The Rude Awakening and a Super Show!!

Wow what a fantastic road trip! Jean and I left Fort Worth on Sunday morning at the crack of noon (took a while to load all our boxes) and drove 9 hours to Rolla, Missouri where we spent the night. After a good night's sleep the city provided us with a very special wake-up call courtesy of the Fire Dept. Apparently someone had burned a bagel in the toaster................... definitely a "scrapbook moment".

We pulled into our hotel in Rosemont late Monday afternoon. The trade show was held Tuesday thru Thursday and I have lots of photos to share that I took on the trade show floor, but first here's the news from the Super Show (consumer craft show). This was the first time the show had been held in Chicago and the turnout was incredible. It's great to see so many people who love to craft!

The mayor opened the show together with Mike McCooey and Wendy Russel. Wendy is from Canada and hosted a craft show for HGTV there.

So many people and so much to do. I was the first presenter at the Craft Academy at noon on Friday. The Craft Academy is on the show floor and open to anyone on a first come basis. Designers can show techniques, demo products, have a Make It/Take It - anything educational, or informative. I chose to talk about the new products I'd seen at the Trade Show, which will be available in stores over the next few months. I had a few samples to show and talked about many more. Kathy Cano-Murillo, the Crafty Chica was there too to share a project. You could also find her at the "I Love to Create" booth at the Make It/Take It table.

I'll give you information on new products later in Part 2 when I post photos from the trade show.

After appearing at the Craft Academy I judged a craft challenge in the Westcott booth. We had 3 crafters who were challenged to decorate a scissor holster and Eileen Hull, Lorine Mason and I were the judges. Marisa Pawelko was our host. You can see the video on YouTube/America's Top Crafter.

It's hard to judge creativity, because all 3 projects were equally cool in a different way, so we politely passed the buck to Wendy Russell and she chose Isabel, the youngest contestant, as the winner.

Isabel was very creative and had turned her holster into an animal with a pointy nose. I love to see children crafting - "touchy feely" hobbies are important in this hi-tech world we live in. It was fun to see that even the guys in the booth got in on the act. Check out that yellow holster.... very becoming!

The judging was over and I made my way to the Michaels booth to teach a Make It/Take It for Loew-Cornell using Woodsie™ shapes. I love working with these small pieces of wood and used them throughout my class projects, which I'll show you later. We made a note holder and it was non-stop crafting fun for the next 2 hours. My friend, June Beach, took some photos then went on to teach her jewelry project. For those of you who don't know June, she is a jewelry designer at Michaels and also a Swarowski Ambassador. I just LOVE her jewelry pieces. You can see some great samples of her work in the Bella Boho book available in the jewelry department at Michaels.

With commitments fulfilled for the day I headed to the workshop storage room to start putting together "Goodie" bags for our Saturday workshops. Just look at all those boxes!!! They were on the cart, on the table and under the table too. Jean and I unpacked them all and filled bags until 8pm. I still can't believe how generous the manufacturers were. We received product from: Elmer's, I Love to Create, Colorbok, Creative Imaginations, Little Yellow Bicycle, Quick Quotes, SRM Stickers, Mark Richards Crystal Stickers, Loew-Cornell, Nikki Sivils Scrapbooker, Fancy Pants, Bo-Bunny, Deco Art, Plasteel (Smoothfoam), Westcott, Crafty Secrets, Bazzill, Pink Paislee, magazines from All American Crafts and Kanban. Imaginisce, Flower Soft, F&W Publishing, Pine Cone Press and Marvy Uchida also donated product for door prizes and Kathy Cano-Murillo donated an autographed copy of her new book, Waking Up in the Land of Glitter.

Everyone who took our classes came away with a swag bag like no other......... plus all the supplies needed to create the projects and a QuickQuotes bag to put them in. It was definitely Christmas in July! Here are some photos from the Saturday classes.

Everyone just loved Jean's hand painted Holiday Ornament projects.
These were the projects from the Christmas Crafts class:

I was probably a little too ambitious thinking we could accomplish all 6 projects in class, but everyone got to take all the supplies and tools home plus a CD of the project instructions, so I don't think anyone was disappointed. Extra kits of these projects will be available at my Etsy Shop in September, so check back next month for more news about that.

There were lots of vendors on the show floor with great demos. If you want to know "who's got the button" look no further than Blumenthal Lansing. Jane Anne Smith was helping consumers make their very own button rings. Just fabulous dahling!

I also visited the Super Crop hosted by Scrapbook Royalty. This crop is special in that it raises money for charity. I gave away 3 sets of Scrapbook Memories DVDs and donated some of our class "Goodie" bags for later in the evening. The lady standing next to me in the photo won one of the sets for traveling the longest distance to get to the show - she came from Israel!

I had about an hour between classes to check out the show floor and found my friend Melissa from Kaisercraft. We've been meeting at the shows for the past 2 or 3 years. Melissa is from Australia and the first time we met I introduced myself as the Host of Scrapbook Memories and asked if I could feature her products on the show. Since the show doesn't air "down under", she was a little unsure as whether I was on the up and up or not until someone else walked into the booth and asked to take a photo with me - perfect timing. That has happened each time I have been in her booth at the trade shows, so it's become quite a tradition for us to have a photo together at each show. I just love their products and creative ideas.

I also had a few minutes to talk to Deb who owns Pine Cone Press. I'd like to say that Deb is an "old timer" like me, but let's just say we're "seasoned professionals". She has put her years of knowledge into her business and it shows. She has a wide variety of great products and a kit of the month club. I highly recommend you check it out. I saw lots of Halloween papers and embellishments at the trade show and Deb has a great line too, Hocus Pocus, designed by Lindsy Ostrom, one of my favorite designers. Lindsay also designs projects for SRM Press.

Jean and I left Chicago Sunday morning and headed south. We stopped for a day in Iowa to visit Jean's daughter and new baby granddaughter and arrived home late Tuesday night. I'm still digging thru notes, downloading and resizing photos and hugging my grandkids, so it's taken me a while to post. Now I have to get to work on the trade show post...... Once that is uploaded, I'll be working on some "giveaways" - new products from the trade show, so keep checking back. In the meantime, check out Jean's blog "Just Crafty Me" to sign up for her weekly giveaways. Enjoy!

Yours truly,
Julie :)