Day Two at CHA - Crafty Secrets/Maya Road.

I went to Maya Road and ordred some cool stuff there before I went to Crafty Secrets. Unfortunately, my photos at Maya Road didn't turn out so great. I ordred some stamps, chipboard sets. chipboard books and etc. Back to Crafty Secrets. This is one of their new clear stamp sets that I ordered. It's an office-themed set.

They have best card samples at the Crafty Secrets booth. I have to do skinny book page with a mermaid theme and I'm sure that I'll be able to do something with these stamps for the page.

Here are the mermaid stamps.

Alice in Wonderland! Here's a sample card from the new Alice clear stamp set.

Here's the Alice set of stamps. I love them!

This is the new Altered Fairy creative scraps. I got a deal on these! There are crowns, party hats, wings, kids, birds and all sorts of fun do dads on this creative scraps set.

Here's the other side. I ordered in several other stamp sets - a retro coffee set, a set of silly kitties, an "altered art" set that I ordered last year and something else. The "Craft Supershow" was held right before the CHA show. I ordered directly with the owner. She said that she had extras of some of some of the items left over from the Supershow, so I'm brining several stamps and the Altered Fairy Creative Scraps home with me. They will be available next week.

Day Two at CHA - Advantus

The second place I went was the Advantus booth to order the Tim Holtz Ideaology stuff. I got all the new Ideaology stuff, some of this is pictured above with a sideways photo. I also ordered in the new Tim Holtz papers.

Here's more of the Ideaology.

This is tissue paper tape. The Advantus booth person told me that it is very transparent and fun to layer. I ordered in all 4 of these tape sets.

Another sideways photo. My blogging skills aren't the best. This is Tim's new how-to book. The first 100 people to order got one of these for free and I got one! Woo hoo! I've browsed through it. It shows tons of Tim's techniques and gives you ideas for his stuff. I ordered in a few of these too.

Day Two at CHA - Stamper's Anonymous

Hi again! If you compare this to yesterday's photo of the main hallway at the convention center, you can see a big difference. They had a little opening ceremony thing and read a letter from the governor of California - Ah-nuld!

The first place I went was Stamper's Anonymous. I took a few photos of some of the samples. This is a sample from one of the new Tim Holtz sets.

Another sample from one of the Tim Holtz sets.

Yet another sample from one of the Tim Holtz sets! I orderd in all of the new Tim Holtz stamp sets except for the alphabet.

I saw this and I love this stamp. Think of the possibilities for Halloween! This is a Michael DeMeng stamp from Stamper's Anonymous. I ordered in this one and one that is a very grungy cabinet card photo like stamp. These are wood-mounted stamps. I ordered one for myself!

Have you heard of the Studio 490 stamps? I'd seen them, but never paid too much attention. I ordered some.

This one has an old bottle and old label.

I like stamps like this - with the woman's face. The Studio 490 stamps are red rubber on vinyl cling.

Here's a sample using one of the Studio 490 stamps.

I'm going to do several posts and they will end up backwards. I guess I should do the last post first, but it's been a long day! Does this even make any sense????

CHA Day One

Hi everyone! I'm here in Anaheim, CA for the CHA 2010 Winter show. The show starts tomorrow. Today was an "education" day.

This is a shot of the hallway in the convention center. It's not busy today. Wait until tomorrow. This will look completely different!

Here's a photo of the hallway where my class was held today. Room 213A. Lucky number 13! My class today was with Hero Arts.

These are the projects we were supposed to make. You know how it goes at these things. You never have time to finish everything. What you do finish usually isn't so great as you're hurrying trying to get it done. We had to share supplies, so that slowed things down too. Honestly, I cannot stamp in classes. I don't what my deal is, but my stamping in classes is horrible.

Here's the package of stuff that was waiting for us. These classes are always great. They cost $25 and you always walk away with lots of stuff for your $25. Sometimes I win door prizes in the classes, but not this time. :(

One thing about this class that was different. Hero Arts is using a LOT of the Ranger/Tim Holtz stuff and selling these items too. They are selling the new Distress Inks pads, Diamond Glaze, the Mini Misters and I don't know what all else.

Here's the first card we did. The person next to me got this dot stamp in her kit. We had to share it. She liked the WM big stamp that was in my class kit, so we traded! A win-win situation. We put Diamond Glaze on the donut.

For this one, the big flower was already stamped and embossed on watercolor paper. (See the Dots stamp again?) We colored it with distress inks. Then we sprayed it with a mini mister with perfect pearls and water. The distress inks were supposed to run together, but of course, mine did NOT! I didn't feel bad as the person next to me, hers looked just like mine.

In the sample, the donut didn't look this big. When I was trying to put this all together like the sample, I said something like "This donut is freaking huge!" And of course the instructors heard me and laughed. It really is too big for the coffee cups.

Here's the clear stamps that I got. I think they made special kits for us with stamps from several different sets. I like this set better than the one that had the coffee cups and donuts.

A boring photo, but here's the dot stamps. It's mounted on vinyl cling and is big enough for a greeting card.

In the class kit, I got a Scattered Straw Distess Ink Pad, 3 acrylic blocks (now I can only find two of them here at the hotel), a tape runner and a black Hero Arts stamp pad.

We had like 10 minutes to do this bracelet. Right! I used the new Barn Red Distress Ink - smooshed it around some. They had this gold glitter spray stuff, so that went on next. I used one of the clear stamps with black ink. I wanted to color in parts of the stamped parts, but alas, the class was over. I have one card to finish up too.

I enjoyed the class. The show starts in earnest tomorrow. I have two classes. The first is the "Amazing Stamped Mini Book" and I have no clue who is putting this on. I can't remember and it's not on my ticket. The second is the "Latest and Greatest of My Little Shoebox," I also have no clue what we'll be doing in this class, but I can always learn something and the MLS products are cool.

I can't wait for the show tomorrow. It's always so much fun to see what's new and place orders. The hard thing is not being able to order everything I'd like to order.

More tomorrow!

New Venice Collage Sheet

I just got in a bunch of postcards of Venice, Italy from the 1920's. They are glorious! The architecture is fabulous. Here's a sample of what the new Venice collage sheets will be like. I plan on making at least one collage sheet with the photo corner images and another collage sheet of images without the photo corners.

Back of Skinny Book Page

Here is the back of the summer skinny book page. It's really simple, but I like it!

I cut the 4 x 8" chipboard base and covered it with the vintage sheet music. I painted it green with Studio Landscape Green - more like drybrushing the paint on. Then I painted on some gold liquid watercolor. The gold liquid watercolor is really shiny and a little goes a long way.

I had to go to Lowe's earlier in the week to look for some stuff for the day job and saw the paint chips. The idea started turning over in my head then. I found some stickers in my stash and applied those to paint chip. The little bird is from the Maya Road Mini Bird Sheer set. I edged the paint chip with black ink before I glued it down.

The big sunflower is from the front of paint brochure that I got at Lowe's. This flower is exactly 4 inches wide. I didn't have to size it or anything - just cut it out. I like flowers with faces, so I used my all time favorite face from my Fabulous Faces collage sheet. The gold large round German scrap frame was the perfect size for the center of the flower. I glued on the face and then the frame.

I went to Hobby Lobby on my lunch hour today and they had all of their gemstones on 40% off, so I bought a bunch. I applied the green jewels as shown.

Then it needed just a little something more. I tried a gold German scrap sun in the top right corner and it didn't work. I ended up using 3 butterflies from my gold Designs German scrap. The butterfly on the face/frame kind of reminds me of a crown. I glued down the three butterflies.

In my stash, I found some Seven Gypsies gaffer tape with the months of the year. June seemed appropriate, so I cut around the letters, so the word would be smaller.

I used a light green copic marker to highlight the edges of the flower. The last thing I did was to ink the edges of the piece with black ink.

I think it looks summery and this is very me.

First Skinny Book Page

I'm participating in a skinny book project. This will last about 15 months. So what's a skinny book? A skinny book is tall and skinny. The pages for this project are 4" wide and 8" tall. We're doing one page front and back each month. Here's the front of the page I'm doing. This person's theme is "summer" and she wanted things like flowers, birds, beach etc.

I started out cutting a piece of chipboard 4 x 8". I bought some K and Company 12 x 12 paper pads. The background paper and postcard paper are from one of those paper packs. I glued down the background paper and brushed Vintage Photo Distress Ink around the edges. I did the same thing to the pieces of the postcard paper. I glued down the postcard paper next. The flower thing in the top corner of the tag is actually 3 off-white paper flowers. I colored 3 flowers with my Copic markers, folded them in half and stapled them at the fold. I brushed the vintage photo ink pad across the edges of the flowers.

The tag is a 7 Gypsies Victoria 97% complete tag. This pack of tags has wonderful flowers, fruit and birds. I brushed a little Old Paper Distress Ink over the tag and brushed the Vintage Photo Distress ink around the edges. The bird is a transparency that I made from the Catnip Designs Nesting collage sheet. I used vellum tape to adhere it to the tag and added the three brads. The ribbon on the tag is sheer organza.

All of the eggs are from the Vintage Egg Cigarette Collage Sheet. There's a whole vintage egg card on the bottom of the tag. I cut the three eggs at the bottom out of the collage sheet. I used the Vintage Photo ink pad around the edges of the eggs. After I glued the eggs down, I used a gray copic marker to highlight them and followed up with a light green copic marker. The letters f-l-y are Making Memories stickers. I outlined each letter with a light green copic marker.

Before I glued the flower bunch and tag down, I applied a couple of stickers about Paris from my stash - the red and beige stickers. There's just tiny amount of red in the tag and I wanted the red sticker to complement the red in the tag. They are also highlighted with a light green copic marker. I glued down the flowers next. I couldn't find any pop-up dots for the tag, so I cut up some of the double-sided sticky foam that I use when I make wood-mounted stamps. It worked fine.

When the group voted on the size of the pages, I voted for 3 x 6". I thought 3 x 6" would be more challenging and I was a little worried about filling up a 4 x 8" page with art. I like small canvases better. I think I'll do OK on the 4 x 8" pages.

I picked up some paint chips at Home Depot. I'm thinking about yellow and green paint chips with flowers for the back of this page. We'll see what happens! Sometimes what I plan doesn't work out so well. That's art!