Back in effect.

Tired. Happy. Crazy. Busy. Mind running a million miles a minute. CHA was awesome. Seeing friends, and meeting new ones, was awesome. Checking out products, patterns, ribbons, inventions, and seeing all the creativity filled me up once again. Overflowing.

Everytime I travel I am filled up. Definitely one of the perks.

So what stuff did I LOVE at CHA Summer 2005? Here is a little peek through the lens of my camera:

• SCRAPWORKSnew Ethan Kate line + new ribbons + new Tailored Tabs Essentials. And I am easilly swayed by beautiful, fashion-inspired displays.

• Polar Bear Press. This new company had a darling ABC based 8x8 paper line. Very sophisticated. Cool designs.

• Seeing friends.

(mary grace, me, joy u, and rhonna)

(candi gershon & me)




• FONTWERKS : lots of cool things including new stamps, rub ons (YUM), and new patterned papers.

• Heidi Swapp

So, I love Heidi. I think she is a creative genious. One of my favorite things about her booth was a section of large altered playing cards. Before the show she sent these cards out to a variety of artisits and asked them to PLAY. I was able to do a couple (see Simon's cute face) - seeing them all there together mixed in with these clocks was awesome.

As, of course, were her products. I got so distracted by the cool artwork that I forgot to take photos of the new stuff - check out her site for her product line additions...especially the adhesive backed chip board alphabets.

• Wild Asparagus from My Mind's Eye : new additions to the Wild Asparagus line. If you have not played with this paper it is a must - such a great texture and cool little accents that can be used with the paper or combined with other products.

• Technique Tuesday
: another great Pacific Northwest company with some very cool shape
stamps. I don't see their newest stamps online so check back again for
"Back Rounds" and "Just Picked."

• Scenic Route: AWESOME new paper collection and rub ons that could seriously be the best quality that I have seen yet.

• and, of course, Autumn Leaves :

(these are totally cool little clips)

Here are a couple of the other things that I don't have photos for that really did it for me this time around:

• EK Success writer chalk pen in WHITE. A very nice fine tip and a thicker tip - I get asked about white pens a lot - this one is my new favorite.

• American Crafts : new letter stickers, patterned papers and RIBBON. More yum.

• Heidi Grace : this is my favorite line from her ever.She rocks. And she is a Pacific Northwest girl.

• Mrs. Grossman : they have a new liscened artist...Eric Carle of Hungry Caterpiller fame. I will definitely be adding a few of these stickers to our collection around here. Simon LOVES his books.

• KI Memories : I love the idea that they ran with this time - taking their most popular collection colors and bringing them back in new patterns.

Good times at this show. Home for just a couple days before heading to Orlando for CKU on Wednesday morning. Just enough time for laundry, putting away my goodies from CHA, giving Simon and Chris some love and kisses before taking off again.

I also wanted to say thanks for all the comments on the post last week where I answered the question regarding how things go here in our home. There is always so much to think about...

To all of you who said hi last weekend, thanks - it is always so nice to meet people in person and make that face to face connection.