Throw Back Thursday: Swapping Pins!

If you have been stamping as long as I have (and I know a lot of you have!) you might remember that many years ago stampers were swapping pins at conventions all around the country.  I think I only made pins to swap once at one of those big commercial conventions.  But pin swapping at a Close To My Heart convention wasn't to be passed up as far as I was concerned.  

You still see pins of all sorts attached to consultants sweaters or lanyards, but only a few and usually only provided for a special reason.  In the past, though, many of us brought multitudes of pins to swap and proudly wore as many as we could fit on our clothing.  Here are a few of my favorites that have survived my moves and purging over the years.

First is my "AOL Pin."  

Back in the earlier days of the internet Social Media was limited pretty much to chat rooms owned by your service provider.  A bunch of *DOTS consultants had a chat room in AOL. Which is entirely the sole reason I insisted we get AOL when we got our first dial up internet connection.  There were many limitations to using the internet in those days.  One limitation being that a screen name could only be nine or ten letters long.  And it had to be unique to the person using it.  I came up with CUStampin which became how I was known in the DOTS chat room. Very few people used their actual name.  

It was decided by a group of ladies that we would all make the exact same pin personalized with our screen names in order to help us find each other at our Close To My Heart convention.  It was a lot of fun and a great ice breaker.  This tradition carried on, with new designs for several years.  This pin is about 4" tall.

Next, my button pin: 

I borrowed my in-laws button maker for this pin.  Rather than write the words multiple times, I photocopied them and then stamped the image inside.  Legally, the CTMH images can only be reproduced by hand stamping each one, but I wasn't willing to risk severe cramps or carpal tunnel syndrome by writing the words over and over and over.  The thin paper I used to stamp on was the primary reason for making this a button. It's just under 2-1/2".

I believe if you've stamped and glittered very long at all you most likely have been asked, "Do you know you have glitter on your face?"

Next is my CTMH Kin pin: 

This is an example of the kind of pin you might still see on a consultant at convention today.  It's very personal and wouldn't be used for swapping.  This pin was all done with shrink plastic and is about 3" long.  Two of my CTMH friends and I had started growing our teams.  The three of us were not "related" by uplines but decided to support each other in our business efforts and decided to call ourselves "kin."  Each little doll represents one of us or our downline and is colored accordingly to who it is. I made one for each of the eight of us who was at convention. It's still one of my favorite pins and brings back memories of our ice cream socials.  Yum! Everything on this pin but the "name tag" on each doll was stamped with CTMH - including the old logo. 

Last pin for today - one of my all time favorites:

This pin is actually three dimensional so that it appears you really could break the glass.  The words were done on clear label paper and all else hand stamped with DOTS stamps.  It doesn't show in the photo, but there is glitter behind the stamp. The pin is about 2" square. I think this was the year that they announced at convention that we would no longer be known as DOTS, but as Close To My Heart.  I didn't know whether to be sad that my pin was obsolete or to be happy that it would now be so rare. Unfortunately the red and pink of the frame have faded almost completely away.

Most pins were laminated for durability as were my CUStampin pin and this one.  

I hope you've enjoyed this little trip in time.  See you again soon, or as I used to say, C U Stampin!


*DOTS was the birth mother of  CTMH.

Throw Back Thursday: Remember D.O.T.S.?

Let's jump into the Way Back Machine and see who remembers these:

L-R: First Ever CTMH catalog, D.O.T.S 1997-1998 Catalog Collection, 

D.O.T.S. 1998-99 Catalog Collection, Vintage (1994?) D.O.T.S. Catalog 

In August 1995 I became a D.O.T.S. demonstrator.  D.O.T.S. stood for Dozens Of Terrific Stamps and it's the company that eventually gave birth to Close To My Heart.  

Our first CTMH catalog. This little sweetheart was just 48 pages of new products and inspiration. I think it was introduced in 1996 at the first convention I attended. Close To My Heart was a separate company at it's inception.  D.O.T.S demonstrators automatically became CTMH consultants.  It was recommended we do parties for one or the other, not necessarily both at one time. While I didn't embrace scrapbooking right away, I did fall in love with the many new products and saw immediate use for my stamping addiction business.  The CTMH catalog had so much new fun stuff - stencils for which I won't even go into the myriad of possibilities they gave me, and so many new alphabet stamp sets I couldn't believe I hadn't died and gone to heaven! 

The D.O.T.S. 1997-98 "Catalog Collection" was one of the original "Big Bertha" catalogs - 192 pages of rubber stamping goodness!  It featured our Calendar Cuties and lots of country styled stamps.  And to assist our consultants with our heavy loads carried to and from gatherings, the CTMH catalog became a section within big Bertha.   It made the Close To My Heart and D.O.T.S. parties so much easier to combine and feature all our great products. 

The 1998-99 D.O.T.S. "Catalog Collection" was another amazing Big Bertha with just 256 pages.  This gem was heavy!  Heavy to mail, heavy to tote to parties and had a hefty price of $7.95.  It was worth it's weight in gold so no problem, but I do recall the days I really had to consider if I wanted more stamps or more catalogs.  This darlin' had more color photos of completed projects and more papers and accessories.  These are some stamps I look back at with great fondness and would use to this day if I'd had room to keep them all.  Love the Easter Bunny and the Chickadee.  

This vintage D.O.T.S. catalog is a tiny little 76 page beauty.  Since the label on the back is neither mine nor my original upline's, I assume it's 1994 or prior. All the stamps with the exception of alphabet sets were sold singly. Two favorites, company wide, were This Much Bear and Frank.  They were $9.25 and $8.25 respectively.  Wow!  Wood is expensive!!  Color in this catalog was very limited but where it was, it was gorgeous!  Even now I want to drool all over that page of glitter, chalks, pens and all the other stuff there.  It's my candy store!! 

I hope you've enjoyed this trip back in time.  It's been fun reminiscing.