CHA, day three

This was my final full day at the convention; I may return briefly tomorrow before heading to the airport. I want to share some of the tantalizing eye candy that has abounded here.


Homemade flowers were everywhere. The cleverest idea came from Cosmo Cricket, which sells a super sized glue dot called Glubers, with which these lovely big blossoms were made.


A couple zipper ribbons were out there, and these from My Mind's Eye were used to make these flowers.


What can I say about these dresses. They were at the DCWV booth. Just wow. I didn't even photograph all of them. The woman at the booth said the artists started making them in October. Here's another:


There were also lots of candy and cupcakes made with paper and ribbon. Here's some cupcakes from Nikki Sivils:


And these come from the Ribbon Ring:


Those treats in this photo were all made from ribbon scraps. Mmmmm...

I have to admit, I do not play around much with paint and canvas, but these canvases inspire me to do so, the first from Maya Road:


And the second from The Girls' Paperie:


I also loved this birthday calendar project at Jillibean Soup, made by Aly Dosdall:


I also truly admired the designs of several layouts. Here's a sampling:


That's a stamp around each small piece of patterned paper. What a great way to use scraps. This was at Lily Bee.


I love the use of non-themed paper for a holiday page, using Thrift Store from October Afternoon.


This page at the Doodlebug booth caught my eye. What a great use of bright papers on the white background.


These two pages from Bella Blvd use their monochromatic line. So innovative!

Tomorrow I travel, so I'll share more about the experience Wednesday, as well as favorites at Ella blog in the coming weeks.

CHA, day two

My second day here, I thought I'd share some of my favorite lines I've seen:


The Girls' Paperie has a couple nice lines, similar to their two last summer. These papers come from the less girly Kitsch line.


American Crafts line called Hello, Sunshine was quite nice. I liked these papers, and some accompanying Thickers:


I also enjoyed this line from Lily Bee called This and That, very bold, bright colors:


This line from Jillibean Soup called Spotted Owl soup is nice, sort of boyish (there's a joke in there about hooters that I'll hold back):


October Afternoon hit it out of the park with Rocket Age:


And for mothers of boys, meet Crate Paper Toy Box:


I loved this line by Kaisercraft called Class of '87:


This basic line from Sassafras called Starters is also nice, really open for crafting and getting all arty:


I really loved the Webster's Pages line called Yacht Club, lobster paper and all:


The GCD line Funhouse was, well, fun:


There was a very nice stack with this line.

My favorite line of all may be this one from Pink Paislee called Hometown Summer, which is a Collage Press design:



And K and Company has a fun line called Smash. The company also had fun props too, like this:

I'll share some favorite products and projects tomorrow.

CHA, day one

So now that I've had a day on the floor at CHA, I can share with you a few quick things I noticed, with some photos. Here's a quick look:



Saturated colors are big, like this line from Lily Bee.



I saw a lot of houses today, like this summer collection from My Mind's Eye.



Clocks were big too in many lines. BoBunny had a nice collection with a sort of clean, vintage look.



Saw lots of fairies too--if you have a Renaissance Fair in your area, this is the year to go, because you have the supporting product coming your way!



I learned a new term: cobranding. Many companies are working with other companies to create complementary products. Unity Stamps is paired with many artists and companies like Donna Downey, Bella Blvd, and Jillibean Soup, Coordinations pairing with even more companies like Basic Grey and Tim Holtz, Tattered Angels coordinates with Pink Paislee, etc. Great idea.


This product was exciting: We R Memory Keepers 8 All Around punch. You can make your own die cut 12 x 12 paper.



Lots of tags with many different vendors.



Camping products abounded. Good thing I'm going camping for vacation this year! Loads of cool product, like this line from GCD.



If I could have left with any product to take home to my boys, this would be it. Not the only mustache product I saw.

Back with more tomorrow! I'll tweet throughout the day, if I can get Twitter to accept my photos instead of timing out like it did today.
-Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Off to California...

After a remarkably busy week filled with stamp club, hosting my husband's gaming group, parent-teacher conferences (I'm the teacher), and getting my hair done, I am ready for a day filled with workshops, followed by an airplane, followed by California and CHA. I'll be posting periodically over the next few days, sharing what I see, and when I come back, I'll post longer.

I leave behind me my husband, my two boys, my cat, and three unfinished layouts that will nag at me until I get back. I also leave behind cold weather, which I'm OK with, even though the weather will drop about 20-30 degrees while I'm gone.

I leave you with this, my most recent layout, done to celebrate a date night to Donny Dirk's Zombie Den last summer:

The guy on the left next to Derick wasn't really with our party; he just had on the same shirt, which was pretty fun. As was the ambiance. I used Studio Calico's December kit Metropolitan for this, and was particularly delighted with how effectively these stickers from 7gypsies fit on a zombie layout.

Christmas photos, take 2

Judging from the photo quality on my last post, I see I shall have to blog sans photos until I get back from CHA next week. (I leave this Friday.) I can Tweet better quality photos via the iPad, though, though if you wish to see some of the goodies at CHA, please follow me on Twitter: I go by Buffyfanlarson.

Last week, I posted a layout I had done to gather all the Christmas photos I'd gathered:


Unfortunately, after I made the album, I got these:


So what's a scrapper to do? certainly not redo the page. Instead, I made use of my little used, very lonely 6x12 page protectors and created these pages:



I mildly duplicated the first page of the 2-page spread on a 6x12 page. Easy peasy! Here's how it looks in my album:



Not bad, and the memories are complete.

Lego club

Note: This post is somewhat of a test. I'm going to CHA next weekend (woot!) but will have no computer, just my husband's iPad. I'm testing the iPad's ability to upload photos I took on my camera.


Today we took the boys to the MOA to the Lego club. They were in heaven. Today's meeting let them play with the new sets called Ninjago. When they left, they got to take a small set with them. And me? I got pictures and memories. Perfect.

I guess it could be colder...

Living in Minnesota, I am used to January being frigid. This winter hasn't been too bad, though. Sure, we've had some days that are mainly in the single digits, but that's not horrible. I probably don't have to put my hat on when I race from school to my car.

Today, however, is cold.

Our front door is our outdoor thermometer. A small corner, lower right, builds up some front when it gets down to the single digits. It gets bigger as it gets colder. Here's what I see now:


The whole bottom of the door is iced up. So no surprise that the temp when I checked the morning said over 20 below. (Be aware that I took this photo at noon--it was much colder when I woke up!)

Truthfully, though, I have yet to be outside. The stomach bug that felled my younger boy last week took out my older boy and me last night. We are sitting inside, desperately hungry and nauseous. So I leave you with some things that always keep me going when I'm cold and ill: humor.

Here's some papers my sons have brought home from school (click on the pictures to see them bigger):


Rowan is studying time--check out the bottom for how long he says it takes him to brush his teeth. We're going to have a talk.


Another lesson about time. Look at the top middle for what he says takes him an hour to do. This explains why we leave the house late most mornings.


Dominic apparently went on a nature walk last fall to test using the five senses. Well, four, as he emphatically indicated with his row of x's.


I think of this as the confession essay. Rowan has been writing paragraphs lately of what he did over the weekend. The first lines says he stayed up all night to play computer games. This explains a lot about his short temper on Sunday.