A view of the Anaheim convention center from my hotel room. Don’t let that sunshine and those palm trees fool you – it was cold in Orange County!

I loved this art in the Basic Grey booth.

Felt owls make adorable iPhone cases!

Hey a heart marquee light! So cool! (Btw, you can DIY your own with this tutorial!)

Think neon is over? Think again! I saw neon ink, neon baker’s twine, neon washi tape and more!

No one does yarn art better than Lion Brand!

Giant quilling in the Fiskar’s booth. They also gave away 200 pairs of custom engraved scissors, but I missed it! Next time!

Lunch break: broccly soup anyone?

I could literally spend the entire day browsing the ribbon in the May Arts booth. I love these stripes!

Painted coasters in the Plaid booth that were created using a Martha Stewart stencil. I loved the cool grey and white combo- it’s a nice breath of fresh air in a convention that is exploding with color.

I had to grab a picture of this Rock It in the Basic Grey booth for our own space nerd Rachel!

Biggest takeaway from the show? Washi tape is here to stay! Loved these simple DIY washi tape book covers.

How about a washi tape bicycle? Ok!

This is a film that you can print on and attach to almost anything. How about some custom shoes? I might now go with those patterns, but there is some real DIY shoe project potential here.

In addition to the tradeshow floor, there are also classes, panels and seminars and demo-nars at CHA. I took a demo-nar with Scotch and spent Sunday morning covering the following things with awesome new tapes: invitations, envelopes, tags, candy, toothpicks, favor boxes, chapstick, + my CHA badge holder. It was let by Alton DuLaney who teaches this class on Craftsy.

At the show, the CHA launched a new initiative called Crea8time. It’s about taking the time to create and share! Check out the site here. Awesome glitter tattoo courtesy of i Love to Create.

Also in the iLovetoCreate booth was this fun photo wall designed by Crafty Chica! This is me and Haley Pierson-Cox who you might know from The Zen of Making or CRAFT.

They also had a tie-dye van, where iLovetoCreate designer + social media maven Alexa Westerfield setup shop!

Look at this gorgeous necklace! The cell phone photo really doesn’t do it justice.

And this own was one of many INCREDIBLE button sculptures on display. Just wow.

In the Scotch booth they had a white room and infinite rolls of tape and told us to go crazy! I hope they post a picture of what it looked like at the end. This was taken during Day 1.

And here’s my addition – Stop Pinning, Start Making. It was a popular sentiment!

I said there was a lot of tape. Here’s some new duct tape from Scotch.

And making tape…

And expression tape, which is like the regular tape you use for giftwrap or at the office. There’s also a bunch of new washi tape on the way.

This is what you do when you wear heels and walk 489283 miles. Ouch!

I love it when companies turn their own products into an amazing statement piece like this wall from Bottle Cap Inc.

They have more than just bottle caps, like these letterpress-style wooden letter blocks. Want!

And crazy sizes of bottle caps. These are big enough to be a coaster!

Craft-lebrities abound! Here’s Cathie + Steve demoing some of their new Mod Podge products in the Plaid booth. You can read more about them here.

Ad yeah, while there’s plenty of fun and craft it’s also a conference with session like this. Bad picture, good session! Reps onstage from JoAnn, Etsy, Craftsy, F+W/Interweave and Kollabora.

Adios CHA! See you in Las Vegas this summer!

By the way, I shared tons of pictures live on our Whimseybox Instagram account and will do the same at upcoming events like Alt Summit + Craftcation. Follow along at @whimseybox!

Categories: News + Events