Final-Days-Before-School-Starts Activity & The SU! News

Well my summer is winding down now. My son starts 4 year preschool (only 3 mornings a week) next week. That means more of a routine and the fact that I probably have to start getting up a little bit earlier so I can get a shower in before the kids get up...ugh! My late night stamping habit that I have gotten into is not going to make that very easy! So we will see how that goes!

This week, we have stayed very busy trying to get the last bit of true summer activities in before school starts, but 2 weeks ago we were struggling with what to do. I found this idea to make marshmallow structures on a great blog called "The Idea Room". Amy (the blog owner) has lots of great projects and tidbits on her blog, so I highly recommend checking it out. Anyway, just a bag of mini marshmallows (mine were stale so I was going to be throwing them out anyway) and toothpicks and we had a fun activity for about an hour! Eli really got into making his "house" and seemed to really be enjoying himself! So of course I took some pictures to share with all of you! I think I might have even enjoyed it more than him...my engineering roots showed through, in particular my focus on structure design!

Now onto the final portion of my post. I know most (if not all) of crafty blog readers or SCS fans have seen the announcement from Stampin' Up! regarding its demonstrators...or at least have seen the rumors. I will admit that when I first started looking into it, I had a bad first reaction and I wasn't sure I would continue on...sort of out of principle. Well for those that may have no idea what I am referring to, in short, Stampin' Up! is asking all of its demonstrators to re-sign their Independent Demonstrator Agreement with the new changes. The new changes basically say that SU! demonstrators may no longer promote, market, or sell competitive manufacturers products on any form of electronic media (blog, email, Facebook, Twitter, etc.). This means no other stamp companies' Design Teams if you want to remain a demonstrator. Ok, if they would have just said that, then I would have said no problem right away...I am not on any Design Teams (although I tried a few times). Well SU! decided to go further and say that demonstrators cannot link to competitor's websites where people can buy their products. This is where it gets a little sticky for me. I am not the "Career" demonstrator type...I am the lowly "Hobby" demonstrator. This change makes sense and is welcomed by those Career demonstrators because talking about something other than SU! could hurt their business. But as a Hobby demonstrator, I am very aware of the "competitor's products" and like them, so I purchase them on occasion and try to win them or whatever. Then I use those products on cards and scrapbook pages and show them here...mind you these are all personal cards and such...not like I am going to show these at a workshop or class or anything that is related to my Stampin' Up! "business". When I show you a project, I like to be complete with the supplies I used and the manufacturers...this is the gray area of the new agreement. I am taking it though that if I don't directly link you to that manufacturer where you can buy the product when I create the project, then I am in the clear...I will still continue to give a complete supplies list. I still have slight issue with SU! regulating what I can link to on my own personal blog, Facebook, etc...especially since I don't really use my blog to advertise my SU! business (I do on occasion, but it is not my main focus), but I understand the intent. Well this was suppose to be the short story...think it was a little longer once I started typing...but, in short, I will remain a demonstrator right now unless other opportunities begin to arise for me elsewhere in the crafting industry (ahh, I can dream!) that goes against the new agreement. If you want to read more about all of this (and not all of the rumors and negative feedback!) check out Jan Tink's blog where she recently posted about it after Stampin' Up! clarified a lot of the changes that caused the most amount of uproar (and they actually changed the wording so it isn't quite as strict as was first introduced...the big one for me was that I could potentially design for a store or display, but I cannot promote it...I was thinking about looking into this for local scrapbook stores...not that I have, but ykwim!). Thanks Jan for helping to sort it all out!

Sorry no crafty post today...I will show something next time. Thanks for checking out my kind of engineering!