CHA Summer 2012

I was so excited about CHA, we arrived early for the opening breakfast and enjoyed listening to a presentation from a successful ‘framing’ business owner on good customer service. After breakfast we waited in line with everyone for the show to open and the ladies all raced in when the doors opened, I literally mean ‘ran’, it made us both laugh a lot, I still don’t know what they were running for but I hope they got it :) (I suspect it was Tim they were running to)

 Although this was a small show for CHA standards, it took us 2 hours just to walk all the isles to see what and who was there. It was a little overwhelming at first but we ran into our old friend Trisha in the first 5 mins so felt more at home.

Most of the big names in the business were there, Prima, Graphic 45, Glitz Designs, Teresa Collins, WRMK, Kaiser, Sizzix, Ranger & Tim Holtz of course. One notable company not there was EK Success which was interesting, maybe their decision not to export direct is starting to make an impact?

The booths were very impressive, my favourite was Prima, they had by far the most examples of finished projects, so many gorgeous layouts to inspire. I was so proud to see Janine’s layouts being displayed so prominently for many of the collections. A highlight for me was meeting Anna Dabrowska (aka Finnabar) who is coming to teach @ Paper Flourish in March next year. Her work is incredible, there were two large canvas pieces she had done for CHA on display in the Prima booth and they blew my mind! Anna is such a lovely person, you are all going to LOVE her classes, I personally can’t wait to be taught all her amazing techniques. I was also great to meet Sharon Laakkonen, another brilliant teacher and scrapbooker.

  

Tim’s booth was full of beautiful vintage Christmas treasures including an incredible old snow sled he found on ebay. There was always a large group of women watching Tim’s demos, we didn’t get a chance to video him demoing :( but Peter did manage to get another photo with Donkey LOL.

My favourite product released at the show would have to be Tim Holtz new Snowflake Rosettes, I know we have a summer Christmas in Australia, but I love to use snowflakes on my Christmas cards :). I also ordered the entire range of Art C mixed media embellishments from Little Yellow Bicycle, they are tiny jars of glitter beads, string etc that look too cute. Mandii has taught me well and I can see them displayed in an beautiful glass bowl in my studio.

Heidi Swap’s Colour Mists were a great new product release. No more clogging misters with this product, much like the new Perfect Pearls mists we have in store but  these guys have a shaker ball to get all that glimmer off the bottom :). I still love the PP Mists as these work brilliantly over black or dark surfaces, whereas Heidi’s mists work fantastic over white or lighter surfaces.

I also loved the Magnolia booth, seeing all the cards and projects that feature in the magazines in real life was a big highlight for me. It made my colouring look very amateur, it was incredible, we took lots of photos and they are available up on the Paper Flourish Pintrest Page if you would like to see them.

Magnolia did a special CHA show ‘Little Christmas Release’ which we ordered and will be shipping any day now, so make sure you pre order yours.

Over all, it was fantastic to be able to see all the new paper lines in person before ordering them, however I think I may have bought a little too much (I think we need a bigger shop LOL) but I did try to purchase lines that will ship over a 3 month period instead of all landing at once, much better for the budget :)

CHA was a fabulous experience and we hope to be able to come back to California for Jan 13 to the ‘BIG’ show :)

We hope you enjoyed our photograph journey over on FB and if you are not on FB, you can view all the images over on Pintrest!

http://pinterest.com/paperflourish/cha-summer-2012/

Chicago

Where to start? A lot has happened in the last 6 days!

Well the flight was long, all up we flew for 22 hours, we only had 3 hours sleep the night before we left so we weren’t in great shape to handle so much flying.

On a positive note, for the 15 hour flight from Brisbane to LA we had a spare seat next to us so I curled up and went to sleep on Peter’s lap. Jet lag was really bad on this trip and by the third day, which was also day 1 of CHA, we were both a mess, struggling to stay awake in our classes and you will notice there are not many photos from Day 1 as we both looked like death warmed up! Day 4, second day of CHA, I think we had finally acclimatised to the massive time difference, and had an awesome time.

We spent our first 2 nights in Chicago City staying on Michigan Ave (the Golden Mile) which was a lot of fun shopping (we did not see Ophra, lol, apparently this is where she shops). We did lots of window shopping. If we liked the look of a shop, we would walk in and look at the price tags on the nearest rack, if it started with a $200+, we would walk back out :). We did find lots of bargains in Zara’s, Macys and the Apple Store.

The most amazing store we went into was the American Girl Doll shop, OMGoodness! This was most fascinating for both Peter and myself. These dolls had personality plus and everything to go with it. I will try and describe the shop for you, it was 2 stories full of American Girl accessories. Each doll can have matching clothes to its owner down to the finest details, they can have glasses, freckles, short hair, long hair, they have every piece of clothing available as a real person would.  On the second floor there was a hair salon, you can take your doll to have her hair done! Mums were lining up with their daughters waiting for a hairdresser to become available to do the dolls hair.

Next we went to the hospital, this is where ‘sick’ or damaged dolls go to get repaired, let’s say the dog chewed an arm or the doll’s mummy cut her hair too short, it can be replaced here at the hospital. Further along there was a pet store, because of course, your doll needs her own pet with its own accessories. The height of this experience was the restaurant, where you take you doll out for high tea. Little tables for little girls, with little high chairs that attach to the table for their dolls.

This store was every little girl’s dream and every child we saw in there was super excited, and it was a pleasure to watch.

We were blown away by the size of Lake Michigan, the great lakes are truly “GREAT!” Incredible, you can’t see the other side and it looks just like the sea when calm, apparently even having its own rip tides!

We walked down to  the Navy Pier which is one of the biggest tourist attractions of Chicago. It is a wharf on the edge of the lake with small cruise ships that cater for lunch and dinner while taking passengers out on the lake. Jet boats and site seeing ships were also in and out of dock. Among the restaurants and a museum, there are lots of pretty lights and side shows, the feature being a huge ferris wheel which we went on just before sunset. From the ferris wheel we had a good view of the city buildings, including the second tallest building in Chicago, being the John Hancock Building in which we had dinner on the 95^th floor.

Next Blog Post CHA :)