I’m still on such a high from my lunch yesterday with Sara Douglass!! For those who do not know, Sara Douglass is the CEO of Stampin’ Up!®. Sara’s mum Shelli co-founded Stampin’ Up! in 1988 with her sister (big 30 year celebrations happening this year!), and it is still very much a family business!
Like any good story, this one deserves to be told from the beginning. OnStage, which is a Stampin’ Up! convention held biyearly around the world in various locations. This weekend there are three events around Australia and New Zealand. One in Auckland, Perth and Sydney. Members from the head office travel to all over to attend these events, and it turned out that Sara was going to be attending the Sydney event! I didn’t realise this till I saw the below post on Facebook:
Finally a wonderful opportunity and something for me to be happy about living in Sydney! Problem was that I didn’t have an event or gather on Thursday 5th April, and I haven’t started classes here yet. What to do? My kids will both be at school/preschool that day, and that’s the day I love to create and innovate. Well I thought, I have nothing to loose, so I send an email and was honest. I told Sara that Thursday is my Creative/Innovation Day and she is more than welcome to join me. I go an automatic reply thanking me for my email and that they can’t reply to everyone individually and will only be in touch if the details of my event are suitable. I didn’t think much of it. OnStage is at Luna Park and train ride to me is about an hour. But at least I offered.
Then Friday morning, my hubby and I are having a sleep in since it was Good Friday public holiday. The kids were up so I woke and decided to check my emails in bed! Was I in for a surprise! I had a reply to my email from Sara’s assistance Merilee telling me that Sara is “thinking of changing things up a bit and is exploring the option of inviting a small group to have lunch”. I was squealing! I’m going to have lunch with SARA!!!
Fast forward to yesterday, I was set and ready to go. I arrive to North Sydney about 30 mins before Sara was due. I knew that there was another 3 demonstrators joining us and that they were arriving together. I hadn’t met any of them previously, but did have some Facebook contact with Priscilla since learning of the lunch. I was to grateful that Priscilla arrived with in mins of me with Kristy and Vicky. It was wonderful to be able to share the excitement with others.
Sara arrived right on time and gave us all hugs. She is an incredibly warm person, who was so easy to talk to and the conversation flowed easily. We all showered her with gifts. I had made Sara a purple version of my recent card Floral Celebration as I love that card but have heard from Shelli’s blog that Sara’s favourite colour is purple.
I also purchased family packs of Tim Tams (milk and dark chocolate) and a packet of Wagon Wheels. These I packaged into boxes using the Sale-A-Baration Springtime Foils paper and to add a bit of something extra I used the Sunshine & Rainbows Bundle to make a rainbow and clouds to add to the boxes. To top it all off I used the Silver 1/8″ Ribbon and Myths & Magic Washi Tape. Sara loved the gifts! The others also gave some lovely gifts of Koala toy and key rings, Kangaroo toy, Aussie tea towel, Aussie soap. We all felt very honoured and lucky to have such quality time with Sara.
I also packaged up some Cherry Ripes and Milky Ways into little boxes for Sara’s family and assistant Merilee. I’m sure they will all be on a sugar high once they taste everything! The sentiment from the Picture Perfect Birthday stamp set was, well there’s no other word but perfect! “treat yourself”.
Sara was very careful and did not reveal any announcements that are coming up on Saturday at OnStage! She was so lovely and answer all our questions so well and so patiently and lovingly. You can see that Sara really cares for all of us demonstrators. I can only sing her praises! Looking forward to an amazing OnStage Local in Sydney on Saturday! (And I can’t wait to see the new Annual Catalogue!)
Thank you for visiting my blog!
Bye for now!
Tatiana
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Supplies:
You can purchase the of the supplies I used in this project. Please click on the image below to purchase. Thank you for your support.
For the card
For the gifts
