Convention tips

I was finally awake enough tonight to go through my convention notes. I thought I'd share my favorite stamping tips from the Stampin' Up! convention here with you today.

1. From Brent Steele: Tie a bow onto the top of your card using narrow grosgrain ribbon and then thread a teardrop bead from the Pretties Kit onto each end of the bow, tieing a knot to secure the jewel. This looked so elegant!
2. From Paula Hudson:
   
1. The 5-petal flower from Ginormous Flowers lines up perfectly with the 5-petal flower from In the Spotlight for a cool 2-step stamping look. Then you can punch it out with the 5-petal flower punch.
2. The snowflake punch fits perfectly with the funky looking flower in In the Spotlight.
3. The star in the Punches Plus classy brass template is slightly smaller than the Star Punch and they look great paired together.
4. The three poinsettia flowers in Punch Pals line up perfectly in the punch from the Three For You Punch Box.
   
3. From Shelli Gardner:
1. Use the Color Spritzer Tool with the Versamarker and then emboss to get cool splatter of gold.
2. Make icicle embellishments by drawing a string of icicles onto wax paper with Crystal Effects then sprinkle with Dazzling Diamonds and let dry. After an hour, you can peel off the icicles and adhere them to your project.
4. From Carrie Cudney:
1. Color with markers on watercolor paper and then blend streaks with a Blender Pen. This gives you that vibrant copic marker look in all of Stampin' Up's colors.
2. After coloring with your marker directly on the rubber of a stamp, dab it with a sponge dauber to blend the marker streaks for a more even stamped look.
3. Color the pearls from the Pretties kit with a marker and then emboss with clear embossing powder to seal the color in.
5. From Amy Yingling:
1. The self-adhesive die cut flower from the Special Delivery Girl Simply Scrappin' Kit fits perfectly on the chipboard flower in On Board Blossoms & Basics.
2. Highlight the main lines in the On Board Simon Upper chipboard with the leftover self-adhesive ribbons from the Simply Scrappin' Kits.
6. From Pam Morgan:
1. Tap the embossing buddy to the back of stickers to remove the stickiness if you want to pop-up a self-adhesive die cut on dimensionals. It's much less messy than baby powder.
   
2. To cut out the snowflakes in the Snowfall stamp set, use a 1 1/4" circle punch to punch semi-circles out of each of the snowflake notches. Then just snip off the pointy ends. This gives a very easy rounded look to the cut-outs.
7. From Linsay Mahon during the Workshop Wows:
1. Use the ric rac stamp from the Trimtastic stamp set on a lower layer to get a scalloped edge look.
2. Faux Foil Tape technique, make a straight line using Sticky Strip and then cover with a metallic embossing powder & emboss.
   
3. Mix crystal effects and a drop of reinker and then paint onto the same color card stock using a foam brush. This gives a cool darker streaky look.
8. From one of the other Workshop Wow presenters (sorry I missed her name): Cover chipboard with craft ink and then emboss with Iridescent Ice embossing powder. Then cover in Versamark and emboss with Glassy Glaze embossing powder. This gives it a cool shiny/glittery look.
   

There were a couple of others that were also very cool, but a little complicated to explain quickly including Deb Valder's bow and Stephanie Johnston's typography coluzzle template.

Finally, I thought I'd leave you with a few pictures from the SSUS dinner at the Cheesecake Factory and the SSUS shoebox swap. Thanks to Marjie and Rose for organizing these two events. They were a blast!