Also, I realized that I may not have fully explained CHA yesterday. Basically, twice a year the Craft and Hobby Association hosts a major industry show. Its purpose is to educate retailers, link manufacturers, create opportunities for designers, and sell, sell, sell.
The basics of buying:
- You can only buy product if you have a wholesale number.
- Most companies have a minimum dollar amount of product that you must buy.
- Most products are sold in packs of 3 or 25 or some other number that makes sense to the manufacturers.
- Ordering is a long drawn out process involving a sale rep and lots of chit chat.
- Many booths have gone high tech with fancy electronic scanners and other devices meant to make ordering easier. In my experience, it's often an ornery process. Half the time the scanners don't work.
- Many companies offer education in either class form (you can pay a nominal fee - about $25 - and take a one or two hour class) or make and take form (you can learn about a new product in a quick 5 to 15 minute format at the booth).
- Booths are decorated with product, samples using the product, and a multitude of "fun" things to give the booth a personality. I never believed that samples sold product until I helped my friend Kim buy product. It's amazing how it can change your perspective!
So without any further ado:
ZVA Creative is a Prima competitor (in my humble opinion).
Lots of flowers and bling swirls in their booth. I didn't get a lot of pictures as they had a small booth and it was mobbed. (I did however accidentally smash linebacker style into some poor woman at their booth. I apologized profusely, but she seemed pretty ticked off nonetheless.)
Next up was Basic Grey which is always lovely and distressed and delicious. However I became overly excited by their new "Basics" line which comes in white, kraft, and off-white.
(Border strips, by the way, were a huge trend all over the show!)
Basic Grey also released lots of new (to them) types of embellishments and had lovely project samples of course!
They had a bunch of project kits too (page kit on the left and card kit on the right):
And here's the make and take:
Pink Paislee was the next booth. And it looked very different from previous years. I liked the changes - smaller and more friendly somehow. Though it was super crowded, which made it hard to navigate. Here's a peek at the shabby chic booth:
It was just a hop, skip, and a jump over to Jenni Bowlin, who always has a wonderful booth. I'm partial to the butterflies and the buttons myself, but take a look and see what you like:
After Jenni, it was time for lunch. Nat had arranged for us to have lunch with Dina Wakley and Kerry Lynn Yeary.
We had fun and ate some huge burritos! One of my favorite parts of CHA is meeting people who I only know from "online."
After lunch I headed for the Ellison booth. I really wanted to see the new Tim Holtz die cutting machine...
...and dies:
And I noticed that they were following the felt trend with some of their sample projects:
(I'm loving the coffee cozy!) Running around the show floor I ran into scrapping superstar Vee Jennings:
She was absolutely lovely.
Saw a very cool newspaper dress at i love to create:
And now a thousand and one photos from the Prima booth (I can't wait to get my hands on the canvas bags and aprons and stuff):
From Prima it was an easy trek to the Hambly booth.
They were doing a fun bracelet make and take, which you can sort of see in this photo on Lucy's wrist:
It was done at this Hambly splashed table:
I love those big doilies. I think they must be enormous rub-ons! How cool!
I took a quick wander through the Fancy Pants booth:
Webster's Pages had some great trim and really cool buttons:
Honestly, that flowery trim is *to die for* awesome!
I only snapped a few photos at Cosmo Cricket:
And then I was off for a bit of a wander. Here is a photo of a woman entering the Anna Griffin booth:
The hat she's wearing is so that she has a chance to win that new Cricut that die cuts pieces for cake decorating. The apron is so that she has a chance to win a Slice. The Anna Griffin booth was different from most of the other booths that I saw in that it really was like a little room, almost totally enclosed. Here's a shot from the inside:
I walked past Bella Blvd and saw their new huge frames for 12x12 layouts:
Jillibean Soup was next door to Bella:
I hit up the Crate Paper booth...
...and then stumbled upon the new Tim Holtz stamps:
And the best samples:
The Ranger booth always has the best projects.
And now for my exciting news!
Ranger asked me to participate in their Designer Challenge! Yay! Here's a close up of mine:
Oddly enough, I wasn't the only one to use the phrase "make art."
There were also two popcorn projects:
And I just had to point out this wickedly cool chrysalis-like bubble:
Making Memories' booth was all about the vintage!
Advantus is the parent company of both Tim Holtz's Idea-ology line and the brand new "Girl's Loft" by Margie Romney-Astley. First up, the Idea-ology booth:
This coat is made entirely of grungepaper! Wow!
And there was a ridiculously long long line for the make and take:
Girl's Loft was very soft and pretty:
And it's late, late, late here in California, so I'm going to have to stop here! To be continued...
Thanks for stopping by!
