CHA Day 2

Gosh, this is exhausting work - the halls at CHA are huge, I haven't even scratched the surface yet. It is surprisingly quiet and calm to wander around, you are not jammed up with a crowd of people. The booths of the big companies are huge, and so beautifully laid out - more of that tomorrow. I came across this delightful husband and wife team, her name is Kelly Panacci and I loved her story. She used to design for Sandylion, who of course have ceased to trade. Without a lot of hope or expectations, they submitted some of her designs to K & Company, and she was accepted. Her new Valentine stack is her first one for them. They were clearly so delighted to be designing for one of the biggest crafting companies, it was quite heartwarming, and they were just lovely. Her stack is in the stores now, here are a few of the samples to inspire you - I have the range, and love it. Not just for Valentines...

Here's a shot of all the Tim Holtz Alterations dies, there are a couple of new ones on there for CHA, but I am not sure which ones they are

Then we headed over to the Provocraft stand to look at the brand new Cricut Expression 2, which they are calling the Anniversary edition. According to the chap I was talking to, it will be released in very limited numbers in April, and when those are gone, he was not sure when they would be in production again........why? I haven't a clue. Could be a clever marketing strategy to whip up a buyers frenzy.

Basically, as you can see, you will no longer need overlays, it is all touch screen operation. It will take the Imagine cartridges, as well as all the existing regular cartridges. The retail price point is $399.

I thought it was a neat machine, I did think that the moulded touch screen was a design flaw, it would look so much more streamlined if that flipped down when not in use. In the photo, it looks as if they have reverted to the more sturdy metal blade housing, but when we raised this specific point, he said that it was in fact plastic, the metal one was in just for the show. You can see in the photo, a regular cartridge slotted in on the left, and an imagine cartridge on the right. It has WiFi capability, so we assumed that this meant that if you were designing on your computer with the new Craft Room software (more about that tomorrow), you could cut with the Expression2 without hooking up to the computer. This was just an assumption, I will try and find out tomorrow. There is a light by the blade, which really helped to see exactly where on the mat you were cutting - useful with centre point I would have thought

Every day, they have events on the stand. You are given a ticket, which has to be stamped by a member of staff when you have completed certain demos and make-and-takes. They then hold a draw every afternoon, where all the completed, signed tickets are thrown into a revolving drum and names pulled out. These people are then invited to spin the wheel (behind Jinger), and if they are really really lucky, they get to win the prize against the pointer when the wheel stops spinning. One lucky person won an Imagine, there were lots of magazine subscriptions, and if you were really unlucky, you just got a high five from the large green acrylic animal to the left of the photo.

Talking of large green acrylic animals, here I am with my new bedtime buddy, which was in the goody bag from the gala - a lot of you wanted to know what was in the bags - well here he is, and a tee shirt, and cartridge - I think this will become my avatar photo, me and Cricky having a good time