My feet hurt.
A lot.
My friend Nat Kalbach is lying on my bed here at the Marriott and she just muttered, "I don't have feet."
Yep. Our feet hurt.
But we're happy!
Day One at the Craft and Hobby Association Show and what a day!
Some things that are different from my last two trips:
- I'm staying in the hotel that is attached to the convention center. This makes a HUGE difference! It's worth every single penny. No bus to take. No need to schlep everything all day long. I am so happy that I reserved early!
- I'm not buying. My two previous visits to CHA were with my friend Kim who owns the scrapbooking store Portrait Bug. This year, I'm here representing Scrapbook Memories TV and Sakura of America. It's a whole different ball game when you're not buying. This show is all about buying and selling and even though I was procuring product for Scrapbook Memories TV's "Product Pick" segment, I still felt a little useless, you know? We'll see what happens tomorrow when I do my very first day of make and takes!
- The other thing about not buying is that you miss out on all the sales pitches. I actually *love* hearing them. You get to find out what things are made of and why they're manufactured the way that they are. It's always interesting to get the details. It changes the way you feel about the product and makes you an educated consumer. I miss it. Now I'm guessing, eavesdropping, and it's not as fun.
- I have a new roommate. The last two shows I've roomed with the aforementioned Kim. This show I'm rooming with Lucy Edson. Lucy and I met about six months ago at CHA-Summer 2009. It has been lovely to discover how much we like each other!
Now, onto the photos!
There are a lot more sewing, knitting, general craft vendors. We were wowed by the Lion Brand yarn booth. Check out their knit flora and fauna:
Wow! Amazing, right? We wandered past some other good ideas:
This was the softest, most lovely knit blanket. It feels like a mixture of chenille and polar tech. So delicious to touch.
I liked these decorate-able bangles. They're sold in little kits. Jewelry was actually a big theme for the day. Many, many booths (including scrapbooking booths) were either offering jewelry parts or had displayed jewelry items made with their product.
There was lots of lovely knit wear:
(These mannequins were super duper tall and all seemed to have a serious eating disorder.)
Isn't that quilt beautiful? I thought the use of organza (to make the transparent leaves) was absolutely fantastic!
As always, "make and takes" were very popular. I snapped this photo about fifteen minutes after the doors opened.
I was in an enormous rush to cover the entire show floor (about 3 football fields) and didn't stop to wait for any of them.
I discovered a new to me company called Bagmati.
I loved their felt!
Felt ended up being a huge theme for the day. Many many companies had felt embellishments to offer.
Next up, we wandered to the Kaisercraft booth. They had many lovely alterable items (as usual)...
...and some HUGE rhinestones that I think are very fun!
I know it's hard to tell in the picture. But the large rhinestones on the bottom are about as bit as my fingertip. Check out the high heels they decorated with those stones:
I also liked the doodly stamp alphabet in the photo below:
Spellbinders makes the very famous nested dies.
And even though I don't use a lot of die cuts I am so fascinated by what the machines can do. (I suspect a lot of people are like me and that's why we keep buying all these different die cutting systems!) I saw a demo...
...and poked around the booth a bit...
...before something very pink caught my eye. I am not a pink girl. Not at all. But these storage containers from Neatnix made me grin from ear to ear:
All of them collapse completely flat in case you want to store them. They're fabric. The carrying case on the top is long enough to fit a full size trimmer. And the paper holder is so fat. It's at least twice the size of a normal paper holder, which if fantastic! And, if you're not a pink girl, they do come in other colors (and patterns).
EK Success (Martha Stewart Crafts, K&Co., Jolee's, etc.) always has a palatial booth and they did not disappoint.
Catherine Matthew-Scanlon was doing a make and take. Here's a quick pic of her (on the right) with Nat:
I thought that these were unusually unpolished pieces for EK to display in their booth...
...until I got closer and realized that they were all made from strips of paper that had been punched with their border punches! A very fun idea!
I noticed that the Jolee's Boutique items had changed quite a bit in feeling. Here you can see they are very vintage-y. I cannot emphasize how much vintage styled stuff there was at this show.
Also, I had the chance to catch one of my favorite people, Carla Sylvester, teaching:
My first overly excited moment of the day came at the Vintaj booth.
I had never heard of this company before and I loved everything from the booth to the product to the people working there.
This booth incorporated so many of the hot trends spotted at CHA: vintage, jewelry, mixed media canvases.
At the Product Performers booth I got to meet Donna Salazar, who is funny and sweet and full of energy.
She has a new line out that includes these cool acid-free newspapers (she's modeling it in the photo above) that have fun tongue-in-cheek articles and ads...
...and are used to make these flowers:
I love to incorporate newsprint into my artwork and this is a great way to do it without worrying about it falling apart sometime soon!
Next up was the GCD booth where Chip Art by Melody Ross was the star.
The concept is that you hammer chipboard with metal stamps to give it texture. Here's a look at the make and take:
and the product in its case:
And some more examples (and more general booth photos):
You may have noticed the wire dress forms. There were *a lot* of dress forms throughout the show. They're the hot new way to display product. And probably evidence of how much sewing has influenced all the scrapbooking supplies. Besides felt, there was a lot more trim than I've ever seen before.
One of my most surprised moments came at the S.E.I. booth. They had a spray fabric ink called Tumble Dry.
I'm curious to try it out and see how it compares to Adirondack Color Wash, which is also a fabric dye.
The 7gypsies booth was lovely as always. However, I was most impressed by the loooooooooong line for the make and take:
Here are about a million-and-one photos of the booth:
Whew. (And I didn't even edit and upload all the photos I took in that booth - amazing, right?)
Next up was Couture Cardstock. It's a new to me company.
I didn't manage to get a photo of my favorite thing from their line, because it wasn't out. They have two weights of watercolor paper in 12x12! So perfect. I love to use watercolor paper at the basis of my layouts, but you always have to cut it down and kind of "waste" the rest of the paper. So I'm excited to get a pack of their perfectly sized 12x12 watercolor paper!
The Studio Calico booth was next. The booth itself was charming:
But the best part was meeting April and her lovely husband. Here's a picture of April talking to Nat:
Both April and her husband couldn't have been nicer or more welcoming. It was easy to see why Studio Calico is so very very successful!
And now I'm going to gush about a woman who I am a huge fan/stalker of: Susan Lenart Kazmer.
Her company, Objects and Elements, was exhibiting at CHA for the first time. I love her book. I've taken her classes. I was so glad to see her at the show! Here's a peek at her (in the center):
And here are some of the beautiful pieces of jewelry she makes and creates kits for:
Here's what a kit looks like:
Her resin is amazing.
Besides the usual jewelry applications, you can use it to create beautiful resin pages! I love that!
She really is amazing. I'm hoping that the scrap world embraces her stuff!
We peeked in at Nicky Silvis, Scrapbooker:
And then wandered towards one of my favorite companies Tsukineko, makers of Staz On.
Staz On is always with me. In fact, I brought a black Staz On ink pad with me to Anaheim! I love it! They had all their colors out (this photo is just a small sample):
And they showed off the new metallic colors:
(By the way, that tag is apparently a black plastic tag. Where do I get those? So cool!)
We reached the silly part of the day at the Doodlebug booth:
I've always loved their letters:
And they had some lovely display/storage pieces for sale...
...as well as (similar to Kaisercraft) oversized rhinestones:
A really unique product from the day was this punch from the Alvin booth:
You can punch anywhere on your paper and in a complete circle! The top punch part comes off of the base. It's completely magnetic. How cool is that?!
I whizzed through My Little Yellow Bicycle after that.
Next up was Melissa Frances. MF is well known for vintage shabby chic designs. However, so much of the show was vintage shabby chic that it seemed to blend in this time rather than stand out. The booth was beautiful, though.
And I'm afraid that we'll have to stop there. It's after midnight here in Anaheim and I've got an early morning. I'll be back tomorrow with more photos and definitely more commentary!
Thanks for stopping by!
PS: If you've got questions, feel free to leave them in the comments!
