CHA Day 1 Highlights: Amazing Classes, Dining Al Fresco, and the Cab Ride of Doom

Hello, Memory Bound friends! We had such a great time at CHA and can't wait to share more pictures with you. In today's post, you'll see photos from some of the classes we took on Day 1 of the convention. As you will see, we managed to fit in a couple of perilous adventures, too! 

Maggie started the day with a class by Tim Holtz. In addition to being an incredibly talented designer, Tim's a great educator. His classes are so popular that admission is by lottery!

 

Tim's project was a Configurations box with wheels, covered with papers and filled with all kinds of vintage goodies. The box even lights up with a tiny hanging lantern!

 After class, Maggie had a photo op with Tim!

  
Here's a close-up of Tim's amazing project!

Meanwhile, Bonnie and Kellie attended a class by Canvas Corp. 

They learned some fun mixed media techniques.

Bonnie looks pretty excited about all the new techniques she learned!

By mid morning, it was time for some of the crew to head over to the Creative Imaginations and Quick Quotes preview party held at a local hotel. (Check out pictures of the new product we saw in our previous post here.) Nobody wanted to walk 15 minutes to the hotel in 100-degree heat, so we hopped in a cab. That's when the first adventure of the day started! The cab driver turned his music up LOUD, which should have been our first clue that things were going to head downhill fast!

The next indication of trouble was when he pulled out a little wooden owl and American flag and told us how the owl talks to him. We all know that owls are popular design motifs, but a talking owl in a cab? Of course, this called for a picture. :)

The cab driver sped through the busy streets and somehow managed to get lost on the short drive to the hotel. When we finally arrived, he pulled into the wrong entrance and nearly crashed into another car. Kellie happened to be turned completely around in her seat so she could see out the back window and yelled for the driver to stop just in time!

 Whew! We made it to the preview party and lived to tell about it!

Once inside, we looked at lots of great new product and sat down to make a fun mini-album. Look how serious Maggie is in this picture! She is not going to miss a step!

 

Later, Kellie, Bonnie, and I attended a class sponsored by Hero Arts.

One of the instructors was Shari Carroll, one of my favorite designers! We learned some fun stamping techniques and made several wonderful holiday cards. You can look for them in future make-n-takes!

Our next adventure happened at dinner time. We had only a short time to grab something to eat so Kellie asked the hotel staff for a restaurant recommendation. She was told there was a Mexican place on the second floor of a building "just across the parking lot".

So we set off in the 100-degree heat, in what turned out to be an endless trek around office buildings and through parking lots. There was no Mexican restaurant in sight. We were getting hotter and hotter with no hope of food, so Maggie boldly went into a fancy steak house and asked for directions. Turns out we had to venture through a parking ramp with rough terrain to get there!

FINALLY! An Adobe Gila's sign beckoned us to come in and cool off.

 

But as we climbed the stairs, we could see something was strange...This was an OPEN AIR restaurant! On a 100-degree day, of course we had to find the only open air place in the city of Chicago!

 

 "Where would you like to sit?" the waitress asked. We burst out laughing and told her as far away from the open doors as possible! Then we took some photos for dramatic effect. :)

As if we hadn't packed enough into the day already, we still had a few evening classes to enjoy! After our refreshing dinner, Kellie, Bonnie, and I went to a great mini-album class by Fancy Pants. It was fun to meet the gal behind the brand we all love. When Kellie asked her how Fancy Pants got its name, she explained that she enjoyed crafts as a little girl, so her grandma began calling her Little Miss Fancy Pants. When she started her company, it seemed to be the perfect name!

One of the steps involved spraying paper strips and fashioning them into a ruffle along the page.

What a fun accent! We'll be teaching this great class at Memory Bound so look for details on our next calendar, due out in September.

Meanwhile, Katie and Maggie attended a class where they learned some awesome new techniques using WOW embossing powder.

And Maggie won the big prize: A whole box of embossing powders! Her expression says it all! It's MINE, all MINE! LOL

Keep watching our blog for more pictures of our CHA adventures! We're all very excited about the new products we've ordered for Memory Bound and can't wait to share them with you! 
Janet

CHA Highlights - Day 1

 Hello, Memory Bound friends! We are just back from a wonderful time in Chicago at CHA, the Craft and Hobby Association Trade show held each winter and summer. At the trade show, retailers preview the new product lines from industry manufacturers, take classes, and soak up lots of great new ideas to bring back to our customers! 

We're in the process of consolidating all the pictures we took (imagine five scrapbookers taking photos of new products on our cameras and phones!) so that we can share the highlights with you. We'll be posting photos over the next several days so be sure to check back often. We will also upload all of our photos to our Facebook page so be sure to LIKE us on Facebook to see the entire collection of pictures!

But let's start at the beginning! We left on Sunday afternoon for the trip to Chicago. Our Summer CHA crew is pictured below: Janet, Maggie, Kellie, Katie, and Bonnie.

 The trade show opened on Tuesday, with Monday dedicated to classes and private showings by manufacturers. We grabbed a quick breakfast at the hotel before heading to the convention center for Day 1!

Bonnie and Katie:

Maggie and Kellie:

   
Yes, they did let me eat breakfast, too! No worries there. :)

Here's a shot of the lobby of the Rosemont Convention Center. It's a huge place!

  As you can see, the lines for classes are VERY long! We attended some great classes at CHA and will be sharing many photos with you in upcoming posts!

 On Monday, Maggie, Kellie, Katie, and Bonnie attended a preview party sponsored by Creative Imaginations and Quick Quotes. They checked out lots of wonderful projects. Love this beautiful card!

Here are more colorful projects from the preview party. Notice the layers and textures, design trends which continue to be strong.

 

 Beautiful Christmas cards!

I love the clean look of this card! Notice the strips and layers of paper.

  

We saw great new sports papers and embellishments...

and wonderful dance-themed products.

 We saw many new Halloween lines, including this one designed by Marah Johnson. The vintage/retro Halloween look is very popular right now.

 Monday evening, Kellie, Bonnie, and Janet attended the Moxxie preview party. Moxxie is one of our favorite companies -- and they're based in Iowa! (Moxxie will also be coming to our Anniversary Crop in October, so you'll get to meet the great folks behind the brand!)

They had lots of fun new lines and many wonderful projects to share. Here's a banner made with their new camping line.

Look at this adorable camping goodie bag!

We also loved the new fishing papers. Notice all the banners in these projects? Banners -- especially notched banners -- were EVERYWHERE at the show! They're fun and easy to add to any project: Just cut a "v" in the end of a paper strip, and layer on your page or card.
 

 Moxxie has a lovely new faith-based line...

and a great new music line, perfect for band and orchestra pages.

We loved the new line called Road to Recovery, great for pages about loved ones facing serious a serious illness. Here's a mini-book created from a file folder using this line.

Moxxie also introduced a beautiful new family line. 

We loved the new carnival line. It will be great for state fair or amusement park pages and projects!

Check back for many more photos of our CHA adventure, as well as a post about the top trends in paper-crafting! We can't wait to share everything we saw and learned with you!
Janet

Staff Project & Class: Pat's Las Vegas & Family Albums

 One of the many treats of working at Memory Bound is being inspired by all of our staff members' beautiful projects! In this post, I'm going to share with you Pat's latest project: A "flip and fold" album of a recent family trip to Las Vegas. Pat made this wonderful album as a gift, and I'm so glad I got to see it before she gave it away!

  As you can see, this album opens up and has several tabs for photos, yet it folds flat for storage. It's perfect for highlighting favorite pictures!

 

 Pat based her Las Vegas album on a project she created for her upcoming Family Album class pictured below. Join Pat in her class, and you'll make a wonderful keepsake album to give as a gift or keep for yourself! And just like Pat, you can use the concepts you learn in class to make additional albums in any theme or for any occasion.

Thanks, Pat, for sharing your beautiful projects with us! I hope you'll join Pat for her upcoming Family Album class. Check out the details below, then give us a call at (515) 965-1102 to register!

Janet

 

 Family Album

Sunday, September 23, 12:30-3:30pm

Instructor: Pat Ferin

Fee: $20 / Skill Level: Any

Bring Basic Class Kit plus Vintage Photo Distress Ink, blending tool, splat mat, large glue stick, and 1/4" Scor-Tape.   

Join us to create an 8”x8” family treasure using the Simple Stories Generations papers & more to embellish our flip and fold book. This unique book stands up to display your favorite family photos or folds into a mini-book. Don't miss this fun class!

Friends Crop at Memory Bound!

 There is no better way to beat this crazy Iowa heat than to gather your friends to crop at Memory Bound! That's just what this group of cropping buddies did recently. Jill, Janis, RaNae, and Diana had a great time chatting and working!

As you can see, these ladies brought plenty of supplies!

 

So much that they had to designate another table as an overflow area! LOL

 These ladies are very productive! Diana, who works at Memory Bound, is always working on scrapbooking her grandkids' activities and life on the farm. Here she is working on a layout about one of their newly born calves.

RaNae had just finished a wonderful mini-album with photos of her family's trip to Hawaii. I love how she added one large chipboard page to the back of the album so she could include an oversized photo.

So pretty!

 RaNae was also working on a decorated clipboard, inspired by an article she saw in Scrapbooks, Etc.

Janis whipped up a handful of cards using bits of this and that! Adorable! 

And Jill was finishing up a couple of awesome projects she's making for classes she will be teaching at Memory Bound! This particular project is for her Hidden Secrets Christmas Album on July 20. Click here for the details!

  

As you can see, these ladies had a great time spending the day together! If you'd like crop in our workroom, just give us a call to be sure we have space available on the day you'd like to come. It's FREE, and we can set up a tab so that you can pay for your purchases when you leave. It's convenient, relaxing, and FUN! 

So plan now to beat the summer heat, share time with friends, AND get some scrapbooking done. It doesn't get any better than that!

Janet