjoyed working towards these goals throughout the previous year.

I was a little overwhelmed, to say the least, when the placings were announced and I achieved the following:

Recruiting: # 2 in New Zealand

Sales: # 4 in New Zealand

Leadership: # 3 in New Zealand

Overall: # 2 in New Zealand!

More ribbons for our name badges – which were getting rather long by this point!

And for each award, recipients received a decorated gift box, with a cute wee card signed by Shelli and Sara, which contained an engraved sterling silver & enamel charm relating to the award earned – WOW! On the reverse side – the year, our initials, country and ranking earned were engraved!

Each Achiever will also receive a personalised jacket! What fabulous keepsakes!

I really do love what I do – but as I have said before I could not have achieved those results without the support of my customers, husband & family, my team and Stampin’ Up!  A very sincere thank you.

So those are the first highlights I wanted to share – there are lots more!

Oh and we also received copies of the yet-to-be-released Occasions Catalogue – one word – FAB-U-LOUS! Getting access to the catalogue and new product first is definitely a huge advantage of being a demo but these projects will be one of the few posts I’ll do in the upcoming weeks about the Occasions Catalogue. I’ve still got so much Christmas Crafting to do! And “Christmas is the most Wonderful Time of the Year” – we don’t want to miss any of it!

As always – if you wish to know anything more about  info in this post, or to get a catalogue, or to buy any of the items mentioned in the post, please contact me.