Skinny Book Page with Additions

I started looking at the page I had done (previous post) and decided it was lacking. So I added some more stuff. I added the "Paris" and "city of". I added the brown lace across the bottom. I like this better! I didn't mention this before, but I used Copic markers to color the images. I think still fits in the with the "love" theme. It's my interpretation at least!

July Skinny Book Page

I'm behind this month on my skinny book page. The usual! The theme for this page is "love" - not my favorite theme, but that's neither here nor there. This page uses images from the "Silent Guardians", "Happy Together", and "Vintage Paris" collage sheets. There's an ornate plate with an adage ticket "love".

Day Three at CHA

I am back in Houston, blogging from home. Today, I went to my Crafty Secrets class at 7am. ACK! The class was full. Everyone was sorta bleary eyed, but we had fun.

This is a simple card we made using the new set of bird stamps. It has several tiny birds, some words and 3 different bird cages. I love this stamp set. It's on order. Have you seen the Crafty Secrets shadow box kits? The shadow box is an Acc-Cut die. This photo shows the project flat on the table. We used the new Sewing Creative Scraps and the new Material Girl stamp set. I know I ordered the stamps and I hope I ordered the Creative Scraps. I have a dozen of these kits with the Altered Fairy Creative Scraps.

Here's a close-up of the left-side.

Here's a close-up of the middle page.

And here is the right side. The little needle packet actually opens up and there is a little piece of felt with straight pins.

These shadow box kits are actually class kits, so the instructions are OK, but not exactly step by step. They are EASY to put together, just crease on the folds that are made when the cardstock is die cut and apply some adhesive.

So this concludes my CHA diary. I've ordered many products that I haven't shown. Things will arrive in the store at different times. Some of the Tim Holtz items will ship in September and October. The Stamper's Anonymous Tim Holtz stamps should be here in 2-3 weeks.

Thanks for following along!

Day Two at CHA

Right before the show opens, a large crowd of people wait for the doors to be opened. Before the show begins, a local government official gives a little opening speech. I believe it was the mayor of Chicago today. I never really pay attention in speeches. I took a class this morning, but I don't have any photos. I didn't do much with the class materials.

I visited the May Arts booth, but didn't order any ribbon or trim today. I'm going to order online.

May Arts has so much beautiful ribbon that it's hard to decide what to buy.

The Ranger booth was next. Ranger now makes Perfect Pearls Mist. I love my homemade Perfect Pearls Mist, so I ordered 10 colors of "real" Perfect Pearls Mist.

Here's a photo of the Perfect Pearls Mist. You can't tell a lot about shiny things in photographs. One good thing about the Perfect Pearls Mist is that it retails for $5 if I remeber correctly. This is substantially less than other sparkly mist products.

Lucky me! Ranger also carriers the Tim Holtz idea-ology and Alterations. I ordered all the new Halloween dies and new texture folders.

New ATC blanks! Manilla, glossy paper, sticky back canvas in white and natural! Cool!

Stamper's Anonymous was next. I ordered all of the Tim Holtz vinyl cling stamps. I also ordered several of the steps wood-mounted - the retro witch, the retro owl, the witch hazel label and the sketched raven.

Stanislaus Imports! The first I asked about was the clock buttons. They will be back in stock soon. I ordered 2 gross of the two smallest sizes. They will ship as soon as they become available. These are magnifying watch faces in clear and colors. Too cool!

These photos are not the greatest, but this a set of watch faces. These watch faces have patterns or numbers.

Watch part "innards". Teeny tiny watch parts!

I'm not sure what to call this, but maybe a watch face dial? I thought this was cool. The Stanislaus employees asked me how I would use this. I spoke with the owner of the company and told him how they would great frames.

Advantus. I forget what these little Tim Holtz shadow box things are called, but here's one all decorated up. Tim's papers are in the background and tissue tape holds down the papers.

There's a new Ideaology embellishment called trimmings. It comes in 3 ribbon or trim styles to a pack in white. Tim has colored the trim all of the above colors with a mini mister filled with diluted distress re-inker.

Another photo of the shadow box things. I ordered the two smallest ones. I ordered all of the new ideaology - embellishments, papers, tissue tapes etc.

Crafy Secrets! They always have a large amont of beautiful samples. They cater more to the greeting card artist.

I re-ordered the Alice in Wonderland clear stamp set.

New Halloween clear stamp set.

I believe this one is called Banners and it was voted the most popular new stamp set on the Crafty Secrets blog.

A new birdies stamp set.

Crafty Secrets makes postcard kits. Each kit comes with several clear stamps, 6 postcard bases and other little ephemera and embellishments. Here's a couple of samples from the Halloween postcard kit. I ordered Halloween and Christmas styles.

Tattered Angels. I've been wanting to stock some of the glimmer mist. I ordered all 6 of the one ounce sampler packs. They have three coordinating colors plus a 4th as an extra sparkly final coat. The packs also have instructions. I like these kits. For about half the price of two regular 2 oz bottles of glimmer mist, you can try 4 different colors of the one oz bottles.

Maya Road - Ordered these little composite flowers. They are small. You could use them on ATC's.

Two new trinket pins for Christmas - green vintage pearl and light green Christmas or pine trees.

Melissa Frances vintage ephemera pack.

Vintage ephemera stickers. There are several different styles.

This is new Melissa Frances christmas paper pack. I ordered it in the 8 x 8 size.

October Afternoon - I ordered several of the 8 x 8" paper packs like this one.

October Afternoon has the large word card books that coordinate with the papers. I ordered some of these.

Another mini paper pack - Modern Homemaker.

October Afternoon wildcards coordinate with the papers. They are 2.5 x 3.5". Sold to me for you!

Alphabet cards - 2.5 x 3.5" vintage alphabet lovelies!

These two photos show two of the new Prima lines. I ordered the mini paper packs, small tube of matching flowers and matching pebbles.

This photo kinda says it all. Pebbles with Gems!

I went to Seven Gypsies and forgot to take photos. I tried taking photos from the catalog in the hotel tonight and they all looked totally yellow and yuck. The lamps have a yellow cast. I ordered some cool new Seven Gypsies stuff - mini paper packs, bird/nature ATC kits, mini ephemera packs, and all of the new rub-ons. You'll love all this stuff.

I had this post all done, tried to save it and the hotel internet kicked me off. My blogging software had saved a draft, but I had to go back and re-type a bunch of this. Since I did this twice, the second time I was a lot more succint and not so chatty.

I have a class with Crafty Secrets in the morning at the ungodly hour of 7am. After the class, I'll be on a plane back to Houston. Thanks for checking in and following along with me the CHA show.

Day One at CHA

I am here in Chicago for the Summer Craft and Hobby (CHA) Show. Today is an "education" day. For me this means, take a couple of classes! I took a class with Melissa Frances and Hero Arts.

Here is the supply kit for the Melissa Frances class. It was called "Totally Techniques."

Here is the front cover of the little book we made. It had too many pages and I didn't even come close to getting done. We used MF silver glass glitter on the cover and I loved it! It isn't a blinding bright silver, but kinda reminded me of little crushed up mirrors, if that makes any sense. I really liked it. I didn't follow the project design 100% for this cover. I used the image of the little girl instead of two bright gold glittery letter. We used a really cook MF ephemera kit. It has little several photos like the one above, the ribbon above and other trims, some white pearls, and I can't remember what all else. It was cool though. And we used some really wonderful vintage ephemera stickers. I will probably have to order this stuff.

Here's another little photo thing from the ephemera kit.

Hero Arts sponsored my second class. It was a Christmas-themed class. We made greeting cards. This is a photo of some of the stuff I brought home with me from the class.

We also brought these stamps home with us. This is a special "retailer" pack of stamps.

This is another special package of stamps put together for retailers to use in their stores for customer classes, demos, etc.

The leaves are little felt leaves. They're a new HA product.

This card uses two of the new Christmas tree stamps, a new felt snowflake, a new background stamp and lots of little red crystals.

This is a little pop-up card that can hold a gift card. It was easy to make. This card uses new snowflake stamps.

This tag shape was cut with one of the Tim Holtz alterations dies. It's also a gift card holder.

Believe it or not, we made a tiny gift bag out of an envelope. I smashed it back flat for transport home.

I liked both the classes. I'm definitely going to order some of the new Melissa Frances stuff.

Tomorrow I have an 8am class with Hampton Arts and then all day at show trying not to spend too much money on new store inventory.

Wednesday morning at 7am (GAH! - I'm NOT a morning person!) I have a class with Crafty Secrets, will go to show for just a bit and then back to Houston.

I'll take photos tomorrow of the stuff that I'm ordering! My must see vendors are Stamper's Anonymous, Advantus, Stanislaus Imports, Melissa Frances, October Afternoon, Maya Road, 7 Gypsies, Ranger, May Arts, Crafty Secrets, Tattered Angels, Prima and a few more. There's a new place I'm going to visit - Bottle Cap Inc. Maybe I'll end up ordering some cool bottle caps. We'll see!

It'll be late again tomorrow night before I get a chance to blog. Stay tuned!!!