Create 4 Him Team Striving & Thriving Crop Day Recap

Last week, my upline "grandma", Krista Hershberger, gathered all her team to celebrate her win in the Striving and Thriving contest sponsored by CTMH Corp last year. The contest was open to any Director in the company worldwide and each team had to qualify in 5 areas. After the contest ended, all 18 teams who qualified won a free team meeting from Corp - complete with projects and a business class just for them. And Krista's team won!!!!

It was a nice day just to get away from the family for a bit to be creative but it was super nice to be able to get away with a wonderful group of gals to spend the day creating together - followed by a wonderful party with Kristine Widtfelt and her partner in crime, Tiffany. They gave a great business class then showed us how to use the Picture My Life cards in two scrapbook layouts. Here are a few of the photos from the day.

Being a consultant is really super special, I wouldn't give it up if I had to. If you'd like to know more about the perks of being a consultant, please email me!

While I've been waiting

While I have been (not so) patiently waiting for my new product to come so I can start playing with it, I've been using my time wisely. I am working on organizing my digital photo albums and getting caught up on sorting, tagging, and making copies for friends and family. Here are some of the photos I thought I posted before leaving for convention.

The first three are the roommate gifts I made using the My Creations Journal. I went a different direction with each of them so stretch myself (never a good idea when time is short) but I'm happy with the result.

The next four photos are the cards I did for the card swap. Each year, the consultants swap cards or small trinkets that they've made so imagine 1500 gals swapping cards every time we'd get together - it was so cool to see all the talent and generosity.

I never feel like my work is up to par with other consultants but no one refused an offer to swap and I even had one lady track me down for a card I swapped with a friend of hers - that was a good feeling! ;)

This last one is the business card I did the night before I left. I was all done packing but still had some time to unwind (1am isn't the time to unwind, especially when I had to get up at 5am but I figured I'd sleep on the plane). I also made the little card holder too, I didn't want to take my nice one in case I lost it.

I'll have some new stuff to post soon - in the meantime, enjoy your summer!

Studio J layouts

I have been working digitally most of this month preparing for the Studio J classes I offered to help customers with learning to scrapbook in this new format. I have so much fun working digitally - it won't replace traditional scrapbooking for me but the way my life is currently, digital scrapbooking fits me so well! I love that I can do it while my three year old is sitting on my lap - no worries about microtip scissors or paper piercers! I even get journaling ideas from him - as I upload the photos, he tells me what is going on in them and from there I will usually get a great quote to use. Plus it helps him to identify more with the layouts because they are in his words.

I placed my order for the month of June and since I'm a member I saved so much money! I don't usually see any savings in traditional scrapbooking and so I got to do a little bragging to my hubby - "Look! I'm saving money!" If you haven't tried Studio J and you missed the June promotion - don't worry! Studio J is still free to set up an account and play for three months - I bet you won't need all three months to decide it's great! If you want hands-on help, please contact me so I can show you how easy it truely is!

I am currently working on getting ready for Convention in Anaheim CA in a few short days! I cannot believe I am actually going - and that my business paid for it! I am truely humbled by how successful my Close to My Heart business has become in such a short time (I've only been with the company since October) and my hobby has not come out of our personal budget at all! I will have so much more to post towards the end of July so I will be on hiatus until then but here are some Studio J layouts I've done. I'll be posting a few each day this week.

Magnifique - Studio J layout

Sophia - Studio J layout

This company is AMAZING!!!!

I have such a creative high right now! I have the awesome privileged to be in a unit of such amazing and talented consultants - I love what I do and as I get to know more of the wonderful ladies (and men) attached to CTMH I love getting to know every single one! One of my uplines in CTMH is Kathy Markloff. She has been with the company 20 years (and has all the Idea Books to prove it!!). Corp allowed only 5 top directors to host regional training events called LeaderShare. This is the first time for the events and Kathy was selected as one of the directors to have an event. Thankfully she lives in the same region I do (yea!) so it was a no-brainer for me to go. The cost of the event was so reasonable and the product we received to use during our creative time (*remember, this is a training event for us so of course we have to do some creating!*) far outweighed the price we paid to attend. I actually had the stamp sets in my arsenal already so I now have some additional sets to sell (bonus!) plus I got to learn and use some new-to-me products. Enough talking, pictures are worth a thousand words so here are some pictures to show you my day:

Kathy Markloff

Joyce Houck had little goodie bags for her "Shining Stars"

This was the largest group for LeaderShare

While we were there, some of the Corp execs dropped by to teach us Business Classes. Christine David spoke about goals and the importance of play. Brian showed us how to go from basic to advanced in our Studio J class in the afternoon. I learned so much! There are definitely things for me to work on but it was nice to sit and just play too! Here are the projects we did at our Creative Training:

This is a cute gift idea: Our My Creations Cube using Mayberry paper pack.

A 2 page layout using paper from "Wings" (green) and "Bliss" (tan).

And as with anytime this many creative people get together, there is always something being swapped - here is a picture of the card I made:

6 x6 card using "Friendship", February's Stamp of the Month

This is a picture of all the other items I got in the swap (Because I don't have permission to showcase someone else's work on my blog, the photo is purposely far away):

My swap collection: three layouts, 5 cards & two gift holders (plus my creation)

This was my fabulous day - being a consultant, if only to pay for my own habit with a great discount on products I already buy, is so much fun! I get to play every time I go to work and I love what I do! If you want more information on how you can have this much fun too, please stay tuned! CTMH has something WONDERFUL in store for you in the month of May!