And so it begins… We are going to be going around the floor getting some ideas and making piles of catalogs in the hotel room, nightly. We may find something interesting each day, which we’ll post here — but in the end, may find another manufacturer that is doing things in a ‘better’ way. We’ll see!

There are about four football fields full of vendors at CHA. At least 80% of those have to do with our segment of the craft market. We have almost 500 in our database. Thank goodness I brought the ‘baby laptop’ for the show. Otherwise, it would be really hard to keep things straight.

So we started our day by going through the New Exhibitors area downstairs. These are manufacturers who have not presented at CHA before. They may not be necessarily ‘new’ to the industry – but this is their first time with a booth at the show. Of the new exhibitors, we found a few interesting companies.

• Outdoor and More Scrapbook Decor – interactive page elements that adhere to the outside of a page protector.   Not a new idea – but nicely implemented.
• Bam Pop! – We like the Volume 4 collection. It’s a fun back to school look – that would be great for high school pages and class reunions. We are going to restock Volume 3 too and get a couple of their clear stamp sets.
• Pink Paislee – a new company. Their colors match Bazzill. We like the Office Lingo collection.
• Paper Trunk – New company from Carrie Postma. The papers are printed on recycled cardstock using vegetable based inks. We are excited to support this young company!
• Clear Scraps – while the ‘jury’ is still out (as a LOT of the companies are showing acrylic), this company has the lead in that their material is dry embossable through equipment such as the Wizard, Cuttlebug, etc. Pretty cool.
• Core’dinates – really amazing black paper, with a colored core. Look!

It’s been very exciting so far – so much inspiration in one place!  Stay tuned!