Last weekend, Stampin' Up! held a national (and international) convention for their demonstrators - a fabulous day of new products, inspiration, training and celebrations. Some of my team joined me and I made each of them a small gift using the Acetate Card Boxes, Be Merry Designer Series Paper and the fabulous Cherry Cobbler 1/4" Double-Stitched Ribbon...

For each of my guests at the Hamilton Christmas Extravaganza I decorated the Mini Pizza Boxes with the Merry Little Christmas Designer Series Paper, gold and silver Foil Snowflakes and a stamped sentiment from the Merry Little Labels stamp set...

On Sunday we held our final Extravaganza event for this year. The Hamilton Christmas Extravaganza was a lovely relaxing day with loads of industrious creating and plenty of inspiration. I got very busy and only remembered late in the day to snap a photo of our activity...

Stampin' Blends - click to view

At the Creative Stamping Workshops this month, we created Bridge-Fold Cards (otherwise known as U-Fold Cards) using the fabulous Carols of Christmas stamp set and coordinating Card Front Builder Thinlits to create a lovely, peaceful diorama scene...

I used the gorgeous Year of Cheer Specialty Designer Series Paper and Caroline's Diagonal Opening Gift Box design to create these lovely Christmas boxes in gold and silver. These sweet gift boxes are 2" square and look like something small, blingy, and expensive is inside!

Going back 12-months or more, we would never add, say, gold and silver on the same project. But now, the trend in paper crafting is mixing metallics and I love it! Stampin' Up! is right on trend with their Year of Cheer Specialty Designer Series Paper. This gorgeous paper has classic foil designs with a mix of champagne, copper, gold and silver. Here's three of the four paper designs on cards inspired by a photographed image on page 36 of the Holiday Catalogue...

Autumn or Spring? Vanilla or white? Gold or silver? These two floral gift boxes are very similar, yet poles apart...