OnStage New Zealand – a report!

Hi all, I hope that you have been enjoying the recent sunshine? It has been pretty good here with just a bit of rain at the end of last week. I am planning to bring some more sunshine into your life today with a report from OnStage New Zealand!

OnStage NZ!

So as you may know, Stampin’ Up! host a six-monthly live event called OnStage. There is one large, 3-day Live event, and then local one day events around the world. I have been fortunate enough to attend all of the Live events around the world, including visiting Utah, Amsterdam, Brussels and Brisbane – and now Auckland in New Zealand! I realise that not many people are able to do this, and I am incredibly grateful for the opportunity to have done it, and especially the support of my family in allowing me to go.

Today I am going to share some images and stories from the OnStage Live event, and then in the coming weeks I plan to share projects and information we were given at OnStage. As anyone who know me will tell you, I am an incredibly sociable person, and I am rarely happier than when I am surrounded by “my people”! And crafting comes high on my happy list as well, so you can imagine that I am in a good place to be able to attend an event which includes friends and crafting. Here are a few photos showing my happy zone at OnStage this time around:

As you can see, there are some big smiles involved! The first picture is of our little group of Musketeers – all for one and one for all. I am so grateful to have Astrid and Constanze in my life, and I look forward to seeing them as often as possible. It was fantastic when Constanze was desperately waiting for the traffic lights to change so she could charge across the road to hug me – so special! It is friendships like this which would not be possible without Stampin’ Up! and I am thrilled that I am involved. It has become traditional for our little group to wear something fun on our heads, mainly to be able to find each other in big groups, but also just because! The others forgot to bring their deely boppers with them this time, so it was suggested that we wear bunny ears as Easter was approaching. Astrid and I popped out and picked these beautiful sequinned ones up before the event on Friday morning. Don’t they look cool?!

The second image is our “collection” of international travellers from all over the world including Germany, the UK, the USA and Australia! A number of us have been to all of the OnStage Live events and it is great that Tamra made us little signs for our country of origin!

Finally, you have a picture of Andrea and me together again after more than 4 years since our last event in the same place as one another! I am grateful for social media to keep in touch with this gal, but boy have I missed her! Andrea works for Stampin’ Up!, and she is featured in a number of their videos. I love it!

Meet the bosses!

I also get to meet the Co-Founder and the CEO of Stampin’ Up! each time I attend OnStage Live – here they are, Sara and Shelli!

These lovely ladies do an amazing job, and they make every demonstrator feel special, no matter how long you have been with the company, or how many sales you make. One of my favourite parts of OnStage Live is when this mother-daughter team are stamping on stage – the script is irrelevant, they couldn’t care much less about the time limit, and the love between them is palpable! It is adorable, and we all get to be a part of that.

International friends and gifts

Over the years, I have “collected” quite a lot of amazing International friends. And Jackie here is a native Kiwi (New Zealander). She was so generous and made a number of us international visitors these beautiful paper satchels as gifts! They are so lovely, and they also had chocolate inside them! Amazing. I am so spoiled to have been a proud recipient of one of these special gifts.

Time for some crafting

To round out this post, I am going to share with you one of the beautiful projects from the OnStage display boards. This uses one of the new stamp and die sets coming in the new catalogue in June, which is awesome and is called It Starts With Art! This set is part of a product suite called Follow Your Art, and I predict that it will be very popular with crafters who like to share their passions. Let’s have a look:

The stamp set is based on some of the core Stampin’ Up! ingredients for card-making, including pens, ink bottles, ribbons, buttons and clips. the possibilities for this set and the cute sentiments in it are seemingly endless, so watch out for plenty of projects using this when mine arrive in the mail!

Inspiration

The inspiration and ideas I came home with from OnStage are massive, so watch this space for regular updates and shares for what they can mean for you. If you want to get involved and hands-on with the new products as soon as possible, then be sure to sign up for my classes or to host an event of your own. I will be hosting a launch event for the new catalogue including a make-and-take project for all attendees, so check here regularly for details on that.

Finally I would like to share an image from one of the banks in New Zealand, which I thought captured the country and the OnStage event really well!

Get Involved

I hope you have enjoyed this brief insight into my experience at OnStage in New Zealand, and if you would like to know more about it, including how you could be eligible to attend these amazing events, then please don’t hesitate to contact me. Have a great week, and I will be back soon with news of a limited-edition bundle of beautiful which will only be available during May and even then it will only be available while stocks last… check back tomorrow for more details!