This month Close To My Heart held its Australasian Convention 2016 right here in Adelaide, South Australia. This much anticipated event is a highlight of my year and having it here in my home town city was extra exciting.

We began Thursday with Leadership Day. Full of fabulous business training, creative training, incentive trip training and finishing up with a creative session where we made a fabulous mini album with our new Adventure Fundamentals Papers, stamps and embellishments.

A highlight of Leadership Day is catching up with Leaders from other states. I shared a table with these amazing women Mandy and Shaunna from WA along with Helen and Shirley from Qld. Its fabulous to be with these empowering women and the best part is we all support, share and cheer each other on.

We were all spoilt with gifts of awesome CTMH product and we had the opportunity to create this super cool mini album.

We also received this beautiful Mimco pendant, a gift from the gorgeous Jeanette Lynton.

A super treat going to Convention is catching up in a relaxed atmosphere with our sister consultants. We had a lovely dinner at Jamie Oliver’s restaurant with a beautiful meal, lots of laughter and of course lots of photos. But, we weren’t the only CTMH consultants there that night. There were a couple of groups of CTMH girls from all over Australia so, you can imagine great conversations happening all over this restaurant and down stairs…well, you’ll just have to go and check it out yourself – the down stairs area at Jamie’s restaurant is very interesting. Oh, and you’ll want to take your camera!

Convention began bright and early Friday morning – there was excitement in the air!
With Kristina, Jill, Brian O’Callaghan, Brian Holman and Monica – check out these guys and girls, I guess you can say these are our bosses, who bring the whole exciting CTMH convention event to us. They make us laugh and they make us cry (in a good way) how many of you can say your bosses can do that AND look so fabulous in these groovy outfits? You just got to come and experience this all for yourself!

It was fun sharing Convention with some of the girls in our team Brooke, Tracy, Karen, Sue, myself and Jodie had a ball of a time!

There were fabulous card swaps over the weekend and I made fun gifts for my girls with the colour theme based around Sea Glass our colour of the year.
This is what 500 girls cropping looks like.
We played with some brand new papers to be released in January 2017 and our corporate team spinning some moves for the camera with the colourful theme.

Can you tell I was super excited to find a Sticky Girl stamp.
I now have a matching pair as I found a Sticky Boy in June at the US CTMH Convention.

Friday night I entered a sample of my creative work into the Creativity Showcase.
I shared Christmas ideas featuring the Oh Deer! Collection. Loads of girls stop by to say hello and take photos. This is a fabulous night where Consulants showcase their beautiful work. It was amazing to see all the creative talents in one room!

Saturday was just as exciting as Friday. It was great to have Clare join us for one of the creative session. I loved having girls in our team being able to experience the bigger picture that Close To My Heart has to offer.

It was an honour to be asked to create ‘something special’ for our CTMH convention auction to benefit Operation Smile. Very happy to share it raised $400 on the day!
Thanks to Ruth for your generous bid.

 

We finished Convention off with a fabulous Gala Dinner and Awards night and you can tell by the smiles in this photo we all had a great night.

Close To My Heart has out done itself with this 2016 Convention.
I hope you enjoyed reading all about this fun event. If you’d like to join me at the next convention you are most welcome. Come and spend time with warm, caring girls who love to craft and love to have a good time together. Email me for more info jplorikeet@bigpond.com

Jacquie x