What a Difference a Day Makes!

Or a week, or a month, or a whole generation! It's unbelievable how much the Arts & Crafts Industry has changed over the past 15 years, or maybe not (unbelievable) since it is a creative industry after all. We've seen trends come and go, then come again - beading for example. Some trends are starting to make a comeback - wearables - and some have disappeared altogether. This was really apparent at the recent CHA show. I've been home a week now and had a little time to go thru some notes and photos again. As I said earlier, there was definitely more vintage and not a lot of digital, in fact I really don't remember seeing any digital at all.

I missed a couple of things in my initial post that are worth mentioning. Marvy Uchida has some new very, very big punches with 5 or 6 shapes on them. They are great for card making and easy to use, since it's a lever punch. Unibind has a wide variety of small albums that are just perfect for gift giving! They are sized for standard photographs, 4" x 6", so it's easy to make one in minutes. Sandy Lion has always done a tremendous job with licensed characters, but this time they really outdid themselves with 3-D papers! Just like the books and movies, when you view them thru special glasses the characters jump out at you, but the pages look fine without glasses. I'm just waiting for a company to come up with a 3-D camera, or at least software to turn digital photos into 3-D. I have an old 3-D viewer that my grandparents owned. I loved to pull it out and look through all the special photos they had every time I went to visit. My children had one too (about 25 years or so ago) and just loved it. Donna Smiley at 7 Gypsies always does such a wonderful job finding cool products for her company and, of course Ranger had new products to share. All in all though I didn't see a whole lot of innovation at this show, just new ideas that are really old, rediscovered ones in a different dress. It's all about presentation, and, of course, if you haven't been around as long as I have, some of the ideas and products really are new! I just LOVE the amazing creativity of it all!

The next CHA show will be in Anaheim towards the end of January. I'm already looking forward to it and wondering what will be new and exciting. In the meantime, give something different a whirl and ENJOY!!!

Yours truly,
Julie :)