CHA Report

CHA was fabulous! We arrived home late, late last night - I believe we may have even been the last flight into Dallas Love Field before the ice storm and extreme cold hit.  I've heard that people still in LA will have to wait until Friday before they can get out!

Here are Tracy, Lolly and I waiting to check into the hotel, the fabulous Marriott at LA Live.  It was a very short walk to the convention center and next to the Staples Center and a pedestrian-friendly entertainment area much like Downtown Disney.

The booths were all elaborately decorated.  Here's a glimpse of Graphic 45:

And a few others I've forgotten the names of:

I was tickled to death to see this in the Ten Seconds Studio booth as a sample.  Cheryl Darrow (the owner of TSS) took my art quilt class earlier in the month and changed her piece by adding her signature metal! Isn't it beautiful?

Here are views of the two new Graphic 45 paper lines, Le Cirque and Curtain Call, and some samples. Beautiful as always.

The Ideology and Ranger booths were among my favorites.  Check out the 9 new colors of Stickles.

And the new Distress Stains - we have those on order for the store, so I can't wait to play with them.

New Liquid Pearls - yummy colors!

Perfect Pearls Mists:

New "Embossing Puffs" - coarser embossing powders which have more texture when embossed. 

And Ideology - all things Tim!

Here were a few celebrity sightings the first day.

darling Claudine Hellmuth giving us a demo

Heidi Swapp

and Tim Holtz (yes, I was that close - he was showing me the new tissue tape dispenser)

I'll be posting lots more as I make my way through the tons of photos I took.  Lots to share! You can also visit The Little Blue House blog for more photos and info as we posted daily from LA.

I'm off to CHA

I'm so excited to be jetting off to CHA in sunny California in the morning! (Not excited about the 6:30 AM flight departure!)  Six of us from The Little Blue House are going to scout out all the new products to place orders for the newest and freshest designs out there.  We will be blogging from there on The Little Blue House blog so check out the blog daily.  I am not taking my laptop this time so will update everyone when I return next week.

This week we have featured organizing large embellishments on the LBH blog (link above) so take a look at our ideas for getting it together in that department.  Or, if you've missed the past two weeks, check out the organizing ideas for ribbons and small embellishments in past posts.

Au revoir!

I'm home!.

I arrived home this morning from CHA - bittersweet, as it's always good to get home, but we had such fun in CA that I didn't want it to end! Yesterday was not only Jaclyn's birthday, but my daughter, Dana, turned 28 as well! And as it turned out, I decided to fly home through Albuquerque to spend the night with her. It's always great to be able to say Happy Birthday in person.


I loved how the vendors went all out to decorate their booths. There were some pretty awesome ones - can you imagine trucking all that stuff in, setting it up in a day or two, and then disassembling it again? But they are sure impressive.

I loved Doodlebug's 50's soda shop fountain look:

This was one side of their booth with "windows" and window boxes filled with such yummy glittery goodies.



Vintaj had a great booth with lots of brass findings - loved this display door! Their demo counter was made of old wood - you can see a bit in the pic to the left.



Graphic 45 is a fairly new paper line. Loved all their gorgeous papers and they had a fabulously decorated booth. Check out this display unit (a small version of old bed springs).



This huge hanging metal flower uses one of their papers - isn't this beautiful?!



Speaking of flowers, they were everywhere. Look at this happy endcap from Petaloo.



When Tracy placed an order at Prima, she qualified for the "scoop as many flowers as you can in this plastic bag in 10 seconds" offer. Here she's holding the bag while Jaclyn furiously scoops.




Tracy was very happy!



This was a cute layout at Basic Grey. The flowers were made with styrofoam balls cut in half and covered with tiny paper flowers. Very cute. I regret not getting a close-up.
I finally got to see Flower Soft up close. This has been getting a buzz on Yahoo groups and I could never quite "get it." It's basically a fluffy fibery product that you sprinkle on a wire (if you want to make flowers) or a shape covered with any clear drying glue. It really does make very realistic flowers as you can see on this card sample. It comes in every color imaginable and they had some interesting samples with hearts etc. Not something that I might use, but a new concept.

Everyone wants to get noticed at CHA. Look at the huge ribbon spools that were stacked on the four corners of the Offray ribbon booth. We heard they were made with paper - very clever and they really did look like ribbon!



It was great to get to see the altered bras for breast cancer at the Melissa Frances booth. They are so much prettier in real life! As you probably know, Melissa is a breast cancer survivor. I actually got to meet her in the booth and talk a bit with her. She talked a little about her cancer journey and how excited she is to have a full head of hair back and anticipating her upcoming wedding. She is a beautiful person, inside and out! I got so caught up in talking with her that I forgot to take a picture! She had beautiful papers, as always, and great new products. Isn't this little shabby chic box just the most adorable thing? It would be so perfect for a baby's special mementos. I so have to have this to keep for a future grandchild!





I can't remember which booth this was at, but look at this suitcase papered in these beautiful bright, happy papers. I would just love to have this to open and look at when I felt down or sad. I think I'll be keeping an eye out for an old suitcase...More cute ideas -- a paper covered lampshade from Graphic 45:

Paper birds in a tree (great Easter decor!) from Jillybean Soup, a brand new paper line.

A cylinder purse with a Just Rite Stamper monogram on the front - hmm, I'm imagining recyling an oatmeal box...?

I'm still on a CHA high. What creative stimulation - so many exciting ideas crammed in my brain right now. Just hope I don't forget anything. Thank heavens for digital cameras and old-fashioned notebooks! I have tons more to share later...

More CHA

Another day, more fun! There were more celebrity sightings today, some great make 'n takes and tons of fun stuff to look at! Here's Tim again - today he was doing an awesome make 'n take.

Look at the cool "Memory Capsule" I made. These are so neat - there's a special dimensional front piece that allows you to add items inside along with your collage. This uses alot of the new Ideology trinkets.


And here's an overview of some of his new trinkets.
Got a pic of the new Alcohol Inks from Ranger that match all the Adirondack ink colors.


Spotted Donna Downey near the 7 Gypsies booth. She introduced a new canvas album and fabric embellishments with Prima.

Heidi Swapp was in attendance. Look for some really cool new stuff from here - and yeah, Create Joy Workshops will be carrying them!

Cute Kristen Robinson was in the Stampington booth working on her delightful journals. Her beautifully romantic book on the front of the new Stampington Love publication was there to drool over irl! I had a great talk with Kristen - I just adore her work and was totally thrilled to meet this sweet and talented artist in person.
Also at Stampington was Ruth Rae working on her wonderful antique Singer Featherweight. I loved seeing it, as I have one almost as old and love it. I loved seeing her darling muslin dresses which she'd stamped and free-motion stitched. She said she would be lightly stuffing them and she also had made adorable garment bags for each dress. Cute, cute, cute.

I had to stop by the Crafty Secrets/Heartwarming Vintage booth to visit my blogging pal, Vicki Chrisman. Their booth was as beautiful as ever and Vicki as warm and friendly as ever. Loved seeing you Vicki!

There were lots of fab make 'n takes and not enough time to do them all. Here's a few I managed to get into. This was such a cute huge chipboard at Daisy Bucket - I'm just wondering how I'll get this on the plane!

An initial from Bo Bunny - love their rubons.


A great book from 7 Gypsies with lots of pockets and doodads.

A cute card with new kraft paper from Jillybean Soup (a new paper company with really cute names for their paper lines and embellishments.




CHA is such a fun and happy place, kind of like Disneyland next door! See all the happy stuff.

Oversize buttons

cute, cute pillows

And for a treat, the chocolate fountain at Rusty Pickle!

Enough excitement for one day! More tomorrow...

http://http//www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YrnhCdvU9c