still here

Anaheim Convention Center Welcomes CHAW 2013

Despite my earshattering silence, I've been up to stuff lately. (Aren't I always?) Last month was the annual winter trade show from the Craft & Hobby Association (aka CHA). I was happy to again work with Pink Paislee /Heidi Swapp in their beautiful booth.  We had a team meeting the night before that included an introduction to Heidi's new media team (the sweetest girls, ever!) and a wonderful class from Heidi Swapp herself. There was also dinner and orientation for working the booth --all of it was lovely and much appreciated.

With Rebecca and Heidi

With the Heidi Swapp Media team (except for Kim, sadly)

 Booth duty was great fun as always and I really enjoyed being able to do make-n-takes for one of my shifts. If you know me at all, you know how much I love doing make-and-takes and demos. And teaching too for that matter!

With Elaine at the booth Make-n-Take Counter

On the subject of teaching, I'm hard at work planning some public classes this year. It's been awhile since I taught at a store. Lately, all of my gigs have been at private events such as crops and retreats. So, I'm kind of excited about getting back into the retail stores and meeting more happy, scrappy people. I'll be sure to post more once I've got things in place. While I'm thinking of it, if you are interested in keeping up with my teaching and other crafty shennanigans, be sure to follow me on twitter: twitter.com/MammaJammaBlabb

At my other favorite booth Epiphany Crafts with Cathi & Tina

A few weeks after CHA was over, I was back at the Anaheim Convention Center, this time for the Scrapbook Expo. I worked for two different vendors there. First, I did setup (and teardown) with the lovely people of Paper Wizard. In case you're not familiar with Paper Wizard, they are makers of beautiful, intricate pre-made laser cut titles and accents. The owners are an adorable husband and wife team who were a joy to work with. And they are music lovers, so we had tunes going the whole time we were setting up the booth. It's as good as better than whistling while you work!

With Eric & Bonnie of Paper Wizard after tearing down the booth

During the show, I worked a day and a half with another lovely family, this time the owners of Mon Ami Gabby, purveyors of a beautiful selection of elegant embellishments. It's always dangerous for me to be around a lot of luscious trim and flowers and the like. Like being a kid in a candy shop.

With Chris at Mon Ami Gabby

With Marina and Chris

 I was able to take some classes, too. I did a Melissa Frances bookbinding class taught by the lovely Kim Garner, a "Hot Off the Press" elegant cards class with Sophia of Strictly Scrapbooking and an awesome organization class with Tiffany of The ScrapRack. Plus, I had a half day to walk the floor for awhile with a friend I used to work with, and then for while with one of my besties. I guess you could really say I packed in all that I could in the few days I was there.

With Tiffany of The ScrapRack

With Kim of Melissa Frances

With Sophia of Strictly Scrapbooking

Now, I'm inspired and motivated and working up some ideas for National Craft Month to blog about . So, be sure to check back soon!

fabulous weekend

This weekend was an extra special one. It started early, for one. I left town Thursday afternoon with my roomie Michelle Gutierrez  to check into this hotel in Manhattan Beach.

Springhill Suites

We were there for Teresa Collins' event "Inspired Journey" at the Manhattan Beach Marriott on Friday and Saturday. Due to a series of unfortunate events we weren't able to stay at the actual event venue, but our substitute location was fine with us (and we were only a couple of blocks away from the Marriott).

Michelle relaxes, creates & computes --all at once!

 We had such a great time - the event was terrific! We attended four classes over the course of the two days, each about three hours long and loaded with inspiration and cool techniques.

My group (class track) was the Sea Fairies

Ginger and Teresa Collins, Hosts/Event Co-ordinators

Manhattan Beach Marriott, our lovely event venue

Teresa taught two fabulous & elegant classes

Sande and Paula from 7Gypsies brought us a fast paced, exciting class

Rebecca of Pink Paislee shows off the super cute folder project we did with her

We met a lot of other great crafters, did a lot of networking and had a lot of fun, too. (Check out both Michelle's blog and  Teresa's blog for more about the event.)

Clockwise from top: Me, Martha, Michelle & Teresa

The event ended on Saturday evening and I said goodbye to my roomie. In her place my honey came out to join me. We had planned a mini getaway (an early anniversary celebration of sorts). We kicked around the Manhattan Beach area all day. It was so nice and relaxing. We jammed in as much as we could in one less-than-24-hour day:

Late breakfast at local landmark Dinah's

The workers never stop bustling at Dinah's

Next we hit the beach

The Roundhouse in the background

A pic by the hubster

The Manhattan Beach pier

Who would turn this offer down?

After our beach stroll, we caught an early showing of "The Avengers"

The weekend ended with dinner at 
Paul Martin's American Bistro

thank you

Made with Pink Paislee's Vintage Vogue line

Organizing my CHA pics so I can share them. Thank you for your patience.

the party's over

CHA Winter '12 is a wrap and my head is swimming and brimming with thoughts, ideas, inspirations, things to share, plans to make.

I can't wait to post some of my pics here in the next few days. For now, here is a booth pic with some of the Pink Paislee/Heidi Swapp team. (It just wasn't possible to get all of us together at one time.)

the happiest place on earth

Today, I'm in Anaheim at the happiest place on earth. No, not Disneyland. I'm at the Convention Center for the Craft and Hobby Association's annual winter trade show.

You don't have to be a paper crafter to love this one. It is every craft, ALL crafts - fine art, needle art, kids crafts, and more. The show floor opens on Sunday and for two days I'll be working the Pink Paislee booth. This is my third year working with them and I'm thrilled. The booth is always fabulous, the people are terrific and I always have a fabulous time.

I was able to preview what they have in store for us about two weeks ago and have had to keep my lips sealed all this time. That wasn't easy! You're going to love what's coming and I can't wait to share photos with you!

The Pink Paislee team, CHAW '11

On Tuesday and Wednesday I'll be walking the show floor and taking lots and lots of photos. As usual, I'll be posting my pics at Flickr. You can view photos from last year's show here.

I'll do my best to be a good set of "eyes and ears" for those of you who can't be there!

cha is approaching quickly

At the Pink Paislee booth, CHA Winter 2010

At the end of the month designers/instructors/retailers/manufacturers/sales reps all will descend on the City of Angels (L.A. Convention Center to be specific) for the Craft and Hobby Association's winter trade show. I'm looking forward to being there again and for the second year I'll be working in the Pink Paislee booth for a couple of days.

One of the most exciting things about CHA is the new product releases and the samples. For any of you crafty types who aren't able to be at the show, surfing the web for sneak peeks at the new releases is the next best thing. Nancy Nally of Scrapbook Update has added a nice resource for finding the latest sneaks at her blog. Check it out!

The other thing I will recommend to my fellow crafters is to surf the manufacturer websites over the next couple of weeks. Most manufacturers not only leak sneaky peeks at their soon-to-be-released products, but they also post lots of wonderful projects using the new lines which means lots of great inspiration to get your creative juices flowing! Some of them also post contests with giveaways (I've added a link to one at the end of this post), so be sure to visit the manufacturer blogs (if you're on Facebook keep an eye out for release updates and links to manufacturer blogs - you'll need to "like" the company first in order for the updates to show up in your news feed).

Have fun!

ETA on 1/14/10 - click below to enter to win a new, unreleased Core'dinations assorted pack:
Core'dinations- win a paper pack

CHA continued...

So by now, you're probably getting an idea of what I like and what I love and what intrigues me. But just to make my preferences abundantly clear, today I'm going to do a big, pictureful, random post about lines I love.

Once again, you can click on any of the images to see them larger.

Now, to start with even though they've been around forever and are not on the new, up-and-coming list, I will start by telling you I have always loved Making Memories and K & Company. They've just been a steady, you-can-always-count-on-them-for-goodness, reliable companies. That said, for some reason I didn't get as many pics in their booths as I usually do.

However, here are some pics of the new "Handmade" line by K & Co. Be sure to check out Craft Critique for a thorough review of this line.

 

  

  

  

  

  

 

Again, I'm a bit thin on pics of the paper lines & embellies at Making Memories. I snapped some pics of some new Slice stuff (I've decided I need a Slice too - love the portability).

 

 

Transparencies - I'm loving these

  

A new pink Slice!

  

And a cute baby line

 

And a cute travel line

 

But the newest offering at Making Memories (in case you haven't heard already) -they are now doing jewelry! Oh yum! The make-n-take at their booth was a cute little charm necklace. The product displays for the new line were thrift shop chic all the way. Take a look...

 

 

So, what about some of the other lines I'm loving? Well, I'm glad you asked!

Pink Paislee
I had the pleasure of working the Pink Paislee booth the first day of CHA. I am so in love with all their new lines. The new canvas albums are so fabulous - especially  the natural album. The brilliant designers at PP had the great idea to make the press-ons for the three new lines the exact same size as the cover of the natural canvas album so that users can customize their albums to match the line they are using. Stroke of genius!

 

 

May I take your order?

Here are the press ons (rub-ons) - 

above is 365 degrees line, below is Queen Bee line

 

And did I mention the pleated ribbon? There are four different duos that match the new lines perfectly (the Bayberry Cottage line has two different duos-- the neutral set of cream & black will match all the lines). And it is stitched twill. I *love* twill!

The new artisan tapes are very cool too. I've seen tapes in the scrapbooking market before, but these are a little sturdier, opaque and yet the rolls fit onto a standard tape dispenser. What I really love is all the awesome ideas the creative team had for working with tape. The dimension they created opened my eyes and my world.

  

 

Teresa Collins
Can I say I love, Love, LOVE Teresa Collins! She has the most amazingly gorgeous products - classic and understated at the same time that they are sumptious and rich. Her booth was amazing with this fabulous chandelier that she hand- jewelled. After the show, Teresa donated the chandelier  from her booth (kind of hard to see, but it is below her name in the pic below) to Scrapbook Royalty where it was auctioned off with the benefits going to Haiti. She is quite an amazing lady - and was gracious enough to join the Willow Traders for our CHA dinner. We love you, Teresa!

 

 

At the Willow Traders dinner, l to r: Chelle, Julie, Me & Teresa

Tattered Angels

It seems like I love Tattered Angels more with every passing year, every passing show. This year they debuted some very yummy products: Glimmer Glaze, Glimmer Glam and Chalkboard Glimmer Mist.

 

Heidi Swapp has formulated some of the new colors and let me just inject here that her samples and the new tags with the gold foil and "hidden" text/images are beautiful. I caught one of Heidi's demos. For those of you interested in her techniques with the Glimmer mist, check out this video.

  

  

  

  

KaiserCraft

As usual, Kaiser had plenty of purdiness. I have to admit I have one line that I'm really digging (and hoping to maybe do a class with.... hmmm, we'll see). The samples were fantastic and they have a new wood tree that is so adorable!

 

  

  

  

 

Websters Pages

The booth at Websters was way different than what we've seen the last couple of years. Scaled down with few samples and a very to-the-point all business feel. But guess, what? I'm still a huge fan and loving what they brought.

Then bulk trims are yummy and so are the embellies.

 

  

  

  

  

 

Tim Holtz

Mr. H has some new beautiful dies for Sizzix and his very own Sizzix machine which looks like a vintage suitcase - it is so CUTE! . He also designed some embossing folders that fade away at one end for a very distressed look. (Sorry I don't have a pic of any of these things, but trust me - they are must haves!)

 

  

 

Dear Lizzy by American Crafts
Lastly, I'm in love with the charming new "Dear Lizzy" line from American Crafts. This line smacks of fresh laundry and the those lovely days of spring transitioning into summer.

 

  

  

  

 

Stay tuned for more from my CHA adventure!