Once again, the CHA show was fabulous! I hardly know where to start. There were so many wonderful booths, products and people!

I traveled to California with two very good friends and a wonderful new friend. It’s about a six hour drive for us but with such wonderful company the time passed quickly. Of course over a six hour period the excitement grew to such a level that we were about ready to explode when we finally pulled into the parking lot of the Portofino Hotel.

We were able to stay at the show for two days. I spent the fist day with my friend, Billie, wandering around and doing some Make & Takes.

Our first stop was at the Delta booth where the “Crafty Chica”, Kathy Cano Murillo, was helping people make mini shrines and another talented artist (I’m so sorry I’ve forgotten her name) helped us decorate a clipboard.

A stop at the Ranger Industries booth gave us a chance to make a pin using Memory Glass and visit with the very talented and fun Debbie Talch. Not far from Ranger’s booth we found Emi Fukushima in the AITOH Company LLC’s booth doing a Japanese Doll Make & Take. It is hard to say which was the best part of this M&T, the lovely Japanese doll I learned to make, or getting to work with the lovely Emi. Emi couldn’t be any nicer and we found she has a good sense of humor too! Lots of laughing while we worked!

Heading in the other direction we found the Chartpak booth and artist Susan Persson Dumke. Susan is just terrific. I wish I could have brought her home with me and made her one of my best friends. Her project was a three part one. On the first day she was making gift bags, on the second a matching card and on the third a gift tag. Beside the great projects we found a new “must have” product, Triocolor pencils by Koh-I-Noor. These are the softest pigmented pencils I’ve ever worked with. The color just glides onto the page and they come in a comfortable chunky size. A great use for these pencils is to rub them over embossed paper to bring out the design.

I had a blast in the Art Girlz’ booth. Their Make & Take was a cool tag using their stamps and silver charms to make a funky Art Girl. Allison and Tracy were a lot of fun. I really love their stuff and will be adding some of it to my personal collection very soon! We used arm and leg charms on the tag and something really wonderful about them is that they are double sided. You can flip them over and have your feet pointing in different directions without loosing any of the detail.

Day two I headed out with my other friend, Chris Herrmann. Chris and I are both designers for Scrapbooking.com. We were making calls on some of the wonderful companies that have provided supplies for us to work with and a few others we would dearly love to work with. One of our first stops was at B Line Designs, owned by Beverly and Bob Seymour. Oh my gosh, the very day that I win the lottery I’m ordering one of every stamp in their catalog! Whether you do card or scrapbooking they have something for you. Beverly totally made my day when she recognized my name and asked about my website! It seems she is a regular visitor to HouseOfStirfry.com.

We discovered Art Declassified, owned by Karen Desmet & Vanessa Spady. If I wasn’t going to love them for their products and wining personalities I would have to love them for their great slogan, “because there are no rules in art.”

We met the new owners of Rubbernecker Stamp Company, Dave and Pat Miller. They are fairly new to the rubber stamp community but full of enthusiasm and eager to catch up with the rest of us. I’ve always been a fan of the Rubbernecker line of stamps and now they also carry the Stamp Oasis line.

Andy Millet was an enthusiastic fellow who told us all about his company, Quick Quotes. They have tons of great sayings printed on vellum and ready to be added to your scrapbook pages. They also have a new line of canvas shapes ready for you to decorate and embellish your work with.

One find that got us excited was the Wish in the Wind company. They have come up with a system for mosaic scrapbooking. They have papers printed with guide marks to help you perfectly align diced up photos in a variety of mosaic layouts. Like everyone else we spoke with at CHA they were wonderful people.

Monday night we capped off our stay with a great dinner at SunSpot restaurant in the Marriott hotel with Suze Weinberg, Debbie Talch and other friends.