Introducing Marisol Gutierrez

Marisol Gutierrez

Marisol became interested in stamping when she was looking for invitations for her daughter’s baptism.  She couldn’t  find anything that she liked, so she started searching the web for ideas.  Stampin’ Up! came up in her search and she ordered some products.  She was immediately hooked and signed on as an Independent demonstrator approximately 3 years later.  She’s holding her first workshop in October of this year!  She didn’t ever want to appear pushy so she never outright asked for bookings, but at a kindergarten gathering this fall, she mentioned Stampin’ Up! to one of the other mothers and that mother  booked a workshop!

Presently, Marisol’s stamping area is in her bedroom.  She’s working to clean out the basement so she will have her own space to stamp and create.  She laughingly tells us that she used to have her own space until the birth of her son, Joaquin, but with the option of him either sleeping in her crafting space or sleeping in the hall, she felt that it wasn’t fair to for him to sleep in the hall!  Marisol usually crafts to Freestyle or Merengue-style music and says that she does her best work with this in the background.

Marisol finds that she is inspired by her children and current trends.  She says that she doesn’t have a favorite Stampin’ Up! product but she loves to use brads on many of her projects.  Just recently, Marisol created 500 Triangle Boxes for an event, and also was a bit overworked from doing her sister’s wedding invitations.  She tells us that she always gets her mojo back sooner or later though, because she loves to create with her hands! 

Check out Marisol’s castle on the Royal Blog Tour coming soon, and see what she’s been busy creating for us!

Introducing Erin Calhoun-Mangat

Erin Calhoun Mangat

Erin has experience in many different jobs, but she tells us that she has never regretted buying the Stampin’ Up! Starter Kit.  Before that, none of the jobs felt “right” to her.  Now, Erin looks forward to a new workday and wants to make a career out of paper crafting!  She sells Stampin’ Up! products, teaches classes, and also sells and donates her finished paper-crafted creations.  She has made many new friends, and laughingly tells us that her calendar has gone from “Free all the time” to “Let me go check that day”!

Erin’s favorite product is the Big Shot because of its versatility.  She loves that it can emboss paper for new textures or designs, or cut shapes with just a few cranks of the handle.  She’s anxiously awaiting the arrival of her Fancy Favor Die – she ordered it and can’t wait to make the Christmas favors and other 3D projects like luminaries that she’s seen on so many blogs!  Erin finds much of her inspiration from card swaps that she participates in, as well as from online stamping forums, as she says it is a great place to learn new techniques and color schemes.   She also loves going to events, especially those that Stampin’ Up! hosts – she has learned many new techniques and remembers many a time that she’s come home the same day to make a bunch of samples that utilize new techniques that she’s been shown.  

Because of Erin’s background in designing (Graphic/Web Design and Production, as well as a stint making Costume Jewelry), Erin loves patterns and paper.  She tells us that she buys paper because of the color or design of it, buys journals because of the pattern, and feels that her strength is in gluing!  She tells us that she loves glue almost as much as she loves paper, and has fun experimenting with the different types of glue that Stampin’ Up! has.  She loves the sticky tape as it is fantastic for 3D projects, but also loves Crystal Effects, and says that she uses it on probably every three out of five projects! Erin says that the Snail Adhesive is her “best friend”, especially at Christmas-time, and she enjoys watching people open her gifts as they try to figure out where the tape went!  

As for stamping secrets, Erin tells us that Home Depot is a great place to find material to use for her projects:  she loves to use the bathroom tiles, washers, metal sheeting and even paint chips in her projects for truly amazing effects!  

We can’t wait to see what Erin has used to make her projects truly spectacular for the Royal Blog Tour!

Introducing Mickey Roberts

Mickey Roberts

The first thing that you’ll notice about Mickey Roberts blog are her dynamite scrap page layouts!  So many blogs these days focus on cards; but Mickey is right in there with fabulous scrap ideas.  In fact, Mickey first became interested in Stampin’ Up! because of her interest in scrapbooking.  She loved the stamping that went along with it, and joined with some friends in a club with a local Stampin’ Up! demonstrator.  After a few years, the demonstrator had to discontinue the club, and guess who became a demonstrator to keep the club going?  Not hard to figure that one out!  Since then, Mickey has established many more clubs and is continuing to share her love of paper crafting with an ever-expanding customer base.

Mickey’s favorite parts of the whole paper crafting experience are the stamps and the inks.  She loves to use inks both in traditional as well as non-traditional ways.  In a recent blog post, she showed off some of Stampin’ Up!’s stencils as a border for a set of scrap pages which really met her stated goals of using inks to enhance projects and create interest in the project’s elements.

The one thing that Mickey tells all her stamping friends is that there are no bad ideas in paper crafting.  If you go with your gut instincts, you’ll seldom go astray.  And if you don’t feel comfortable with what you’ve created, walk away from it.  When you return and look at the project with rested eyes, you’ll know exactly what to do.  Mickey recently took her own advice when she was struggling with a particular color combination.  She stopped her crafting and went to a movie with her husband.   There in one of the scenes was that exact color combination – and inspiration struck!  Problem solved.

I can hardly wait to see what Princess Mickey has in store for us with all that creativity she’s been showing off!

Introducing Madeline Morcelo

Madeline Morcelo

 

Madeline is originally from Puerto Rico and has always loved doing crafts. After coming to live in the United States, she enrolled in a card class. The teacher was a Stampin’ Demonstrator and Madeline instantly fell in love with all of the products used for the class. She wanted to know how she could get them so she talked to the demonstrator, who introduced her to her upline. After seeing more wonderful products in the catalog, Madeline was hooked and signed up herself.

The stamp sets that contain greetings or messages have become her favorites. She can always find just the right one and loves to add them her cards. Her favorite projects are 3-D items. She finds inspiration for those from all sorts of sources, but especially television and hardware stores. She loves to see unique items and adapt them to paper. She is a bit of an expert at that J and loves adding her own little twist to designs that have been around awhile.

When Madeline first moved to her area, she lost her “mojo” quite often. It is difficult for her to find customers where she is living. So, she decided to try a new venue. She now designs for her own online classes and that has given her new inspiration. She enjoys creating many spectacular 3-D items for all of the online members.

Be sure to stop by Madeline’s castle to see her beautiful projects!

Introducing Karen Trelfa

Karen Trelfa

Karen truly became a Stampin’ Up! Demonstrator quite by accident!  She was asked by her niece to hostess a workshop since her niece’s space was too small.  Karen filled out two order forms with her wish list, but because she claims she “does not like to shop”, she filled out 4 more type-written pages of further orders for herself approximately 2 weeks later when she decided she needed more!!   The demonstrator at that workshop wisely suggested to Karen that she sign up as a demonstrator with Stampin’ Up to receive the discount on her order, and that was exactly what she did!  Despite a long period of time of non-use of the supplies, both at her regular home and her winter home in Florida, Karen finally took out her supplies when someone suggested she use her supplies to teach a card-making class to the “old ladies” in the community.  She had so much fun that her business took off and Karen just recently earned 5^th place as Rising Star with Stampin’ Up!  The stories just get more humorous as Karen recalls recently signing up two new demonstrators at a funeral home, and tells us that you never know where opportunities lie (not literally!)!

Karen’s favorite Stampin’ Up! product to work with is ribbon.  She loves the texture and dimension that it gives to her projects, and laughingly tells us that her customers would think she was “ill” if a project did not contain some sort of ribbon!  Karen enjoys teaching, and feels that her strength is her eye for balance.   She also consistently reminds everyone about keeping stamping projects simple (“KISS”).  As she says, there is a time for “over the top” in projects, but Karen feels that it is classic simplicity that makes stamping and creating most relaxing and fun.

Karen is most inspired by her customers who she says challenge her to find new and creative ways of doing things and have her think “outside the box” regularly!  She works full-time as the owner of a construction company, so she appreciates her time for stamping and becomes newly motivated when her students are excited about Stampin’ Up!  

Whether simple or “over the top”, we’re sure to be wowed by Karen’s creations on the Royal Blog Tour!

Introducing Kim Innis

Kim Innis

Kim Innis became a Stampin’ Up! demonstrator about 12 years ago—on advice from her doctor!  Kim began stamping as a hobby, for relaxation and stress release, about a year after nearly dying from a bad bout of pneumonia.  She had previously done a lot of counted cross-stitch, but found stamping a lot easier and more fun, because of the almost instant gratification from completing a project in just a few minutes.

It should come as no surprise to learn that one of Kim’s favorite techniques is the One Sheet Wonder.  With this technique, she can create her own background paper in a jiffy, use a little on a current project, and save pieces to use later on other projects.  Another favorite for Kim is making 3D projects, like creating birdhouses from the mini milk carton die.  Her favorite Stampin’ Up! product is ribbon, and she rarely makes a project without it.

Kim loves blog hopping to get stamping inspiration…she finds projects to duplicate, and modifies them to give them her own unique style.  Whenever she is stressed, or loses her stamping mojo, Kim just checks out some blogs and gets busy stamping, and everything is right again in her world.  Kim encourages us all to stamp something every day…after all, it is just what the doctor ordered!

Introducing Frances Hicks

Frances Hicks

 

Frances was introduced to stamping by her best friend’s cousin.  Little did she know then that a stack of cards that they created would lead to her stamping addiction!  At the end of this month (October), Frances will be celebrating her 6^th anniversary with Stampin’ Up as a demonstrator.  She works as a demonstrator in her “spare time”, noting that she also works fulltime as an electrical designer for an Architectural/Engineering firm (and tells us that the “coolest” part of her job is commuting to and working in the same department as her youngest son!).  

Frances uses her dining room area to stamp.  Her husband has provided her with a large cabinet space to keep her supplies.  She says she does her best work in the morning, but is known for her “stamping marathons” when she stamps all hours of the day and night to finish swaps or to prepare for a workshop or other stamping/scrapbooking event!

Frances especially loves to scrapbook, and has recently started her 2 oldest granddaughters (ages 7 and 8) scrapbooking as well.  They accompanied her to a scrapbooking crop recently, and Frances fondly recalls how much fun they all had together – she looks forward to many more “relationship-building experiences” in the future.  Frances also tells us that, though the family has endured many hardships this past year, she turns to her stamping to perk her up and get her mind off of her troubles and to get her excited again!

Frances’s strength is in choosing stamps and colors that work well with the Designer Series papers.  She tells us that she picks a stamp set that fits the season or works well with the paper, and then chooses a sketch.  She enjoys participating in the online sketch challenges – it is in these challenges that Frances says she goes to when she needs inspiration to design her scrapbook pages or cards.  Her favorite tool is the Big Shot, as she loves its versatility, but she’s quick to add that she’s also in love with the glitter, punches, and the many other products that Stampin’ Up carries. 

I’m sure Frances right now is busy planning all of her wonderful projects that she intends to share with us during the Royal Blog Tour!  We can’t wait to see them!

Introducing Brenda Hugar

Brenda Hugar

 

Brenda has been a Stampin’ Up! Demonstrator for 7 years.  She attended a class that her best friend, Diana (and later, upline!), was doing in town while she was visiting that she invited Brenda to attend.  Brenda remembers that she was instantly hooked on Stampin’ Up! when she saw how well the cardstock, markers, pads, and other great accessories coordinated with each other!  Unfortunately, she lives 2000 miles from her upline and her one downline, Jackie (who happens to be Brenda’s older sister), but says that they get to share ideas back and forth almost daily via the phone, the internet, and through their blogs. 

Brenda’s favorite experience while stamping was when she got to attend her first convention and met up with her upline and several friends.  She recalls the swapping and sharing that took place, both stamped items and ideas, and fondly remembers how inspired she was when she left Convention!  She still looks forward to attending Convention and Regional Workshops as often as she can for the camaraderie and the sharing that takes place there.

Brenda’s favorite Stampin’ Up! product is the markers.  She loves to use the markers to color an image directly, but also to use them to color on a stamp, especially for the very small details.  She tells us that she uses her markers with her blender pen or aqua painter, as well as with the Color Spritzer tool for a speckled background.  She even uses them to color ribbon so she has matching ribbon in all the colors!

Brenda’s stamping are has changed a few times over the years.  She presently has her own room to stamp, but says that she has worked to find time almost daily, even if it meant stamping on the kitchen table or the counter.  Brenda works “solo” these days – until last month, her Siberian Husky used to wander in and out to remind her that she had been in her room too long and it was time to put away the stamping supplies and pay attention to the family! She finds inspiration in everything –in nature, as well as in magazine layouts or in cards that she might receive in the mail.  Brenda is always amazed at what people can come up with when doing punch art, and tells us that she now looks at a punch with “new eyes” as well, in order to figure out what she can create with them!

According to Brenda, her strength lies in making her card layers complement each other.  She likes to layer her images, and says that she is careful to get out her pencil and “do the math” to make sure that all sides are even.  She reminds us that we should “measure twice, cut once” when preparing our layers! 

We can’t wait to see the wonderful creations that Brenda is preparing to share with us on the Royal Blog Tour!

Introducing Marilyn San Clemente

Marilyn San Clemente

Marilyn has been a Stampin’ Up! Demonstrator for 9 years.  She initially started out scrapbooking the lives of her kids when her daughter was born 15 years ago, using it as a stress reliever, and working on her scrapbooks until late into the night after the kids were in bed.  She wanted to stay home with her kids (besides a daughter, Emily, who is 15, Marilyn is married, and also has a son, John, who is 19), so her husband encouraged her to find a way to pay for her “hobby”.  She attended a Stampin’ Up! party, but didn’t know how to use the stamps or other products.  Her friend, Michele, helped Marilyn to get started by teaching her different techniques.  Ironically, after Michele and her husband adopted a little girl and she wanted to be an at-home mother as well,  Michele  quit her job and signed on as Marilyn’s first down-line!

Marilyn loves all of Stampin’ Up!’s colors, cardstocks, and the fact that everything matches and coordinates.  She especially loves all of the designer papers.  She is always sad to see a favorite color or pattern go, but then realizes that there is always another one that she absolutely loves which replaces it!

Because Marilyn worked in a stationary store for a few years, she feels that her strength in stamping is in helping a Stampin’ Up! customer to design a card.  She used to help those customers in the store design a wedding invitation that was not “off the shelf”, so now Marilyn enjoys the challenge of using a particular stamp set with a specific color theme, and creating from there.  She says that she finds inspiration everywhere – in color combinations and the shapes and layouts of magazine pages, but also from a few favorite blogs that she regularly visits to get her mojo going.  She also relies on her down-line and sideline to inspire her, noting that she is always very pumped up after leaving her monthly group meeting.  Marilyn hosts spring and fall stamping retreats for her Stampin’ Up! Demonstrator group at her house on Cape Cod, which leaves everyone motivated and inspired!

Marilyn doesn’t have any stamping secrets except to tell us that there are so many new techniques and products that come out, so she’s always learning something new after 9 years!  She says we also shouldn’t stop looking for the new challenge or experience!

We can’t wait to see what Marilyn has to share with us on the Royal Blog Tour!  It’s sure to teach and inspire us as well!

Introducing Melissa Rodgers

Melissa Rodgers

Melissa has been a Stampin’ Up Demonstrator for 11 years, and says that she can’t even remember what her life was like before stamping!  Since she was very young, Melissa has always enjoyed crafts. She tells us that, once she discovered stamping and Stampin’ Up!, she has found that they have supplied her with all the tools and options she could ever need to create!

Melissa finds inspiration from everything around her: magazines, browsing an antique store, enjoying the outside, or brainstorming with her blog buddy, Gayla.  She can’t single out a single stamping experience, but states that nearly every get-together with friends and stamping has been life-changing for her.  Melissa loves the new people she’s met and the friends she’s made through the craft.

Distressing is probably Melissa’s favorite technique, and she’s fondly referred to as the “Distressing Queen” by her group of SU! demonstrators.  She says that she can’t pick out a favorite project as there are” just too many”, but says that one can usually spot her project among a group of creations because of her stamping and distressing style.

Melissa has to be extremely organized to fit in her stamping time.  She’s a full time Process Manager, a mother of 5, and a grandmother of 7!  All of her kids live within 10 minutes of their house, so she sees them often and says that her family is her life.  Her husband and her son remodeled her office to make a stamping space for her, and she says she can’t wait to use the space as a full-time stamper!  She typically utilizes this stamping space in the early morning hours before heading to her “day job”, a few evenings a week, and again several hours over the weekend if she’s lucky!

Melissa’s stamping tip that she shares with us is to be kind to ourselves and to our ideas.  Often, she says we are too critical of our work.  If we find that our project isn’t turning out the way we think it should, she tells us that we should walk away, and when returning, we just might have the “aha!” moment we needed to make things fall into place, to become the project that we perhaps visualized in the first place!

We can’t wait to see the creations that Melissa is so eager to share with us during the Royal Blog Tour! 

Introducing Carol Matthews

Carol Matthews

For Carol Matthews, Stampin’ Up! really is a family affair!  It was Carol’s niece who first introduced her to Stampin’ Up!, and it was a bequest from her brother that finally provided her with the funds that she needed to buy her Starter Kit and other products that she needed to get started.  Now, two and a half years later, she has 5 downline, regular classes and a whole lot of new friends that she’s met through Stampin’ Up!  And every day she thinks of her brother and how much joy he has given her.

As Carol has grown in her Stampin’ Up! business, she is finding that she gains a great deal of inspiration from her fellow demonstrators, especially her downline and new friends that she meets at Leadership.   But, when she needs to come up with something that is all her own, she uses the new Color Coach, and peruses magazines and other publications for color and design inspiration.

With all the Stampin’ Up! products that Carol uses, her favorites are the Simply Scrappin’ kits.  There is so much that you can do with them, and she loves to make mini scrapbooks out of them, not only for herself, but to sell at craft fairs.  She says that they’re popular at her classes, too. 

While Carol finds that just about everything about her Stampin’ Up! business is enjoyable, she recalls one early class where she offered 10 cards to be made, and 20 people signed up.  Let’s see, 10 x 20 = ?  200!!!  When she realized that she was going to be cutting papers and ribbons for 200 cards, she learned not to do that again!  A good lesson for all of us, I think J  And she’s learned to keep the make and takes for her workshops simple and inexpensive, and save the big complicated projects for her classes (but not 200 of them!).  Now that makes everything enjoyable!

Of course, Carol will be saving some of her BEST work for her Castle on the Royal Blog Tour.  Be sure not to miss it!

Introducing Tammy Baldwin

Tammy Baldwin

If you ever run into Tammy Baldwin on the streets of Georgia, you’ll recognize her because of the stamp in one hand and the ink in another!  At least that’s according to her husband, who claims that she’s a 24/7/365 stamper.  Tammy doesn’t dispute that claim, saying that she even dreams about stamping, and has withdrawal symptoms if she doesn’t stamp every day!

Of course that may all be an exaggeration, especially now that she has My Digital Studio and the Sizzix Big Shot in her repertoire.  The Big Shot is, hands down, her favorite Stampin’ Up! product, though she says she hasn’t found any Stampin’ Up! product yet that she doesn’t like.  Tammy loves to participate in sketch challenges, and has a blast using My Digital Studio to come up with wonderful but quick takes on the sketches – you can find lots of those great ideas on her blog.

As we get into the Holiday season, you’re bound to find some great 3-D projects from Tammy, who especially likes to use the Big Shot to make boxes – all kinds of boxes!  And she loves to mix up her colors to decorate them, as well as to decorate all her other projects.  Her current favorite color combination is Early Espresso, Cherry Cobbler, Daffodil Delight and Very Vanilla.  Now I’m going to have to go see what I can do with those colors – a combination I’ve not yet used.  How about you?  Hmmm.  Maybe we’ll even see some of that on Princess Tammy’s Castle for the Royal Blog Tour!

Whatever we see at Tammy’s Castle, it’s sure to be creative!

Introducing Laura Bement

Laura Bement

Laura Bement-Jaroscak has been a Stampin’ Up! demonstrator for over 10 years.  And like most of us, she’d been having fun with Stampin’ Up! products for several years before that. 

What Laura has that’s really special for her is her 11 year old dog, Toby, who has grown up with all of Laura’s stamper friends and customers, and who just loves it when they all come over for a workshop.  It’s great for the dog, as well as Laura’s customers, that she has a great area for stamping workshops in her home, which is where most of them end up happening.  They all have to be careful, though, to place their purses up on a table or chair as Toby has been known to pilfer goodies over the years.

A full-time teacher, Laura is very happy that she is able to combine her teaching job with the flexibility that Stampin’ Up! offers to its demonstrators.  Of course, even when she is not stamping, she is always looking around her, paying attention to store and magazine layouts, trying to notice how colors and textures work together.  Her favorite types of stamps are all the wonderful floral stamps offered by Stampin’ Up!, especially as Laura loves flowers, but doesn’t have much of a green thumb (that little bit of Old Olive on her thumb doesn’t count?).  She is quite happy to be able to be successful with her flowers that thrive on paper rather than on dirt.

Laura is most creative in the morning, which means she has to be equally creative with her scheduling.  She has been known to set the alarm for 4:00 am on a school morning so that she can put in some stamping time to start her day.  She just loves to have a few creations behind her before the day is even really started.  She’s even embraced scrapbooking, even though she resisted when Stampin’ Up! first introduced their scrapbooking products to compete with her first love, card making.

I’m sure that you’re going to love Laura’s blog – it’s based on Stampin’ Up!’s Demonstrator Business Website blogging tool, and her projects are so creative.  She’s had the blog going for a little over a year and manages to keep it up even with her teaching, other school and family responsibilities, and other (gasp!) hobbies – biking, knitting, reading – where does she find the time?!   Ah, yes – at 4:00 am in the morning!

Introducing Janice Rosenthal Rock

Janice Rosenthal Rock

Janice started out dabbling in stamping but found the whole process rather mediocre. She had been introduced to a company that specialized in clear-mount stamps but just wasn’t feeling the love.  Then a friend introduced her to Stampin’ Up and it totally changed her mind about the whole process. She was awestruck by the wonderful products and was immediately hooked. One short month later she signed up as a demonstrator and convinced her best friend to do the same. The rest, they say is “history.”

She was excited to do her first Stamp Camp with her friend! They carefully cut each and every piece for every project and carefully packed up their supplies into little cellophane bags so nothing could get lost. Their efforts really paid off until they realized they had forgotten to include the card base. Janice and her friend still get a good laugh when they think about that first event. Don’t feel alone, Janice. I am sure we all have a story that relates.

Her favorite Stampin’ Up product is ribbon. She uses it on EVERYTHING! She loves to embellish her projects with whatever she can get her hands on. Ribbon is often at the top of her list but she doesn’t limit herself to one embellishment. If you visit her blog, you will see that Janice adds something to every card she designs – ribbon, brads, pearls, or anything else that will add some bling and pizzazz! And she does a fabulous job of it, too.

Janice taught high school for 18 years and that teaching expertise has carried over into her Stampin’ Up business. She loves to teach other stampers new techniques and projects. After doing it for so many years, it just comes naturally to her now. And her customers and fellow stampers appreciate her for it. She gets her inspiration from other stampers by starting her day with a “blog surf.” She likes to see what others can “dream up” and share with her. Stamping is her therapy; therefore she seldom loses her mojo. But when she does, she just takes a day or two off and then gets back to the “surf” for a little inspiration. 

Janice has just one secret to share with us about stamping. She wants us all to know that “a good glass of wine goes GREAT with stamping!!!” You know, I have heard that before J.  And, of course we all know chocolate does too J

Be sure to visit Janice’s castle and see her beautiful embellished cards and projects. I know you will visit often.