It’s time for a semi-quick SNAP! wrapup.

What is SNAP! you say? So glad that you asked! SNAP! is the brainchild of a group of amazingly talented, creative and design-savvy bloggers. It will hopefully become an annual event held in Salt Lake City. Judging from the attendance (325), and happiness all around, I imagine it will!

Royal Design Studio was THA-Rilled to be a sponsor of this awesome event, and I personally was honored to be asked to present a Saturday stencil class there-Get Your Stencil ON!

As official sponsors, we had an official table in the official sponsor room. We thought that the best way to introduce these lovely ladies to our stencils was to GIVE them one. Not wanting to give out hundreds of the exact same stencil (boring!), I decided to take a range of designs. Then the dilemma: how to choose who got what? Inspiration finally hit on the day that we arrived, so we were off to Target to look for dice. We laid out six different designs on the tables and attendees rolled to see what number came up.

Winners! It was amazing how many times people rolled and got the exact design they wanted. I was really stressing about this, so it was nice to see VERY few pretty pouty faces!

The day (yes, that IS how I roll) before I left for the conference I stenciled up some new canvas samples to share in the booth and in my stencil class. We just happen to have some new stencils coming online very soon, so it was a perfect opportunity to put them to the test. With almost 30 years of stencil life behind me, it was SUPER hard to try to figure out how much info and inspiration I could cram into a fast 1 1/2 hour stencil class/demo.

In the end, I decided to stick to “stencil basics” but wanted to introduce some great options besides “roller stenciling” and get them to start thinking of stencils as more creative/less mechanical-and you can see from this pic that I had PLENTY to say! I think I succeeded because I got some fabulous feedback. There were audible gasps (of delight!) in the room when I showed them how to quickly stencil with a stencil brush and our Stencil Cremes and pulled the stencil away to reveal-ta da! no bleed-unders!

Super fun for me, was that I not only got to teach, I got to learn too! They had an awesome schedule put together, with many popular classes running concurrently, so it was hard to choose. I think I chose well….I studied photography with Emilie Ralph of Photo by Emelie, Photo editing with Amanda Padgett from Everyday Elements, and attended a design panel that included Beth Hunter from Home Stories A to Z sharing the basic steps to creating an amazing vignette. This included some audience participation where a workshop attendee, Traci of Beneath my Heart, and Mandi of Vintage Revivals played the roles of accent piece, mirror, and plant respectively. I actually had some good AHA moments in these classes so glad I went!

What rounds out a great weekend of learning and sharing? Shopping!!! They had a Queen Bee Market on sight that was just a visual delight and an overwhelming temptation. The last thing I need to buy is more jewelry. So, what did I buy? Yes….I did……lots.

One beautiful piece of jewelry that I DIDN’T buy, was one that was graciously given to each and every attendee. The theme of the conference was to “Just be You” and to be authentic as a blogger. Great advice for bloggers and “normal” people alike! And now, I will leave you with some pretty pictures of tulip beds from the site of the conference, Thanksgiving Point, Utah that I was inspired to take after my photography classes……

Last thought…I want to give a very sincere thank you and shout out to the lovely, talented and oh, so helpful Shelley Smith of House of Smith’s who, not surprisingly, wrote a WAY better SNAP! wrapup than me!