Remembering being a Stampin' Up! Demo

For a few months in 2009, I was a Stampin' Up! demo.  I wish I'd titled my page, My Stampin' Up! Experience or something like that.  Calling it "Lessons Learned" makes it sound like it was an all bad experience and that was definitely not the case.

Here are a few of the things that resulted from my brief time as a demonstrator:

• I started my blog. This is one of the best things I've ever done.  I love blogging! I love the people the hobby has connected me to.  I love being able to share my work with people who appreciate the creative process.  Thank you for being here.
• I began having card classes in my home.  My demonstrator immediately assigned a "stamp a stack" to me that she didn't have time to do and that was the start of having card classes.  The ladies and I enjoy them very much.  I've been a trainer for years so this came naturally.
• Sales does not come naturally to me.  Having had a sales job once before, I knew this.  My original plan was just to be a hobby demo but my demonstrator talked me into having some workshops so I got caught up a little bit in trying to sell.  I always prefaced my workshops with how I wanted people to really enjoy themselves, try out the product and not to feel obligated to buy unless they felt the hobby was a good fit for them.  I truly believe this, but you can see why I might have had some trouble making sales.
• Since I don't enjoy attending home parties, I should have known I would be really uncomfortable having them.  Personally I want to be invited to someone's home because they want me there - not my checkbook.
• No one company makes everything.  In my previous sales job, we only sold one product so it was easy to say we had the best and mean it.  Stampin' Up! makes fantastic quality products.  They are not, however, the only product I want to use so I was very uncomfortable trying convince anyone else of that.
• That said, I love the many products I acquired as a demonstrator.  There were only a couple of things I ever bought that I regretted.
• Stamping has been a gateway into other crafts and has added so much to my scrapbook pages.  

I left Stampin' Up! after only a few months because it was going to be difficult to meet the minimum sales and the company was putting a lot of restrictions on what we could say on our blogs and even in our e-mail.  I didn't and still don't agree with this business philosophy.  I believe we all benefit from sharing resources and ideas.

So I still buy Stampin' Up!  I do card classes and some card videos with their products.  I'll even post about their sales and new catalogs.  I just use them as one of the many craft vendors I enjoy.

For this retrospective page, I used a sketch from Life.Paper.Scrapbook, a new Australian Quarterly scrapbooking publication which is just awesome!

In keeping with the theme and time frame, I used all Stampin' Up! products most from roughly the 2009 time frame.  The scallop circles were made with the Big Flowers set layered on another set of scallop designs.  The tab punch was one of my first purchases from Stampin' Up!   I was at the time doing a scrapbook page series where tabs were just the perfect embellishment.  Even the ribbons are Stampin' Up!  The background paper is my very last piece of Sage Shadow paper - a color discontinued in the last color revamp.

I resisted the urge to use mists so I stamped little dots on the background with SU!'s Itty Bitty Background set.   My journaling is tucked into the large pocket at the top.

Thanks for stepping back a few years with me today.  Later in the week, I'll have a Project Life video using mostly new products and yes, there will be mist...and also stamps and ink.