CHA in Chicago was overwhelming, as usual. Karin and I just returned home last night, after spending three full days walking and looking and ordering...and sometime in there, we stopped and had our picture made with Elvis!
If you want to know trends, repeat after me -- Chipboard. Flowers. Chipboard. Flowers. Reach out in any direction, and I guarantee you would be touching one or both of those from almost every company.
The two new collections from BasicGrey are on their way to Scrapbook Generation, including papers, monograms, tags, ribbon sets, rub-ons, and new mini-monograms. We believe that we will be the first store in southwest Missouri to receive the shipment -- in less than three weeks. To cut down on the chaos of everyone trying to order from BasicGrey at once, they did something different. When you arrived at their booth, you were given a number, which is the order your store is shipped to. Out of the whole country, we are order #58! We have such a good number because Karin and I practically ran, once the doors were opened at 9 a.m. the first day! Faithful blog readers will be the first to know when BG arrives, and we also have a little hoopla planned for that special day, that only blog readers will know about.
Next stop was the Prima booth, and we did get carried away! There are new paper collections to match all the new flowers, and spools of ribbon as well. One of the cutest new touches is colored rhinestone circles to go in the center of the big flowers.
We spent the rest of the time checking out all scrapbooking exhibitors. As you can imagine, the "old faithfuls" came through again. What caught my eye especially were the following...
-- K & Company: two new groupings of beautiful papers and everything to match (one set in muted corals and peaches, and one in blues), plus these absolutely over-the-top glitter letter sets;
-- KI Memories: four classy seasonal sets for Halloween, fall, Christmas, and winter, which include the cutest sets of tiny embellishment packaged in test tubes like a chemistry set;
-- Doodlebug: several cute new seasonal sets, plus new embellishments that are long strips of shaped papers for great borders;
-- Creative Imaginations: sophisticated travel papers for Italy, Washington, DC, and Las Vegas; plus an innovative line called Bare Elements -- purses, blocks, boxes, ornaments, and more, all plain and ready to decorate;
-- Flair: beautiful additions to their fall and Christmas papers;
-- Bo Bunny: a pink dog group, a raspberry group perfect for family recipes;
-- My Minds Eye: no new Wild Asparagus, but a new group called Bohemia.
Newer vendors that show lots of promise: Moxie (for school papers), Crate Paper (for muted papers in several color combinations unlike anything else on the market), Fancy Pants (for huge chipboard shapes), and Imaginisce (which could be the next big thing, with an exotic collection of elegant papers, metal embellishments, and matching jewels).
Today's excitement at Scrapbook Generation:
New arrivals...
-- All My Memories: a new shipment of 12x12 Urban Chic albums in all six colors;
-- Doodlebug: a new shipment of all 32 colors of minibrads;
-- Making Memories: several new sets of foam stamps;
-- Basic Grey: several paper groups are back in stock, plus the chipboard monograms and chipboard tag sets;
-- Heidi Swapp: the large florals are back, plus large white florals sold in bulk;
-- SEI: scrapbook kits in a bag and box are back;
-- Petaloo: large silk flowers in several sizes (some with polka dots!);
-- Doodlebug: polka dot flowers are back in stock;
-- Magazines: Memory Makers, Card Maker, Paper Works, Scrapbook Answers, Simple Scrapbooks, and the latest issue of Creating Keepsakes;
-- Wubie: travel and map papers.
