CHA 2014 Wrap up

Hi everyone!

Here I am, back from CHA (followed by the Play event organized by Big Picture Classes  - I'll have to make a separate post only for this), my head and my heart are spinning!! In a good way. :) I don,t really know how I should present you my ideas. You've probably seen so many photos of products already because they were already all over the web even before CHA had started. So I think what I'll do is just present you what really stood out for me, personally. Hope you'll enjoy this post. :)

So, in no particular order, here is what is still in my mind and heart after 4 days of walking, and watching, and talking, and meeting….

1. Paper collections:

There are so many paper lines. So many beautiful ones. Here are the ones that I saw and thought: Yes, I will get that one!

Heidi Swapp: Dreamy
It's all watercolor-y, soft and pretty.

The thing i love most about this collection is the paper itself. The colors.

I love these glittered frames with a white impression on them.

And I love this alphabet. Glittery and glossy.

And her mini stencils will be perfect for cards or to add cool layers to layouts. I also thought about Project Life, although I'm not sure the size will fit. They are bigger than they look like on this picture.

American Crafts - Dear Lizzy: Day Dreamer

Wtercolor-y feel

Cute camera motif
Cute 3x4 cards

Rub-ons!!!!
Happy colors
cute stamp set

Love the motives and happy colors

Mini flairs


American Crafts - Amy Tangerine: Plus One

Hand stitching stencils
black bendable plastic words

cool camera motif
beautiful vibrant colors

 cute sketch book

Awesome Washi-like translucent letters in very cool colors

Yummy colors
motives on ribbons
cute puffy stickers
awesome stamp motives
watercolor paint

Look at that gorgeous album!!!!!

Webster's pages - Alisson Kreft: Sprinkled with love AND Hello World

Hello World:

Awesome paper

Awesome colors

cute motives

VERY cute paperclips in different shapes. Here: elephant and onesie

Paperclips: red bird and speech bubbles

Sprinkled with love:

I love the colors and papers

Paperclips: enveloppes

I love the patterned paper!

Light bulbs paperclips

Very cute collections!!!

Crate Paper - Maggie Holmes: Style Board

I couldn't resist sharing my friends Noell and Izzy from Paperclipping filming Maggie Holme's collection. :) Go check out the video if you want more details on this collection.

Very cool die cuts and sequins. She has 3 different packs which include vellum, chipboard and gold foil.

Gold rub-ons!!!!! Can't wait to use that!

Very cute gold chipboard thickers.

Kraft paper with gold polka dots

Gold foil kraft tape and white doily-like packing tape that will look almost like a rub-on.

Look at the layering and dimension. These pages were phenomenal!! I went back 3 times to her booth to check it out again and again. :)

Basic grey: Highline

2. Stamps and Ink

Tim Holz: His distress inks are now in mini-format and he has a new blender tool, smaller and round (will make the straight lines disappear).

Tim also has a new tool which can spritz ink from any marker, making a kind of air brush effect.

And look at this lamp from Stella!!! It has different lighting like LED light,  true color and incandescent, with a dimmer for any of these lighting. It will be available in April 2014. I plan on buying one for me and maybe one for each of my girls. I've been looking for an awesome light since I was in high school!

(If you'd like to see more of the booth at CHA, which is soooooo big and really impressive, go check it out here)

Tombow: Their markers are phenomenal!! I loved the colors and the feeling while coloring. The ink is water based which makes it water colorable with a brush and water!!

Look here, the lady just sketched a flower quickly and with water and a brush went over the lines to make a beautiful and quick watercoloring.

Here are the markers: A pen at one end and a paint brush at the other end. Look at the vibrant colors!

And this is the blender marker, sold together with a little spritzer and a plastic palette for blending color.

The blender does the same job as the water brush, but I would say on a smaller scale? You can color some lines and then use the marker to pull the color toward the center, or where ever you want it to go.

You can see it well on the pink parts of my owl.
Apparently this blender marker can replace Gamsol when used with colored pencils such as Prismacolor. I can't wait to try that!

This was made with the plastic palette. A little color rubbed and a spritz or two of water, you can than stamp it onto your card stock for gorgeous backgrounds to your cards and pages.

Art Impressions: I am on their Design team since a  little bit over than a month and I love them so much!! They are a family company and they are all so lovely and friendly!! I loved getting to know them! Their stamps are for the most part very funny but they also have (my favorite!) beautiful and elegant images to color in.

Here are some of the samples c I made for them for CHA:

What I discovered with them this weekend is their  watercolor line!! The line has several little stamps which work together to form a bigger image and since you assemble all the pieces yourself, the number of different images you can create is endless. Look at this:

Using her water based markers (Hellow Tombow!) Bonnie colors the stamp and stamps on a watercolor paper.

She then takes a wet brush and dab gently over the stamped image to make the ink travel a little and to soften the image which gives it a perfect watercolor look. No need to know how to draw. Look at that!!!! I can't wait to try it myself!

Lawn Fawn: I discovered this company (I know! I've heard of it before, of course, but I had never bought a stamp from them since I already have so many stamps!!!) and their high quality stamps. They have their own cutesy and bright style and great images to color in.

La-La Land: These stamps are so fun to color in. I loved their samples.

And I am no Copic expert but by looking at their images I managed to do this:

Very proud of myself. ;)

As for Inks, I discovered:

Avery Elle (Available at Two Peas in a Bucket and Simon Says Stamp)

Avery Elle also has awesome stamps. Their card samples was just Fabulous!!

Imagine Crafts (with Tsukineko) which has awesome gold, silver and white ink as well as Neon!! They produce the Memento and Staz On ink.

Look at that ink on black cardstock. Awesome, right? :)

3. Project Life related:

We R Memory Keepers has a small drawer unit perfect for Project Life cards (4x6 and 3x4 drawers) There are only 5 drawers, but they are deep so they can contain a lot of cards!! I think this is a good find.

4. Small elements:

American Crafts - DIY collection: Very trendy with the chalk, DIY has small tags and labels, buttons, bigger shipping tags, clothes pins on which you can write with a white pen. I loved the look of the collection and the versatility of the bits and pieces.

Such cute speech bubbles!!

And look at the buttons! Big and small. I bet we can color on that with Gelatos.

Small labels.

And some chalk tape. So awesome!!

Doodlebug: As always, Doodlebug is colorful and I love that! I found my favorite sticky rhinestones and was happy to find some puffy stickers too in various shapes and enamel dots to go with it. 

I saw these straws in a couple of other collections. I wonder if we'll see them pop on some pages here and there this year.

Freckled Fawn: She has some very cool paperclips.

5. What stood out the most for me:

Cosmo Cricket: I knew the name, I had bought some previous paper collections, but. But. But. I had never seen it just quite as I saw is this weekend! Look at this:

They have vellum, glitter paper, kraft paper, crepe paper, wood veneers, wood charms, nice trims…

Stamps

Wood veneers and wood charms

Tissue papers

More lids

The mint green tissue paper.

More vellum and glitters

It is as if this collection was made just for me. I love everything about it and these pictures are full of inspiration. If you want, you can also go on the Cosmo Cricket blog to see what Julie has to say about her new products. 

And on this, I'll end my review of CHA 2014. I have plenty more photos because there was so much so see and so many pretty things, but I think your head should be full by now. ;)

See you soon!!

Marie