I made a report about CHA for Scrapfriends, so I am just going to copy it over here. I will try to post some photos later, but for now they are linked to my gallery. :)
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CHA Winter 2006 - Las Vegas, Nevada
Can we say FUN??? That sums up what my experience was at CHA. That and EXHAUSTED!
I flew in late Monday afternoon and went to my hotel, the Sahara, dropped off my stuff and took the monorail to the convention center. Once there, I helped Dina Quondamatteo and Janene Jaeger, the owners of Zsiage (who I was there with as a member of their design team), finish setting up the booth and fine tuning things.
I have to say, the only thing that disappointed me about the whole trip presented itself that first afternoon when I found out the four Zsiage projects I had mailed the week before had still not arrived (and have yet to be found!). I spent my first evening hanging out with Dina and Janene and we called it an early night.
The next day, Tuesday, was crazy. The Zsiage booth was in the New Exibitor section, which was in the farthest corner of the General Crafts hall. (I can't believe I didn't get a picture of the booth!) I only had an hour that day to walk around and spent a half hour visiting with Laura at Adhesive Tech. I was shown some very neat techniques using the glue gun and also took some photos of a few Scrapfriends projects that were there at the booth.
I made a 'quick' jaunt over to the Scrapbooking Hall (anyone who was there knows that it was no quick jaunt since it was so far away!). I visited with Jamie from Prism Papers. I was able to thank them for their continued support of Scrapfriends. Jamie showed me the new Prismatics colors and I have to tell you, they are gorgeous! Jamie told me that Prism is thrilled with our work. Kudos to all team members!
I had a few minutes to meet with Dennis Meyer of Craf-T. He is just about the sweetest and most gracious man I have ever met. He is continuously thrilled with the Scrapfriends site and is just a great person to visit with.
Right next to the Craf-T booth was Masquepen which manufactures a very cool masking product.
Tuesday night I went to the Designer Dinner and had a great time meeting Eli, Catherine, and Melanie. Melanie, bless her heart, took pity on my late self and invited me to sit at her table rather than let me sit at the table for 1 they had originally placed me. When I was getting my food, I met Catherine and while we were talking, Stacy Julien from Simple Scrapbooks Magazine and Big Picture Scrapbooking walked by and we spoke with her for a few minutes. She is just as nice as I figured she would be.
Later I won one of the door prizes, a Digital Scrapbook Memories DVD as well as getting a fat, awesome, goody bag. Melanie also won a goody bag which she seemed pretty excited about.
I also had the chance to meet author Thena Smith who has penned five books and is noted for her poetry. She was there with her Bluegrass Publishing posse. Those ladies were so nice and fun to talk with.
Day two was an early day for me. Zsiage was a class sponser for a very cool class put on by PaperArtsy, a stamping company from the UK. Their booth was located not far from us and I was able to hang out with and enjoy several of the people working for this company. I was so impressed by the sheer talent they had as well as their gorgeous, eclectic stamps. The stamps are pre-mounted on EZ mount. Beautiful.
Because of the PaperArtsy class, I also met one of the managers for Golden Artist Colors, Pamela. They have a variety of interesting fine arts mediums and texture mediums.
I spent all but the last two hours of my day at the Zsiage booth. I was able to visit, following are some of the highlights of what I saw:
Ranger Crafts, they have 12 new distress ink colors. TO DIE FOR!!! If you like the original colors, you will drool over the new ones.
PageSage has some exciting new DVDs coming out. Suzzane from PageSage was so nice and I really enjoyed meeting her. They had an awesome display in their booth of old film reels that were decorated by different artists including Tim Holtz and MaryJo McGraw.
Stopped by Paper Salon. Not only are the stamps very cool, but they have a some beautiful paper lines as well.
Zsiage has an awesome product out. They released 10", 5", 3", and 1 1/2" chipboard alphas at MT, but this show they release the same sizes in 2 new fonts as well as a product called Scrapbook Film. This is a milky acetate product that is pretty cool. I am really excited about it. Yes, I am bit biased, but really, it's cool.
BasicGrey has beautiful stuff of course. I only had a few seconds there, but I was able to snap a couple of photos.
I also stopped by the 3 Bugs in a Rug booth which was right near the booth I was working in. They have some beautiful papers and the owners were nice as pie.
I also enjoyed visiting with an Australian couple who's booth, Woodstock, was right across from me.
Wednesday, was my last day at the show and I tell you, I was BEAT by the end of the day. But somehow, I managed to muster up enough energy to make a geek out of myself when I saw Ali Edwards after the show. I handed her a 12x12 sheet with a 10" Scrapbook Film 'A' from Zsiage and spoke with her for a minute. Considering she must be hounded all day, she was truely down to earth and gracious. Anyone who knows me, knows that I am an Ali fan, so that was very cool for me.
While hanging out in the hotel room with Dina and Janene that night, I was looking through my goody bag from the Designer Dinner and picked up a copy of Correspondence Art from Spring 2005. It was there that I discovered I had been published ('V is for Vivian') and didn't even know it! Needless to say, we did a little bit of jumping and screaming!
Anyway, I had a blast, but it's GREAT to be back home with my kids. This experience was totally different than CHA-Chicago because I didn't have as much time to walk the floor. But I did meet some fantastic people and made some new friends in the meantime as well as meeting some of my online friends. It was a great event. Even Elvis was there. ;)
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