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/