I'm back from CHA!!!!

I'm feeling the effects of the jet lag at the moment, I'm not that good at coping with all the time changes. I finally got my body clock on Californian time on the day that I had to leave!!!! I guess it will be a few more days before I get back in the UK time zone but I don't care cos it was sooooo worth it this year....I had a fab time, with fab friends, saw some fab artwork, did some fab classes and have ordered some, yep you guessed it, fab product!

This is where it all happened, the convention centre in Anaheim, as you can see, it is a tad on the large size and boy do you feet know it when you have walked continually for four days!And look at the sunshine, on the last two days, the weather was beautiful.....real t-shirt weather.

This was the view from my hotel room....I have a bit of a thing for fountains, so I felt a very lucky girl!

I arrived in California the day before the trade show started and met up with my dear friend Beverly Seymour from B Line Designs and one of her designers, Susan Mostek. They were demonstrating at the retail craft Supershow which was fun to see, made a real change for me to be a customer instead of an exhibitor. I was lucky enough to spend a few evenings with Bev and Susan, catching up with news. My only regret is that I didn't get a picture of them. I did manage lot's of other pictures though........

Here's me and Suze
Tim working his magic Me again on the Ten Seconds booth with Cheryl

OMG!!!! The new stuff from TSS is amazing. The new colours of metal are going to be my new favourites....bronze, a pale gold, a turquoise and a hot pink. Now I'm not going as far as saying hot pink will be my new favourite but some of you pink worshippers are going to love it!!! It is all ordered and hopefully will be in stock in a couple of weeks along with all the new Kabuka and Big Daddy moulds. Now.........drumroll please........I brought back five of each of the new moulds back in my suitcase. I know they are not on my website yet, but you can see the designs on the TSS website. So, if you are itching to get you hands on these, the first people to call Karen in the shop tomorrow on 01234 714848, will get them.

How cool is this chandelier? It was part of the display in the 7 Gypsies booth.....I need me one of those!!!

Now for the Ranger, designer challenge. As I mentioned before, I was invited by Ranger to take part in the designer challenge this year. I was sent a box of melt art goodies and some substrates to work on and had to design a project along the theme "melt art is the hottest ticket". All I could think of was a meal ticket, so that was the theme for my submission. I can't begin to tell you what a thrill it was to be asked by Ranger but the biggest thrill came when I saw my work on the wall alongside artists such as Suze, Tim, Donna Downey......it doesn't get much better than that. Anyway, here is my piece.

The spoons are full of UTEE, all the tickets have been dipped in UTEE, there's a piece that was poured on a TSS mould and the diamond thingie was UTEE poured of a piece of embossed metal, then cut out with a cookie cutter. I beeswaxed the cutlery napkins and the rest is metal and paint.....it was a lot of fun and I felt so honoured to have been a part of the whole amazing experience.

This was Cheryl Darrow's entry, as you can see, she did some fab pieces of UTEE on the new moulds.

I am just blown away by the beeswax work that Suze does.....how cool is this?

Leandra's entry was unbelievable. She made that birdcage out of wire and UTEE. I was so worried that it wouldn't get there in one piece....they obvously did an amazing job with the packaging as it made it without any mishaps. My photographs are really not the best and this one definitely does not do justice to this piece which was pure genius!


My friend Linda Cain, made this gorgeous piece. We had been admiring each others work for some time and we finally met briefly at a previous CHA. This year we decided to meet up properly and arranged to have lunch. She is an amazing artist, she is on some very cool design teams, she's witty and funny and I just love her work......look closely at this and you will see why....her attention to detail is second to none.

There were so many more submissions, I'll share those with you on another day.

These were some samples from the Objects and Elements booth. I took their class, they have a fab new resin product which I can't wait to get my hands on....it's so up my street!

Then I was a lucky girl again and took the Art journaling class with Ingrid Dijkers....this was a very cool class. I had never done any art journaling and wondered if I really wanted or needed to start something else. I now know that of course I do and I'm thinking it could quite easily become another addiction! These pictures are of Ingrid's amazing work. I have not photographed my work yet but when it's unpacked, I'll share it with you.

This is a tunnel journal that Ingrid made....it is just so clever and so beautiful, I just love her style.

Here is a sample from the Kaiser booth.

Then there was the new love in my life.....Vintage. I saw this company last year and this year I caved and ordered some of their stuff. There booth was beautiful as were all the samples.

Do you see what I mean!

Then there was the Graphic 45 booth, it is always a joy to check out there booth, very vintage, I just love it.

Okay, I think I need to go to bed now. More to follow soon with news of all the goodies that are coming our way.