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CHA (Craft and Hobby Association Report by Lea Cioci

My trip to CHA, Chicago - Summer, was a great trip. First I wanted to talk a little bit about trend colors then on to the products at the show. The trend colors are not only in the hobby industry, but fashion and all areas. As many have seen, the tropical colors have been big, greens, pinks, purples as well as turquoise and coral. For the fall, while greens and pinks are still going to be big, turquoise and browns (creams, tans all the way to rich, chocolate browns) will be big. Also the mix with the coral but the turquoise and browns the biggest. Brown is going to be the new black! At least for this fall and winter.

Paper Arts of course are HUGE but the crossover and merging of all types of paper arts continue under the basic umbrella of scrapbooking. Mix-media and scrapping, altered, crafty arts continue as it has in the past few years. Techniques of stamping have merged with scrapping and altered arts. The mainstream prevails while many companies hold their own with the more altered and artsy. More artsy needs to come to the forefront in my opinion - just my taste.

Scrapbooking has gone from big 12x12 to smaller 8x8, 6x6, and even 4x6 sizing. Colorbok has always impressed me with their products. They have new Brag books, one series by Flavia. They are a thin, tall 4x6 blank mini book with stickers and embellishments to create beautiful brag books. Colorbok also has Punch Out Pads that contain tags, word art, and paper all matching in hues and patterns. And continuing that have been a good seller with Michael stores, is their card kits. The kit comes with several cards, die cuts, stickers, and embellishments. They do have many scrapping kits and Colorbok brings the best to all paper artists.

Delta and Plaid being crafting companies, both with stamp companies within, have taken the bold step with some new, fabulous paper arts kits for scrapping, cards, altered arts/cards. Both have artists with great products. Plaid's Anna Griffin line even includes charms with their card and scrapping kits, and has regular parts for collage, scrapping with papers, tags, charms, and epoxy stickers. Delta has their Sarah Lugg line with collage kits, card kits, and scrapping kits. Again we see the crossover of the arts to fit the needs of the consumer.

7 Gypsies continues to fill a shabby chic, and altered market with their hardware, stickers, embellishment products. New, is "gaffer" tape with numbers, words, and letters on it. You buy it on a roll and is cool.  They have mini clip boards, new hardware, 4x6 cards that have themes like "evidence" or some business card. Lastly they have new blank bracelets for creating fun image themes.

A new company Tapestry has Beth Cote and artists with a new, refreshing line of papers, tags, word art, slide mounts and other scrapping collagables. While the line is basically stays mainstream, the colors and styles lend themselves easily to altered art so that all styles of artists can express their art with these products.

Ranger is one of my favorites, Tim Holtz is still riding high (as should be) Taking Adirondacks to higher levels and new embossing powders, gold/silver for alcohol inks and more. Tim now has a new line of stamps, I found the fonts he used in his words to be exceptional.

The regular scrapping companies are mostly the same except for the trends mentioned above. They stay strong and fill the needs of the market with more stickers and styles, papers, mini album products and embellishments.

The last thing I saw and was WOW'd by was DMD. They have inkjet printable lace vellum, color vellum, denim fabric, mulberry papers in colors - all adhesive back!!! They have regular vellum and linen fabric as well. The only downer for me is they don't sell this wholesale in bulk so it is sort of pricey to me to get 4 sheets for 5.99, but it will sell because the product is too cool.

CHA winter in Las Vegas promises to be bigger and better than ever!!!