JEANINE'S BITS AND PIECES: CHA PHOTOS

Back from CHA and have some fun photos to share!

I am looking at these photos and, even though I have now officially lost 15 pounds on nutrisystem (WOO HOO), I look like a cow in my fat clothes (esp the ones on Jen's blog and the KV blog). Sigh. Jen always tells me to wear fitted clothes (which I didn't do - do you always buy clothes that are too big? I always have). I have my big clothes on that, as she so kindly puts it, makes me look like i am wearing a tent. Sigh. LOL. She is right of course, but I feel like i need to hide my big body you know?

ANYWAY, enough about my confidence issues!! LOL!! Here we go!

This is a photo of Jen and I in the Orphan Works booth. We were playing with my xshot portable tripod.

What is funny is i would set the timer for 2 seconds, pull out the xshot, and the photo would snap. Well here is what happens when I forget to set the timer and snap the photo early!!! Boy we look mean in this photo!!!

Next up are some photos of the CHA Designer Showcase we did Saturday. We had a bunch of new designs, cards, products, etc and had some good meetings (wink)!!

And I even did a PAPER LAYOUT with our new Sawyer collection! I did it digitally first and then did all the fun paper stuff. I ripped, wrinkled, crumpled and inked. It was fun!

Next we headed on over to Tapestry by CR Gibson (one of our licensing/manufacturing partners) to go see our newest releases! They were busy taking orders from retailers but we snapped some photos!

The boxed kit with Calista's photo is from the "Fancy Free" collection and will be available at Archiver's stores nationwide as well as independent retailers. It comes with fun scrapbook, papers, elements, etc.

The chipboard suitcase/board books kit is our "Franklin" collection with some revisions. It is called the "Traveling Suitcase". It is a travel-themed kit that will also be available at Archiver's by the end of August and independent retailers across the US/Canada.

If you are a retailer and interested in ordering either kit, please contact Tapestry by CR Gibson here and just tell them you are interested in the Kristy Valshan kits.

We also met up with our friends and licensing partner Scrapblog. It was great meeting Rebecca in person! We are really excited to have been invited to join Anna Griffin, Rhonna Farrer, Cosmo Cricket and others to be premium content providers on the Scrapblog site. Look for our free themes to be released over the next couple weeks (right Rebecca? LOL)!

We were so fortunate to chat with many scrapbookers, artists, and crafters from all over. We got to go to lunch with Robin, Melinda, Connie, and Oriana (see photo on Jen's blog), hang out with artist friends Brenda Pinnick (loved her new sizzix dies) and Vicki Schreiner (who has a whole new line coming out at Cracker Barrell stores), wave hello to artists as they did their classes and make and takes (Jill McKay, Claudine Hellmuth, Margot Potter), see fellow digiscrappers (Amy Teets of Dream Street Papers, Amanda Dykan of Design Originals, Kristi McFadden and Cindy Wyckoff of Scrapbook Dimentsion Magazine, etc) and have fun! Sorry if I left anyone out!

Speaking of people, Jen and I got to sit down and to a make and take with Crafty Chica! She has an incredible new product line and beautiful glitters, and is just so pleasant to talk to! We made some fabulous sparkly earrings and she mixed some glitter for us to take home!! How fun is that?!?

One of the WEIRDEST (and coolest) things to happen was when Jen and I were walking the show and I could swear I was hearing my name (but not the usual voices, lol). I turned around to see my good friend from college, Lisa Dorsey! I have not seen her since 1993! 15 years later she recognizes me at CHA (which is amazing in itself) and I got to hear about her, Greg and her girls! So great!

Other highlights of the week were breaking my diet with Jen (she FORCED me to go get chocolate cake at 10pm at night and get Portillo's 4 times!! really!!), spending time with Jen's family, and making friends with the neighborhood skunk. Ask her about our new product line too!