CHA08 Chicago

My first time at a Craft & Hobby Show: CHA08 Chicago Vendors set up and camp out for three days to show off their new products. Some gave make & takes and some did not, but demos and ideas gallore graced this Donald E. Convention Center.

Lisa Fritz, my co-design team buddy, and I wanted to get a head start and maybe get some eduction in as well, so we started off on Thursday to Chicago. We got there and found a class called Innovative Meets Recycled which is put on by a new "family-owned" company out in Nevada called Piggy Tales. They were all so nice and had great new products! The name of their company is based on bringing back "nostalgia" and all their products are named after Fairy Tales! Our favorite things were the draw-bridge chipboard book, springs and barndoors which open up to envail a photo or journaling! Great Coordinating papers that are all double sided for larger print scrapbooking and smaller prints for card-makers!!!

More of my favorites were Basicgrey, and now for you quilter/sewers they are manufacturing fabric featuring their Urban Coulture paper line!!! They had two new paper lines featured. They had a beautiful quilt hanging up in their area and I did a fun make & take!

But the highlight of my trip was that my two favorite designers were there! Tim Holtz and Ali Edwards made a special appearance at the request of Tim. I was able to watch both of them show their fun sides and give tips and tricks on how they create their masterpieces!

Here is a photo of Tim creating with tags using his inks and paints! He has new clear stamps and MASKS available that he did demos on and they are magnificent! I am sure to buy these masks that are re-useable, just like stamps almost...but you place a thin piece of transparency where you want to mask your ink. It's like stampingin reverse! "It's ingenius"... like one of his many women-admirers said as he showed us how to use them! I wanted to get a sample, but the other ladies grabbed them so quickly...I couldn't get one :(

It was so cool to watch Tim do his thing! He also has new Grunge Alphabets and Cut Outs that look like they are chipboard, however when you get your hands on them they are pliable like leather almost. They take ink and paint, you can rough them up and heat them into dimension!!! I just stood there and watched for a long time.

Then as he was about to take a break, he said Ali Edwards would be standing in for him! People were asking him "how did you get her to come!"...he just stated "I asked her!" Here they are together as he goes to break and she comes to play! She just showed up to play with inks and acrylics as she showed us her mini book created using those items. She has a new book coming out! She says "don't be scared just to play around, you might discover something!!!"

My two favorite designers were there to inspire me so I was a happy camper! Oh, I forgot to mention...http://www.scrapblog.com/ has a contest that I am entering. You can tag your scrapblog as CHA08 and they are looking at them and giving away something. But you have to do layouts on their site...which is FUN and it is a COOL site dedicated to digital scrapping. They are adding lots of exclusive designers, new formats and ways to print at home and into soft & hardbound books! For the exclusive designers art and credits toward printing, you can buy gift cards. A lot of changes will come about in August08 for them!!!