Close To My Heart Calgary Regional Convention 2009

Today was such a full day! This morning we had a great opening from Jeanette Lynton, the founder of Close To My Heart. Her passion for this business just radiates from her. Plus she’s so approachable! She said she didn’t want anyone coming up and introducing themselves by wanting to shake their hand with her. She wants a big ol’ hug! Too cute!

Anyhoo, after Jeanette we got a lot of great business advice from various members of the staff and there were different sessions available based on what we signed up for. The afternoon arrived and that meant play time for us! WOO HOO!

We made a card and 2-two page layouts. Here I am working away with a few other BC consultants.

One of the really cool tricks I learned by doing this layout is called masking. It’s amazing. You’re going to love this. Masking is when you want to only use part of a stamp. What you do is stamp the full image on a post-it note then cut out the part you want. Got that? I’ll say it again, cut out the part you want.

In this example below I want “fishing” from the stamp “hooked on fishing” from the Campin’ Fever Stamp Set (D1353 for $28.50 CDN). Using my micro-scissors I cut out fishing. Next, I put the post-it note on my page, lining up the space for “fishing” where I want it to be. With my acrylix stamps from Close To My Heart, it’s so easy to then stamp again over the image because I can line up the “hooked on” part so that with the hole I cut out only the “fishing” shows up exactly where I want it. Isn’t that neat-o??

The second great find from this workshop was the Dimensional Elements In Color – Adventure (Z1158 for only $5.50 CDN). It is a steal of a deal! Seriously, don’t tell Close To My Heart what a deal it is, I’m sure the price is a misprint. You get 11 items of chipboard with outdoor related sayings. It’s great for camping or fishing or adventure embellishments on your layouts. The wheels say things all sorts of different things. One says the months of the year and you can spin the dial to show one month. Another says: treasure, search, explore, learn, discover, celebrate.

Here’s the layout we did with the Dimensional Elements In Color – Adventure. It’s a little hard to see in this picture. I took a close up of the piece we used and the rest of the pack is below.

Okay, now enough talking and on to more pictures. Here are some of the samples they showed us. I love some of these items!