CHA 2009

This weekend mom and I were able to attend the CHA event here in Orlando. Oh my goodness, it was so much fun! I was a little bummed to see many of the companies who were there for the trade days left for the consumer days. I had been looking forward to seeing a lot of thing in person and then their booth wasn't there :(.

There were lots of stores with goods for sale, but also lots of vendors showing off their new goods. Some selling goods. There were also lots of celeb crafters and free make and take sessions.

The highlight of my day there was the Papertrey booth. I have loved papertrey stamps for a while now, but always feared buying without being able to see and hold. We waited in line for nearly an hour just to get into the little booth, but I spend my fair share of stamps and will be back to their online store http://www.papertreyink.com/, probably too soon in the future.

Here are the stamp sets I got:

1. cupcakes, you all know my love of all things cupcakes so this one I couldn't resist.


2. Second thing I can't resist, buttons. These are far better for my hips too. However, this stamp set lead me to the horrid task of dividing my buttons out by color. That took 1/2 of the afternoon but now I will have a much easier time finding those I want to use.

3. Fancy Flourishes. I see these used often on a blog I love (stalk) http://dawnmcvey.typepad.com/ (I got to meet Dawn this weekend and I have a picture, but due to the horrible closeness and poor lighting of it, I won't be posting for both our sakes.). Since seeing the first card she used them on, I wanted them. I bought a cheapy version at Michaels, only to be disappointed in it's stamping outcome. Now I'm SO happy to have the real thing.

I also got a free stamp set used in two of the cards I'm about to show you. It's an exclusive set that was only available at CHA and you only got it if you spent too much moola. :). I'm wishing I had spent a little more and gotten a second set because I'm seeing the "free" set on ebay for as much as $60. CRAZY.

Due to the convention itself and the time spent dividing my buttons, I wasn't left with too much time to actually play with the stamps. However, here are a few quick cards I made up. The second one is a duplicate of one the papertrey girls taught us how to make during one of the free make and take sessions on Friday.


Happy Monday!