Pretty clever title for my post huh? lol… I was looking at my last post which was about a million years ago, and I was sitting here thinking why am I struggling with yet another title for my blog post? So there we have it, simple and easy and now I shall get on with my super long (so now you have been warned), blog post filled with lots of pictures from CHA!

When I got back from the show, I decided to take a few more days and just spend it with the kids, unpack, clean, organize, gather my thoughts, etc.. before I jumped back into my daily routine and all. Sometimes it’s kind of nice to go a while w/o thinking about the outside world or well really anything other than what is going on in your very own home.

I have a lot of pictures so I think I am just going to post them in order…or at least the order that I remember them happening in. Ha hahahahaha! Halfway through this post I realized I had way too many pictures to post and there was absolutely no way I could keep them in order so let’s just throw that idea out the window shall we. This first one is of Rebecca and I at the airport waiting to board our plane early Friday morning. We were both pretty tired, but anxious to get to California and excited about our trip!

I love this picture! Angie snapped it while we were in the Super Shuttle on our way to the hotel after meeting up at the John Wayne airport.

View right outside our hotel and in front of the convention center!

After we checked into our room, Angie and I headed over to the convention center to grab our badges and walk around.

I accidentally snapped this photo with my iPhone, but I’m so glad I did because I absolutely love it and it makes me laugh every time I look at it!!

I guess I stopped taking pictures for a while, because the next set start on Saturday right before we walked in for the first day of the show. I have been to several other CHA shows in the past, but I normally worked in the booths for a manufacturer. I have only gone with my mother to one other show and that was to Chicago for a summer show several years ago…so it was really nice to go with her again and know that we could actually spend time together checking things out!

Rebecca and Angie had never been to CHA, so both of them were pretty darn excited.

Now I didn’t take a ton of shots of new products, I mainly just shot things that I found inspiring. I figured there would be tons of blogs showing off the new supplies – not to mention the company blogs and of course their pictures will look way better than anything I’m going to shoot with my iPhone. This was taken in the American Crafts booth in the Amy Tangerine section and I loved how she decorated the wooden hangers with washi and then used them to hang up her layouts!

Amy Tan was super nice and we chatted with her for just a bit. She gave us some terrific canvas bags that had, “yes, please” embroidered on them, and she also showed us one of her new products which I  took a bad pic of below.

These were really neat and they allow you to quickly punch holes in a tag and/or embellishment so you can add embroidery thread to it and then have one of those fabulous looking tags that you see on her layouts all the time! I always admire them, but always think…there is no way I am going to take the time to do that!  Well now it will be relatively easy and there are so many cute shapes in the template package. I also thought these would be great for my classes so I am anxious to get them in!

The Glitz booth was one of the first ones we stopped at and they had some yummy new products for sure! I loved several of the papers in their “Love You Madly” &  “Uncharted” collections, and all of the papers in their new “Color Me Happy” collection! And their washi tape…well I really just wanted to throw it in my bag and run like the wind…however I don’t run and I’m a bad liar so I figured that was probably a bad idea.

And these new giant roller doodle stamps were pretty awesome too. We all wanted these!

I spotted this layout in the Studio Calico booth and I loved it! I didn’t take a lot of pictures in the SC booth, but don’t think I wasn’t drooling over their products. I can’t wait to get my hands on their new templates, wood veneer, and they had several new great patterned papers as well. I happen to know a great friend who ordered a bunch of their new stuff for her amazing store and as soon as it comes in I’ll be sure to let you know!

One of the booths I was most looking forward to seeing at the show belonged to Allison Kreft, and she did not let me down. Her new collections, Sweet Notes and Composition & Color, were outstanding and her booth was like pure eye candy!

Look at this washi tape…tell me you don’t love it?? Do you see that ruler ribbon?? OMG!

Yep, I’ve already thought of 7 different ways to use this one sheet of paper!

Rebecca could tell me for sure, but I think it was every hour that Fiskars was giving away one of their new products called a Fuse. If you took pictures in their booth and then showed them they would give you a ticket for a chance to win it. There were other ways to earn tickets and Rebecca earned tons of them and tried for it several times. I only tried twice. Neither one of us won one of course, but we did end up with a cute picture!

Had to take a picture of this sweet canvas in the Tattered Angels booth. I’m sorry, I’m not sure who the designer is, but it was really pretty and it sure inspired me.

I also found these in the same booth – new 12×12 heavy duty cardstock mistable papers in a variety of super cool textures.  These are going to be great for building custom backgrounds.

Sorry the picture quality is not so hot on this, but I wanted to share the cool technique that, Julie Comstock, who also just happens to be the very artist who started the company with her husband and also designs the products, used on this layout! She added Glubers to her page, and then sprinkled glitter over them to create faux bubbles for her page. I absolutely love this idea!! I also loved some of the new papers and embellishments in their new “Summer Love” line.

I’m going to wrap up this post for tonight because I’ve been working on it off and on all day and there are just way too many pictures to try and add to this one post. The picture above is of the fountain outside the convention center. I loved the way it lit up with all the different colors. Seems simple, but it made me happy.

Saturday night, Angie and I took a class with Donna Downey and it was great. I have never taken a class with Donna, but I liked her teaching style and the project was really fun. The sponsors were very generous and Angie and I both got to play and experiment with new products and techniques.

Unfortunately this picture is a bit blurry…that’s what I get for not taking it myself…I don’t mean that to sound bad really I don’t, I have just gotten pretty good at taken pics myself by holding my arm out (which is really long..lol), but a lot of times people just assume that you would like for them to take the picture for you and you don’t want to be rude and in this case it was Donna’s husband I think and of course I for sure didn’t want to say no to him!

This concludes part 1 of my CHA post. Stay tuned.

Creatively Yours,
April