Editors Note: Debbie Hodge, NSA member and contributing writer for Memory Makers Magazine, offers her take on CHA Winter:
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Last week at the Craft and Hobby Association Show in Anaheim, the cold bite of winter was not warmed by the southern California sun. Instead, scrapbooking was smoldering with the lush colors and textures presented at CHA Winter, the craft and hobby world’s fair.
While I had planned to walk the floor of CHA in an orderly way — checking out every booth in order — it never happened. Just as the photos and embellishments on a scrapbook page draw my eye in and lead me through its contents, new products caught my eye and pulled me deep into their particular booth. Once in, I looked, wide-eyed, and wandered, until . . . something across the far aisle drew me into another booth.
And so it went.
I saw as much as I could, and still I didn’t see it all. Nonetheless, this report is jam-packed with paper-crafting delights to fend off the coldest winter doldrums. So, settle in with your favorite warm beverage and read what’s hot.
The combos we'd already been seeing were still strong: black and white; black and cream; black and cream and red. The new combos, though, involved red with pale blue or aqua or pale green or all of the above. Just to give you a sense of it, check out Crate Paper’s Samantha, Gin X’s As You Wish, Cosmo Cricket’s Dutch Girl, Li'l Davis’ Endless Summer, and Piggy Tales’ Little Red Riding Hood.
Birds and stars are still going strong, and now we can add owls, skulls & crossbones, flying hearts, sewing pattern markings, and chandeliers. Once you find them, just tell me just how cute are these owls? HamblyScreen Prints, Basic Grey’s Perhaps, Sassafrass Lass’ Serendipity and Autumn Leaves’ French Twist. If you sew, there's nothing like seeing old pattern markings to conjure those days in home-ec making aprons. See them in: Mustard Moon’s Sew It Seams, and Basic Grey’s Afternoon Tea.
Chandeliers are definitely a new motif that you can see in offerings by Hambly Screen Prints, One Heart One Mind, and . . . I know one other manufacturer, but I just can't find it right now. There's a challenge for you! If you're a pirate-loving matey, you'll find lots of pirate motifs this season, including heart & crossbones, heart & wings, skulls, skull & crossbones. Check these out: Junkitz’ Extreme Boy, Marah Johnson’s Lovestruck, Magistical Memories’ chipboard, and Love, Elsie’s Roxie. What stayed with me at the end of each day was the breadth of materials being used to make embellishments. There were old uses for new materials and new uses for old materials. The most pleasing examples of this follow.
- Maya Road introduced velvet flowers and 1" wide blossom trim.
- The Let's Pretend line from Imaginisce includes corduroy button brads.
- Junkitz embellished its Salsa Celebration line with boldly colored and layered felt flowers.
- American Crafts’ Thickers are alpha stickers in felt, foam, and chipboard in 12 rocking fonts and bright colors as well as black, white, and natural.
- Shapes made of chipboard, foam, plastic, and felt fill the jars in American Crafts’ House Collection. Choose from Typehouse (numbers, punctuation and symbols), Playhouse (hearts, arrows, geometric shapes, tags, photo corners, and stars), Greenhouse (flowers), and Holidayhouse (seasonal and holiday shapes).
- ProvoCraft is promising a May shipment of ready-to-alter plain and inexpensive felt bags.
- We R Memory Keepers’ metal alphas are the perfect complement to their Precious Metals papers. They come in four fonts and four finishes (copper, silver, brass, and pewter) and are "crop-a-dileable." Metallic rub-ons accompany each finish.
- Tinkering Ink gets the award for the most surprising combination of materials. Their Frippery embellishments combine raised silicon decorations on felt (the website is showing drawings right now rather than the real thing, so check back because they are very cool.)
- Queen & Co. cut a floral pattern from 3” wide felt ribbon in 1-yard rolls. They're available in eight bright colors.
There is just no way to talk about all of the great papers introduced this week, so I'll show you a very small sampling.
- A2Z Essentials has 14 new lines in a broad range of styles, each featuring six designs on three double-sided pieces of patterned paper. Now that's a lot of combinations from one of my favorite manufacturers.
- American Crafts new Ala Carte and Ala Mode lines each use the same two color schemes, so you can mix Ala Carte's ornamental and floral motifs with the geometric motifs in the Ala Mode line.
- The new Basic Grey lines feature rich colors and textures that shine through subtle distressing. The combination of vintage and updated motifs results in original designs.
- Circus Rose from Imagination Project introduced Playlist, which uses clean design and vivid red, blue, white, and black. The embellishments include fun phrases such as "Drop it like it's hot" and the journaling blocks are printed on 12”x 12” paper in columns that can be cut and folded accordion-style to make a mini book.
- With nine new collections, the Dream Street Papers booth was busy every time I walked by. Their designers were pleasing store owners big time.
- Heidi Grace has two new collections with six lines in each. Everyday Grace has lines good for babies, children, and playful grown-ups. The lines in Getting Places are named for six locations and have a more elegant appeal while still staying fun.
- Luxe presented six fashion-inspired lines; each has its own strong color palette and unique images. Very cool rub-ons accompany these papers.
- Rouge de Garance's lines include a standard black-and-white alongside vividly colored lines with oversized motifs. The Daphnis and Chloe line includes 12 double-sided papers in a new 6"x 12" size. They are printed on a more technical paper that results in wonderfully rich color.
- Sassafrass Lass’ Serendipity is just straight-out happy making. Got to have it.
- Scenic Route’s Laurel and Metropolis lines rely on great color combos and fun motifs (birds, arrows, and more). Each line includes three craft papers with coordinating corner motifs.
- Tinkering Ink's papers feature brilliant color combinations. Each line plays original oversized motifs against smaller ones.
- We R Memory Keepers has four lines in its Precious Metals collection: one each for copper, silver, brass, and pewter. Rub-ons, alphas and embellishments all emphasize the "metal."
At CHA Summer 2006 coordinating chipboard alphas were the item that many companies were newly including with their lines. This season, acrylic stamps are that finishing touch. Of course, companies like Technique Tuesday, Fontwerks, and Autumn Leaves, who already have extensive acrylic stamp offerings, rolled out more. What was surprising were the offerings accompanying the newer lines.
- Autumn Leaves has 20 new sets. You'll have to check them all out yourself, but my faves are Sande Krieger's Talking in Circles and Jennie Bowlin's themed journaling blocks.
- Doodlebug Design has six cute themed sets: Wedding, Baby, Birthday, Friends, Love, and Smile.
- Fancy Pants is not only making four 6”x6" stamps, but they also have two oversized font-family:Georgia; letter-spacing:0pt'>12”x12" stamps as well as a 12”x12" acrylic block with grid lines. The stamps feature corner flourishes and scrolls, hearts, flowers, and frames all in a style similar to their papers.
- The new stamp designs from Fontwerks include floral images, flourishes, arrows, stars, alphas, and date and journaling blocks. Larger stamps replicate grid paper, lined paper, and handwriting paper.
- For each of the three Love, Elsie lines there are three stamp sets: upper alpha, lower alpha, and images that coordinate with the papers and embellishments.
- KI Memories, which first released acrylic stamps in the fall 2006, added more sets, including alphas, journaling balloons, to-do lists, dates, and clean basic shapes.
- Li'l Davis stamps feature vintage medallions, flourishes, ornaments, and vintage-framed words, phrases, and journaling lines.
- Maya Road stamps include journaling spots, circles with phrases, symbols, and stylized florals. My favorite set featured phrases, such as "from my heart to yours" and "made with love," printed in half circles. Combine for your own full circle.
- Sassafrass Lass has 28 new stamp sets including their new Flip-a-Roos. Use one side of a Flip-a-Roo to stamp your background in one color. Flip it and stamp the detail in another color. Their fun stamp sets include themed word sets, alphas, symbols, and frames.
- Technique Tuesday has more new fonts and a sister set to Whirlygigs called Whispygigs. The artwork at this booth was just gorgeous. It called me back for second and third visits, just to look at the layouts and show them to my friends. They've got a great guide to their products and projects right here.
- Around the Block is continuing to offer small and appealing tools. The "tapewriter" is a mini letter embossing tool (similar to the Dymo). Their "mini antiquing tool" features small triangular sandpaper and ink pads, and the Essential Toolkit is full of pink treasures including a paper cutter, scissors, ruler, adhesive, craft wipes and collapsible scrap bin/tool holder.
- Bind-it-All by Zutter Innovative products punches and binds books in many mediums: cardstock, tags, plastic, chipboard, thin metal.
- Bo Bunny is selling an Apron Tool Kit (in pink!) with several tools including a flexible curve ruler.
- Karen Foster Scraperatus is a pink tool that does the job of several tools — silently setting eyelets, punching holes, and die cutting, with more features to come. The Scraperatus will be available in April '07 at $24.95.
- Making Memories’ new tool is a Tag Curler that you can use for packaging applications.
- The Slice by Tinnus is a hand-held digital shape cutter that will cut images from ½" to 4" in ½" increments. Its programmed memory cards will sell for $20 and the slice itself will be about $160.
- Ribbon Iron from Pebbles - Stop using that light bulb, scrappers, and iron it out with this cute little tool.
- QuicKutz’ Silhouette is a digital craft cutter priced at $369. It will cut from ¼" to 8" on cardstock, magnetic paper, vinyl, vellum and more. QuicKutz will offer digital images for download, and the machine will cut any true type font.
Oh . . . and I almost forgot to mention that you can now get your Crop-A-Dile with a green handle. Journaling blocks, spots, stamps, prompts, and more were in abundance at this CHA.
- Around the Block’s Travel and School lines include very nice journaling blocks and notes.
- Circus Rose and Gin X by Imagination Project present journaling blocks in a variety of list and "mad-lib" prompt forms. The GinX As You Wish journaling prompts are designed to get to know the person you're scrapping about better. The Circus Rose journaling blocks are designed in columns on 12”x12” paper to be trimmed in strips and folded accordion style to create a mini book.
- Creative Imaginations has included great journaling blocks with their Vibe, Fresh, and Narratives lines.
- Danelle Johnson's Interactive Journaling Stamps allow you to pair lined journaling centers with frames in corresponding circle, flower, and harlequin shapes.
- Fontwerks introduced 16 full-color journaling tags that coordinate with their Write Line paper.
- Karen Russell Narratives Impress-On Swatch Books provide a multitude of journaling approaches.
- Prima's Cutie Catcher folds up too look like the classic folded "cootie catcher" game and houses journaling.
If you like the office supply look -- ledger paper, index tabs, photo turns, date embellishments -- there are many places to turn this season.
- 7 Gypsies didn't disappoint us and have come up with six new photo turn shapes
- American Crafts’ mini marks calendar sidekicks are a great embellishment for the office-look lover.
- Imagination Project is offering Project Essentials, which includes two lines Office Supplied and Totally Dated. Go check out the breadth of these lines that they plan to offer as staples. The design is crisp and bold, like a new pad of paper or fresh calendar page.
- Check out this metal index tabs embossed with words from Memory Makers. I'm not sure I can ever get enough index tabs.
- Mustard Moon is offering their Got Paper ledger paper in two new colors and has added dictionary and crossword pages in shades of white, gray, and black.
- Scenic Route has added a line called Backgrounds that consists of six single-sided papers: grey grid on white, grey cube on worn, blue grid worn, white lined paper, worn lined paper, and blue grid white.
There were, of course, tons of fun new products. I can't show you all of them, but I can give you a peek at a few.
- 7 Gypsies oval stamps are more than 97% certifiable. These self-inking stamps frame a circle, oval, or square in a variety of styles.
- Around the Block’s Big Metal Brads are big, colorful, and come in great embossed metal shapes: flourishes, stars, smiley faces and much, much more. ATB’s Die-Cut Ribbon features phrases and symbols cut from the ribbon to let your paper show through.
- Cosmo Cricket’s home décor lacing cards
- Heidi Swapp Bling Crowns. These need no explanation.
- Luxe’s There's the Rub rub-ons include alphas, decorations, and several borders. It's the original and sophisticated borders I especially want to get my hands on.
- Marah Johnson for Creative Imaginations rolled out Birdie and Flying Heart brads.
- Making Memories’ Clear Creations Transparency Packs My Mind's Eye embossed chipboard monograms and shapes get more definition when you ink them.
- Picture-It Page Frames holds and protects scrapbook layouts for display. The debut line includes circle, star, and free-standing frames.
- Prima pop-ups are embossed paper flowers, stars, photo corners, hearts, insects and label plates in a variety of soft but yummy colors.
- Queen & Co.’s Bold Sequins are large and shaped like swirls, scrolls, arrows, flowers, and brackets. They are available in black, white, and eight monochromatic colors.
- Scenic Route’s punch-out arrows are oversized, curving, right-angled and decorated punch-out arrows that make a good point.
- Sweetwater’s wooden buttons and chipboard flowers with type are just lovely.
- The Zsiage Scrapodex replicates the look of a rolodex – but you decorate it and use it to display photos and small pages.
These themed products were hard to pass up without mention: Baby:
- Heidi Grace - Baby Girl and Baby Boy
- American Crafts - The Goods/Baby 07
- Bo Bunny - Daydream
- Crate Paper - Baby Bee
- Cloud 9 - Baby Girl and Baby Boy
- Karen Foster Design - Maternity
Celebrations
- Around the Block - Celebrate
- Junkitz - Salsa Celebrations
Girl Scouts
Kitchen
Outdoors
- American Traditional Designs - Great Outdoors
- Karen Foster Design - Fishing
Patriotic Collection
- Samantha Walker - All American
Pets
- American Traditional Design - Paws & Claws
- Cloud 9 - Cat and Dog
Summer/Beach/Pool
- Cloud 9 - Beach
- Li'l Davis - Endless Summer
- Bo Bunny - Sweet Summer and Garden Chic
- Karen Foster Design - Gardening
School
- American Traditional Designs - Grade School
- Around the Block - School
Sports
- American Traditional Designs - Sporty Girl and Game Day
- Karen Foster Design - Snorkeling/Diving, Bikes, Scooters, and Water Sports
Travel
- Around the Block - Travel
- Rob & Bob - Travel
- Love, Elsie - Toby
- Karen Foster Design - Cruise
Wedding & Love
- American Crafts - The Goods Wedding/Celebration 07
- Scrapworks - Formal Affair and Lucky In Love
- Li'l Davis - Love Affair
- Cloud 9 - Wedding
- Love, Elsie - Betty
- Karen Foster Design - Wedding
Debbie Hodge