Autumn Knockout Tags at The Collins Rep Show

I had a great time at The Collins Group Rep show.  The Collins Group is a manufacturer sales representative group to the retail trade.   Sizzix asked me to come and demo new dies by Tim Holtz and do a M&T with the store owners.  I love the new Texture Fades with Bigz die sets he has out.  I got to play with the Layered Leaf and the new Thinlits Alphanumeric dies. Read through the article for a nice surprise.

The Sizzix booth was beautiful as always and these girls are so organized and know what they are doing.

Setting up, getting ready to go.  People are outside waiting!  Yay, I scored a Sizzix shirt too.

And look who stopped by to do my M&T!  Mario III and his lovely wife Sara.  As well as many store owners.  I even found more Florida stores.  woot woot! Made some good contacts for my upcoming teaching trips, so who knows where all I may go 2015.  Stay tuned.

My sweet friend, Anita Houston, attended the event as well.  It was good to see her and laugh with her.

The next day, I spent working with Jaime in The Crafter’s Workshop booth.  Look at all the new stencils!  As Design Team Coordinator for The Crafter’s Workshop and a traveling educator, it was really a good chance to learn how orders are put together and how stores choose the stencils they are ordering.

Loved spending time with Jaime and Lynne Forsythe.  They are just so sweet.  I feel like I’ve known Lynne for years because we’ve been online friends for so long, but this was our first time meeting in person.
Saturday night, Jaime and I decided we wanted seafood and found a great Oyster Bar, Lee and Ricks. It has a great history about starting out as an 8-stool oyster bar and now expanded to hold 50.  The entire bar is basically a painted concrete trough with a bar top.  Fantastic for eating oysters and the oysters were some of the best I’ve ever had.  I’m not even going to embarrass myself or Jaime and tell you how many oysters we ate.  LOL

All of this is part of Living the Art Life™ and why I love my job.  I get to work with amazing people, great manufacturers, and fabulous products.  I get to do what I love and share this passion with others at the same time.  So, as a Thank You for reading my blog posts and supporting and encouraging me, you can click on this image below to download a pdf with step by step instructions how to create your own Autumn Knockout tags.