CHA excitement begins

We've only been back from CHA for 4 days, and already we have received 2 products ordered at the show!!! And I know 2 more packages are on the way.

It's good to know some companies are fast, even after such a big show.

So what did we get?

We received the newest DVD from Page Sage. It's entitled Rubber Paper Scissors with Judi Watanabe (of Judi-Kins)

This DVD features lots of simple but elegant techniques that Judi is well known for. A must have for the beginner or seasoned rubber stamper! Great also for those non-stampers who want to branch out into card making.

Next our order from Zoom Albums came in. Oooooh, these are soooo cute!!! Miniature albums you print at home. I have so many ideas for these little gems!

Think of the cute gifts you could make for Grandmas! A little album they can carry in their purse. How about party favors, or Bride & Groom albums for a wedding. They take 12 pictures and turn them into a mini album. What comes in 12's? How about 12 years of school pictures, or the first 12 months of your baby's life, the 12 days of Christmas, or a "dozen reasons why I love you" book. You can make a toddler's first reader (take pictures of 12 animals and add the name of each animal for the child to read). Or a mini recipe book for a student in college with pictures of his/her favorite 12 dishes. How cute would a little travel log book be?

I can't wait to see what the UPS lady brings tomorrow!

Hugs,

-Fran

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Part 2 of the CHA Summer 2007 report

Time to write a little more about exciting CHA things......

Yesterday someone called to ask me about any new punches, and I totally forgot about the 6 new McGill punches that will be available in October. These are SOOOOOOOO cool. Here are a couple of them:

and a card made with the keyhole punch:

There are 6 punches all together: Hang Tag, Brackets, Symbols, Keyhole, Punctuation and Heirloom Hearts.

Each punch will be $18.99 and I will offer a pre-order special on my site with a deal if you buy all 6 at the same time.

I can't remember if I talked about clear stamps yesterday, but we picked up quite a few new ones. Autumn Leaves of course came out with another big batch. We picked up a new company (new for us, but they've been around a while) called Impression Obsession. They have some really nice designs for card makers, so we pretty much bought almost all they make in the way of clears.

Stampendous also had a few new clears, which of course we purchased. DMD Industries put out a line of very inexpensive clear stamps (some small ones for less than $2, and some regular size sheets as well). We also saw Daisy Bucket's booth had clear stamps, so of course we bought those. Fiskars also came out with some, and you guessed it, we bought them!!

Clear stamps were definitely a huge hit at CHA. We would have liked to pick up a few other lines (such as Technique Tuesdays) but we ran out of money. I know a lot of stampers prefer rubber over clear, but clear is what most every place is going to these days. They tend to be less pricey than rubber and they do have the advantage of ease of use with clear blocks.

Oh... one more clear stamp..... Francy Pants came out with 2 new 12"x12" clear stamp sets (and yes, we bought those too)

Moving on to new papers.... OMG, this is a long list. I'm just going to hit some highlights here:

-Basic Grey -- 4 new gorgeous lines + new chipboards and rub ons!

-Zsiage --- we already have their fabulous Scrap-o-dex, but this time we picked up many of their papers, chipboards and sheer elements that can be embossed!!

-Around the block --- call me crazy, we bought everything new they had

-Dove of the East --- I spoke about them on yesterday's blog edition.

-Cloud 9 --- they had too much to choose from, but I found a few papers and stickers

-Heidi Grace -- same as above

-Prism --- specialty metallic papers and vellums. Wait til you see what I found there!

-Daisy D's -- 4 new lines of papers, stickers, tags, etc

-Fancy Pants -- 3 new lines of papers/stickers, and some fab new overlays!!

-Daisy Bucket --- I bought everything new they had!

-SEI --- again, everything new. They had the cutest Kitty papers!!!! Can't wait to have those!!

-Karen Foster --- I focused mainly on BOY themes here, but got other things too.

-Bo-Bunny --- again, I purchased ALLLLLL their new stuff.

Another booth that always attracts me is Prima. They did not fail us this time. We re-ordered their Sprites (which we ran out of quickly after CHA Winter), plus they came out with MORE new Sprites, so ordered those too. I'm not too sure when we expect them as Prima is usually quite slow at shipping.... so stay tuned.

Maya Road had done it again with dozens more new chipboard album configurations, cute chipboard shapes, etc. Oh yes, they got a chunk of our money too.

For those of you who are interested in trying out Digital Scrapbooking, we have a great product for you. It's put out by McGill, and it is called Pixel Magic. It's super easy to use, comes with dozens of accessory disks and you can print the results at home or at your favorite store.

This will be a fun new tool for me as well.

One more thing for today: Have you seen the Clip-it-up yet? It's fantastic!! Here is a picture (as I can't describe it as well as I can show you)

The unit comes as the Main Base (bottom picture) and the Upper Tier can fit on top. You can clip up all your stickers, ribbons, trinkets and have them right on hand to scrapbook or make cards. Everything is at your fingertips. It revolves and also has tabs so you can organize your stuff by categories.

My husband just came home from work.... so it's time for me to go too. I will post again tomorrow with more pictures.

Hugs,
-Fran

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We're back from CHA

Well, we're back from the CHA summer show in Chicago. We spent 3 days browsing aisle after aisle of great new scrapbooking and crafting products. Needless to say, our feet are sore and our wallets are empty, but our minds are filled with great ideas, and our hearts with anticipation for the new products to arrive.

The sad thing is on the last day, at the last booth, I misplaced my digital camera. I had it on a clip on my belt and I think it fell out (maybe when there were so many people in a booth). I had taken dozens and dozens of pictures of new products and ideas to show you. All gone...

We're still going through all our notes, and my mind is quite fuzzy on exactly all that we saw and purchased.

For today, I'm going to list a few highlights of some exciting products we purchased. Tomorrow, I will blog again with more details and scans I have from catalogs we gathered.

One of the most exciting thing was of course the new line of dies from Spellbinders for the Wizard die cutting machine. Remember that these dies also work in other personal die cutting machines!! Those of you on my mailing list already know about the Nestabilities dies with graduated circles, scalloped circles, ovals, scalloped ovals etc. Very exciting. I was able to borrow a set of these dies to make a few samples. For the moment, you can see what the dies will do by going to www.franticstamper.com/wiz-preview.htm. I will post MORE new dies to that page this weekend, including the new Christmas dies, new Edgeabilities dies and the neat new flower creations dies that make pop up flowers. Stampers, cardmakers and scrapbookers can all benefit from these new dies!!! We expect the new dies to be available in late August.

Many companies had really nice papers, but by far the most beautiful paper collections I saw came from Dove of the East. We purchased all 4 of the paper collections, which you can see at http://www.doveoftheeast.com/. We also purchased the ribbons, the rub ons, and a few of the trinkets. In addition, we purchased a limited quantity of the 2 treasure boxes (China and India). We'll be taking pre-orders on these soon. Here is a picture of the India treasure box.

We should be receiving all Dove of the East products in approx. 3 weeks. (mid-August)

Another wonderful product we found were Zoom mini albums that you print yourself. These are the cutest 3"x3" little albums that you create with the software (included in the starter kit). You simply upload 12 pictures, add text if desired, and the software does the rest. Then print on the provided sticky back, pre-scored and pre-cut photo paper, fold according to the directions and adhere the provided covers. Here is what you get:
Think of the possibilities: Gift for Grandma's purse, Ornament on the tree, A review of your child's school pictures, Baby's 1st year by month, etc etc etc.... we will post examples of this on the site as soon as we have them. We expect this product in NEXT WEEK!!!

For those of you yearning for high-class organizational products, Options (a division of Plano, the makers of tackle boxes) are coming out with really top of the line designer products, from totes to storage boxes in fashion colors. My favorite was a purse size organizer made of ultra-suede in lime color. This small tote had many compartments to organize all your basic tools, but would also make a CUTE CUTE purse. Priced at around $35, it was a great value. I've seen similar purses in department stores for triple that price, and they didn't have all the neat features of these. They also had wheeled totes with class!!! Move over boring black cropping bag!!! We expect our shipment in October and I can't wait! I think these totes will be on many scrapbooker's Christmas lists.

Still one of the best tools is the Bind-It-All. We started carrying these after their introduction at CHA in January. Many people have requested some sort of tote for their Bind-it-All and they are coming!!! A cool blue tote with a large compartment for your Bind-it-All (the blue matches the blue of the machine) will be here in September. Meanwhile, new smaller wires are here in stock and ready to ship already.

Tim Holtz devotees will love the new Distress Crackle Paints!! I got a chance to watch Tim demo and had my picture taken with him. Too bad my camera is missing... I'm really sad not to have that picture. The Crackle Paints should be available late September and we will take pre-orders starting next week.

Well, I must go to bed now.... I will post more tomorrow, with more pictures.

If you are interested in putting in some pre-orders, please wait until I post details on my site this weekend. Many of my catalogs with prices are still in the suitcases at this time, so I don't have prices on hand.

Thank you!

-Fran

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