Stampaholix: Wow - what a day!

Well Saturday the 16th dawned at stupid o' clock for me due to the adrenalin flowing - it was the day of my first ever Stampin' Up! one day retreat and boy was I nervous!!! Despite the full run through with my willing volunteer, Wendy, last week, it was still uncharted territory for me - and I still had to get rid of Roger and Katy before I could finish clearing up!!

The sound of the Dyson blaring and slightly later but still stupid o' clock for a Saturday got them up and out leaving me about half an hour to nip to the shops for some cooked ham (our little village shop does it own home cooked ham and it is to die for...) and get showered and dressed before my guests arrived!

This is what they were coming for - a whole day of creating and crafting with products from the new Stampin' Up! mini catalogue which launched on the 1st April. We were going to be making a mini album, two 12x12 scrapbook pages and a box with 6 cards - all using items from the gorgeous Springtime Vintage range of papers and accessories! (I will admit to having a little help with the cards from the lovely Stephanie Mayne (the cream one) and the mini catalogue (the red one) and the basic album was designed by Andrea Walford!

I had spent a while creating a fab display of cards, pages and card candy (mostly from swaps I have been in) and actually had enough to set up two separate displays - this was the main one.....

and this was the second and smaller one....

I had made all the attendees one of these lovely little brooches made out of the striped grosgrain ribbon - and with Easter only a week away - a chocolate Easter bunny hopped into the little gift bags....

This was the table set up before everybody arrived.....

and a closer look at the place setting - everyone got a lush kit of papers and cardstock with a whole roll of the new seam binding ribbon, a bag of buttons with half a pack of the basic pearls, linen thread and vellum cardstock...... as well as a folder containg full colour step by step instructions for the projects we were going to be making so they could recreate them later!

We stopped at 12:30 for a salad lunch - the menu was cooked ham, pork pie and quiche with a green salad, coleslaw and potato salad and a bread roll, followed by a piece of fresh fruit. Although everyone had several cups of tea and coffee through the day - Katy was delighted to get home and find that we had barely touched the biscuits and cake I had bought! Everyone was far more interested in getting on with the crafting!

Here they all are (from L-R) Beryl, Joanna, Julie, Lynn and Linda , beavering away on a scrapbook page.