I wasn’t sure if it was going to work, but I tried to create a video of us putting up the tradeshow booth. Before I had ever participated in having a booth, I always wondered what the process was. Sooooo…here’s a time lapsed video of the two days we put together the Carta Bella booth. It’s two days squished into 3 minutes. It’s so fun, and I hope you enjoy my commentary!
Enjoy! Carina
Hello! I’m back from Summer CHA in Chicago and I’ve spent the last 24 hours downloading a heck-of-a-lotta videos and photos! You can see more photos (if you don’t think you’ll get enough here) on the Carta Bella blog.
Many of you will recognize the booth as my Quilt Market booth. It was fun to see it filled with paper this time around. It’s also fun to compare that baby belly after two months of baking (only a month left!).
Here Lindsay and I pose on Day 1 of set up. I hardly had to lift a box because everyone was so concerned (I think they just didn’t want to deliver a baby).
Set up was also fun because it was a Carta Bella and Echo Park team effort. It was nice to have that many hands putting together the two booths. Check out Andrea (CHA Coordinator for Echo Park and Carta Bella) putting up the Carta Bella sign (below) and Lindsay bolting together the walls.
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There were a lot of darling projects in the booth! This advent calendar was made by Deena Rutter who also designed Merry & Bright for Carta Bella (ships September 2012).
I made this Beautiful Moments lamp below. I HIGHLY recommend having a silhouette machine for this project. It turned out darling but took a lot of time to put together.
Samantha Walker put together this fabulous display of silhouette pieces using her Paris Girl Collection.
So many darling cards made by the design team!
Here are my All Hallow’s Eve bottles that you will see in the upcoming Halloween video Lindsay and I do. It should be posted sometime next week. Any guesses on what we dress up as?
I made this banner using the Alphabet Junction Collection by Melanie Ritchie.
Here’s Miss Melanie herself with her first collection! Love the Vanna White pose!
Me and my belly.
Shimelle (from 2Peas in a Bucket), with Melanie and myself. Too bad we aren’t having fun.
Here’s dinner with Lori Whitlock (designer for Echo Park) and Andrea (CHA Coordinator for EP and CB). Matt (THE sticker guy and serious foodie) chose this awesome place. The food was A.M.A.Z.I.N.G. If you go to Chicago, it’s worth getting the beef tenderloin (and all the desserts) http://www.carnivalechicago.com/.
Look at the amazing light fixture! (Which also accounts for the bad photo lighting).
Well, there it is! A few photos from CHA and a little of what we were up to. I’ll admit, I was happy to get back home to my own bed. I’m at the most uncomfortable stage of this pregnancy, and it was nice to snuggle into bed last night. Josh and my girls are in Sun Valley at the Bar Convention (therefore making it possible to get all my blogging in before they come home). They should be showing up tonight so I will have my little darlings to snuggle.
Be back in a second with our tradeshow booth video!
—Carina
Get ready for an image-heavy post! Lots and lots of eye-candy! Here we go!
I really didn’t even plan on going to CHA until the last minute with Designer Workshop being just around the bend. So I was in-and-out in a jiffy (I flew in Saturday morning and left Monday bright and early). However, I still managed to take a plethera a photos. This is easily the longest post I’ve ever done. I tried really hard to tell you whose booth I took the photo at so that you can go check out their new products. So much fabulous stuff at this show!
I know some of you are going to ask, so here it is…there are NO products from me at this show. That’s right. But don’t worry. I’ll let you in on the fun in just a few short months.
I spent a good portion of the weekend hanging on with fellow Riley Blake designer Samantha Walker. Love Samantha and love her design work. She has stuff at Creative Imaginations and Spellbinders.
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Here’s me happily Hanging out at the Waverly booth of crocheted chairs. We managed to read AFTER I took the picture that you weren’t suppose to sit the chairs. Oops. Sorry Waverly. The felt bear, monsters (photo below), and puppets (photo 2 below) are from the Kunin Group.
I failed to grab the name of the yarn company that had this adorable crocheted animal photo.
Once again, I dropped the ball on both of these. I usually take a photo of the company logo right after the image but I can’t find any such photo for these two. The paper flowers are gorgeous and I love the white frames and layouts!
October Afternoon and some Prima.
This is Lori Whitlock, who designs for Echo Park and Riley Blake. It was a blast to finally meet her in person.
Here’s Laurie’s new line This and That. Totally adorable!
The cupcakes were from Echo Park and the photo of paper flowers from Making Memories.
Lots and lots of accordion flowers at this show.
Paper chains adorned Glitz Design’s booth.
More from Glitz Design and then a fun photo of Heidi Swapp and me.
I can’t rave enough about how awesome Heidi’s products are. I love the embellishments especially the newspaper-y banner pieces. These folders and papers can be colored any color and they have the pattern color resistant. It makes for some amazing layouts.
Like this one (love!).
More of Heidi’s products below and a gorgeous table set up by Pink Paislee.
This was the funniest thing I saw at the show. And of course I can’t remember the name of the company. These are CHAIR SOCKS! Aren’t they hysterical?
Sei had some awesome displays.
More Sei and crayons & glue from a cool company EcoGreen Crafts. I was really impressed with their kid-friendly products.
Adornit created this darling banner…
and accordion flowers.
I was loving this from Maya Road….wooden spools! I just bought a jar from an antiques shop but I need more for my tradeshow booth at Quilt Market. This may be a way to supplement!
I believe this is Tim Holtz.
More October Afternoon (paper and cute jars below).
Prima
I have so many pictures from this booth but have no idea what company it is. But examples were fabulous!
More accordion flowers. I thought this one was clever though with the use of several papers.
This was Tim Holtz but for a different brand.
DCWV had great paper trees.
This is from Paper Quilt Creations. I thought the concept was really cute.
A little Anna Griffin.
I loved this company—Little Pink Ladybug. They make bow templates that were seriously so impressive! other than being an ultra nice company, I thought the product was pretty amazing. Check them out if you get a chance!
The bird paper is from October Afternoon (love!) and the layout came from somewhere near that booth:).
And that’s all I’ve got! Putting together the blogpost felt longer than the actual time I spent in California. Hope you enjoyed and sorry if you fell in love with a product that I managed to forget who made. A girl can only do so much when surrounded by such awesomeness.
Hope you have a crafty day! Carina
I had every intention of blogging while at CHA, but somehow I never got around to it. So here’s a quick review of the week in Chicago. I have oodles and oodles of photos, so this does not begin to cover the “happenings,” but as always, things are crazy around these parts so here’s my Friday-midnight report.
This photo was taken by Meg at Spraguefest by the Bean. Why I was wearing a sweater (even a short sleeved one) in that heat is a mystery to us all. Thankfully, I had a chance to jump around at Millennium Park.
1-Deena Rutter and I promoting our Halloween lines at CHA.
2-Haunted™ comes with acrylic stamps, epoxy brads, and flocked vinyl. Yum!
3. The fab My Mind’s Eye Booth. Seriously, it is so cute!
4-Crystal, Deena, and I headed to the city for a little Bandera, shopping, and sightseeing.
5-A sightseeing tour with the Spraguefest group had me happily sliding down the Picasso and racing Kelly and Crystal.
6-It looks like ice cream doesn’t it? It’s actually a caprese salad. Everyone thought I had ordered dessert first. I didn’t want to let them down, so for the next dinner I did (ummm, cannoli!).
7-Just to prove I was, in fact, in Chicago.
8-I’m caught doing a little sewing at the CHA Supershow. I tried out my flocked Haunted line on this sewing machine.
9-Crystal and I made matching bubble skirts! And this was Crystal’s very first time sewing. I make a motion for her to buy a sewing machine. Second?
10-Transformers 3 was being filmed. Unfortunately, you will have to ask Meg and Gary for their photos of Patrick Dempsey. I managed to miss that one.
11-My favorite night out!!!!! A few of us hopped over to Navy Pier for a little throw-up-inducing rides and ice cream (which was closed so I had to beg the manager to let all 8 of us in. Please, please, please?). BTW, don’t sit with Crystal on the swings. While you are clutching to the chain links for dear life, Crystal will be pretending to fly and wobble you all over the place. You will never get on the swings again.
12-The new Sprague booth at the CHA Supershow. It was PACKED the entire time. There’s lovely Jessica herself.
13-Kari from iKari. Also known to lose her voice from talking ALOT and clapping at everyone to show her support. This picture is proof.
14-A wonderful night of laughs with Crystal, Joan, Meg, and Gary. The waiter made it all the more fun. You can’t tell by this picture but the dessert was the size of my head. Okay, maybe that’s an exaggeration. But not by much.
And that is my very-short review (aren’t you glad I didn’t give you the long version?).
Yes, this is it. The big news! I recently signed a fabric deal and you will be able to find my designs in fabric in early 2010! Unfortunately, I have to be very vague about the release because we haven’t even begun first rounds of strike-offs (I will be sure to keep you updated!)! It’s been my busiest summer yet with putting together my first fabric collection and lots of new scrapbooking stuff coming out from My Minds Eye! Next week is CHA and you’ll get to see my Spider’s Web Line which is a sophisticated take on Halloween! I can’t wait to show you how I use them for halloween decorating projects and more!
I also wanted to give you a heads up that Jen and I will be hosting a chat in the 2peas forums (in the digital scrapbooking forum) on Tuesday, July 28th at 8pm CST. It will lots of fun! 
You are welcome to quiz us about digital scrapbooking or paper scrapbooking (and anything else you may like:). Jen and I are also both doing giveaways throughout the chat! It will be fun that you don’t want to miss!