Winter CHA! Meeting Carol Duvall, Suze Weinberg & Jane Seymore!!

This is a very long post..... so much to share! What an amazing week! CHA was fabulous - so many inspiring new products, so many new friends, time with my friend and fellow designer Becky Chabot, and I'm officially now a designer appearing on Ana & Megan Araujo's When Creativity Knocks Web TV program! BIG thanks to Becky for taking this fabulous photo before I told her to "GO AWAY" because she made me nervous (hehehe!). I made a coin purse from Makin's Clay. Stay tuned to find out when this episode will air....

CONGRATS to Becky for winning both her categories, and best of show in the Terra Bella Finishes challenge! Her projects were amazing, and I knew the minute I saw them she was a guaranteed winner! I was fortunate to have one of my entries chosen for publication in an upcoming issue of Creative TECHniques magazine, so I feel like a winner too! If you have yet to try Terra Bella Finishes products, - DO - they are high quality and a must have on my list.

The "Cat Crazy" Designer Fashion Display I worked with Becky on was a huge success also. It truly looked amazing - like a store window display in an upscale store. We were very proud!

Products, products, and more products! So many inspiring things for creative artists! Stamps are still going strong, especially clear stamps. I really liked the fun, funky choices offered by ScrappyCat.

It was great to see some new creative embellishments - fun flowers with bling, crochet, and in black & white from Creative Charms, beautiful detailed pewter stickers from Atelier de Paris, and absolutely scrumptious trims and embellishments from Expo International. One of my favorite finds was the line of metallic brush markers offered by Pentel - I absolutely LOVE these markers! When I discovered they work on Makin's Clay, my creative muse went into overdrive. I got a chance to experiment with them, and many other great Pentel projects, at a designer reception they sponsored, and created this fun little box - the flower started off white - I love the way the colors bled into each other and created a unique embellishment! 

Fabulous papers - Floral papers like the great choices offered by BasicGrey are still dominating the scrapbooking world, but there are some companies venturing off into fabulous new paper patterns. I saw many papers featuring great texture and depth (velvet, glitters, sparkle & bling! - one of my favorites was Fiskars new paper line - the butterfly pape, green & orange papers, and funky "tattoo style" papers, stickers and stamps below are from their lines), The Robin's Nest again featured fabulous papers with that added something to make them special! Many "photo-style" papers with realistic hand painted scenery were offered - some of the nicest were from SugarFree. Creative papers like those offered by new companies Jennann and Dezignz by Dezda which are hand painted (I love hand-painting, since that's how I design my papers!), collage papers from Scrapz and Collage Pauge are fabulously creative and inspiring. I am truly a "texture" gal - and the papers offered by Amate Studios just jumped out of the booth and yelled "TOUCH ME!" Amate also has a versatile line of metal jewelry findings and bracelet blanks that I just can't wait to experiment with using Makin's Clay. Great detailed chipboard and papers were creatively displayed at a new booth by Raspberry, and I saw colorful, inventive creative buttons at the Dill Buttons booth. Dill's big colorful buttons that nest together, buttons that you can fill with photos, flowers, or anything you could imagine, and even buttons designed to have a design hand stitched onto them!

It was also great to see a trend toward offering craft kit projects for BOYS. As the mom of 2 boys who love to create, this was a truly great find. Pirates and castles gallore, sure to make any creative boy happy! 

Celebrities! I was truly honored to get to meet and spend time with so many creative artists and celebrities. My roommates were polymer clay artists Sue Kelsey and Cathy Johnston - their artwork was amazing, and their personalities even more amazing. I am so honored to have spent time with them and now consider them my friends. I demonstrated at the Makin's Clay booth with both of them. I also spent time at the Makin's Clay booth with Linda Hess and Ann Butler - both of who are very talented artists and lovely people to get to know! One of the most exciting moments for me was when I got to meet and talk briefly with Carol Duvall - Queen of the Crafting World! Carol is humerous, warm, and just a wonderful woman. I also got photo ops with Suze Weinberg - Queen of UTEE, Donna Kato - Queen of Polymer Clay (in my PJ's - Thanks Cathy & Sue!) and Jane Seymore! Unfortunately, my photo with Jane is a bit fuzzy, by my memory of meeting her and talking with her about Makin's Clay will never blur! Becky and I also spent the evening with Ana & Megan Araujo and their film crew at the Go Hollywood event at Disney! It was a terrificly fun time full of laughter and memories - Thank you for letting us share it with you all!!! Here are a few of my photo ops - I'll have more to share soon!