Thursday, July 31, 2014

The CHA Paper Arts Show on Thursday

 Welcome to another post about the show. It's been great fun checking out the new product or soon to be new product. Remember, some of these items are just starting production. Some will be shipping right after the show and others may not be available for many months. Still it's exciting and fun to see trends. More on the trends later.
Today I tried to take a lot of photos. As usual, check out the photos on my Facebook page until I get home and can revise my blog posts with the pictures. Today's tour is exhaustive but not complete. I recommend visiting your favorite manufacturer's site to see and read more.
My first stop of the day was Bo Bunny. I know it's a favorite with many of you. I did discuss the travel line called Souvenir line on my class post earlier in the week. Love that line. I like the way Bo Bunny often has ephemera packs that go with their collections. So nice for those who want a little help in assembling that page or card. I'll start my discussion with a little Christmas in July by discussing Bo Bunny's Candy Cane Lane collection. It's a beautiful green moving towards the blue side of the color wheel matched with bright and soft pink. Red, grey and blue are part of the palette as well. White is the base. Bo Bunny products mix well with their other collections when it comes to color. Lots of pretty co-ordination embellishments with doily stencils, flowers, pearls and stamps, and great chipboard and die cuts with a Christmas theme. Christmas Collage is another line with traditional Christmas red and green mixed with brown and a golden yellow. Again a fun array of  embellishments. Reindeers are prominent in this collection. Madeleine is a feminine collection in a pink, green which has a hint of blue in it, burgundy and gold with flowers and bird cages. Wild card is a more  a masculine line with blue and burgundy as prominent colors with cream, white, brown and aqua. Playing cards, steering wheels, games are featured and stripes, dots and chevrons, too.
Bo Bunny fans will have plenty to play with and I think some of these lines will attract new fans.













Next, I dropped by Echo Park/Carta Bella with lots of fun colors and cheery holiday collection. I liked seeing red, white and blue in Carta Bella's winter line by Alisha Gordon called All Bundled Up with swirls, snowflakes and snowmen. Fun line to document winter play. Their Christmas Time by Carina Gardner used classic red and green with kraft and white. I know some folk want classic colors and theme for their holiday pages. I can see this collection working well with the trendy burlap accents so popular now! Alisha Gordon's Home for the Holidays line also has a similar palette and includes a deeper green and red. Alisha Gordon also has a line called Moments & Memories that gives a fresh look to vintage elements like fanciful frames, chandeliers and French parlor chairs. It has a great word sheet for those word strips that are current popular embellishments on scrap pages and the palette is a golden green and aqua green with corals, black, white and a deep blue.
Echo Park has Lori Whitlock's very cheery Fine and Dandy. Sweet creatures with birds, butterflies, turtles and bees and popular items like cameras, banners, mason jars, flowers and camper images in red, yellow, and blue with a green that has more yellow than blue in it. Whimsical and good for kid pages.
















Next door to that booth was Tilli Thomas/ Planet Earth Fiber with an amazing collection of fibers. Nancy Nally directed me to this delightful booth. We both love fibers. I wish I could have photographed the textures. The feel is splendid. Great for needlepoint but would be terrific on home decor projects. Not to mention, jewelry. Well, yes, I'll mention it. The hand to this material is so lovely it would feel wonderful on the skin. I can see a braid or weave of the fibers as a necklace or trim on a decorated box or pretty little roses or bows made from the ribbon. A strip of the ombré ribbon or the cord would be a lovely page embellishment. Just beautiful!

 








Paper Arts Show continued

 Paper Arts Show is on today's agenda but first a quick post about how I spent my time at the show late yesterday. Lots of late day internet problems had me struggling with posts later in the day. So, today, I'm not promising any photos on Facebook to be prompt as that seems to take the longest and require several tries.
Let me just tell you about the booths I visited and promise photos for later.

Sizzix was a wonderland of dies. Card making is certainly part of the Maker trend and lots of great card making dies at the booth. Home decor is another big trend and Sizzix has some great supplies for that as well everything for special occasions. I did talk about Stephanie Barnard's card dies when I discussed the great class she taught here at Paper Arts. Lori Whitlock was teaching a card make and take at the booth showing her line. The dial card die she demonstrated made a fun card and she showed us a cute cupcake box. Eileen Hull has an adorable Country Kitchen line. Tim Holtz holiday dies look fabulous and Marissa Pawelko has a fun line for jewelry (another Maker trend) and journaling sure to appeal to a teen crowd or the young and funky at heart. This really is a booth where the eye candy is abundant so I'll be sure to add photos to this post when I get home and will put some up on Facebook. Added now!





Next stop was Graphic 45. Come Away With Me, the line used in the class I took was a definite favorite. Baby to Bride was as very uniform in value without much distressing or texture so it would have limited use for me except when I wanted something quite neutral. If one wanted to make die cut flowers or add a lot of  textural embellishing it certainly has the potential of "working well with other". It is a revival of an older line so must have a devoted following. The red and green in the Xmas line here is very easy to work with and the designs could fit a lot of styles from vintage to contemporary. It's a very usable and pretty line. I heard several buyers were going to purchase the Raining Cats and Dogs line and who could blame them. Classic Graphic 45 with gorgeous colors and illustrations and very usable. I loved this line, too!




The Crafter's Workshop once again has a great collection of designs for we stencil lovers. Their design team did some great work with these tools. I am sure you'll find several designs to love.  I particularly liked the grouped number stencil and the one with all the triangles.


So, off to check out the floor again today.
Later...

Wednesday, July 30, 2014

CHA Paper Arts in the Afternoon

CHA had a snack available for lunch with a very refreshing Basil Lemonade. I liked it. I continued on from Pink Fresh to Hot Off the Press where I found they were featuring a heat resistant acetate. Great for heat embossing and can be used in an embossing folder. I have some photos on Facebook of lovely embossed cards demonstrating this product. They had a line of die cut cards with the side step cards that are very popular now. For those who have held out against machines they also have templates for hand cutting card pieces. Some fun colorful die cut pads with darling art suitable for party decor also caught my eye in this booth.

Next was Anna Griffin's booth with a new Halloween line, Spooktacular, and an American Patriotic line, madison,  that was quite feminine and beautiful. Lots of lovely products and examples in this vendor location.
The Halloween line was black, white, cream and kraft with orange. The patriotic line was suitably red, white and blue with a darker shade of blue and a navy, too.


Across the way was Spellbinders and I heard a lot of excitement about this booth last evening so I definitely wanted to check this out. They have expanded into a line of products to work with their dies. Solid card stock, patterned paper, embossing folders, threads, liquid inks, ink pads, and stamps that co-ordinate with the dies. The designer of this Celebra'tions line is Richard Garay. It's a 12 color co-ordination group in simple clean graphic design, very contemporary.


All the old favorites and those delicate nostalgic designs are not forgotten at Spellbinders and were beautifully displayed.
I drifted over to Stampendous, whose class I took yesterday, and their Creative Palette, that I used in class, was the featured product. They also were demonstrating their glitters and embossing powders like the fabulous Gilded Mica Fragments. These had been attached to a die cut double sided adhesive leaf shape and I loved how it was flexible and didn't flake off when I bent and twisted the leaf.


That was not the entire afternoon I did move on to a few more booths before deciding a break for the day was in order, but next post for those.

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