Written by Gitte Sørensen, Forums

It is NOK really only when the big jumbo jet Thursday at noon, and after 12 hours non-stop flight from Frankfurt, begin to put in for a landing and I in the same spot on the famous Hollywood sign in the hills north of the impressive city, it really dawns on me that now I am really on its way to Los Angeles, where I find the next 4-5 day to spend almost all my waking hours in the LA Convention Center for CHA's (Craft & Hobby Association’s) annual winter show, where there is a tradition for all the world's leading manufacturers and distributors will present the year's biggest news in scrapbookingverdenen.

I have long since booked space on several courses for myself and Gitte O (as we know, is a member of my design team, but also – and not least in this context – is my sounding board for business).
So early Friday morning we are ready in the queue to receive our "badges" and tickets for the workshops, we must participate in.
And before long, we take place in the queue for the first of its kind, for the whole Friday is dedicated to teaching in the exhibition opens on Saturday.

With a few exceptions, all fantastic workshops organized, and teachers are highly competent. Typically, firms' owners / creators or their design teams responsible for teaching and it makes teaching very intense and focused, when this comes "straight from the horse's muzzle" and not from someone who learned it from the other, who have learned it by a third, etc..
Tuition is slightly different than the rates you get on as normal scrapper, for it is of course also in firms' interest to make a good impression and shape our students, which of course ultimately is their link to the end user. So besides the fact that we are allowed to try to make different things, They also make much out of that show and explain, how we can bring ideas forward.
And then you have to sometimes just bear with all their sales talk.
The courses cover a wide, but several trends are repeated in some of them and the year's biggest hit should certainly be "Mixed Media" where you mix chip board, corrugated, lærred og akryl i samme minialbum og dekorerer med bl.a. pattern paper, ink, mist-spray, false, metalpynt, Stamps, flowers and bling.

There are course participants from around the globe, and already the first day we run into several other Danes. Jette W and Heidi, as we know from the Convention on Funen, is taken over here to gather inspiration and create contacts for such purposes. future teachers and we also meet Pia and Sanne from Creative Sensations, who like us are looking for new ideas and exciting products to the store. It is both fun and cozy, that you are not completely alone out here in the big world.

Saturday morning at. 10 is the official opening of the show and thus the first messedag. This is done in true style with bagpipe music, President's speech and cutting of the ribbon with a giant Fiskars scissors.
And so we would otherwise flow into the huge hall, excited about what kind of world we are locked into. And of course it is nothing less than pure paradise for creative people of all kinds, then here are both professional artists' materials, garn, sewing, jewelry parts, the more classical molding material and then finally, men not at least, the largest section of the show, which paper is devoted to the people.

Virtually the entire first day yesterday to get a general overview and then go through all the booths in the small hall, how many of the new exhibitors are. Which also means that this is where you can find lots of funny things, which can not easily see all locations.
I have home made agreements with several manufacturers / distributors, and it is great to get around and talk to and put a face to a lot of the people, I knew only from emails and telephone calls.
You can really feel that it is a closed trade fair you're on, for there is plenty of room to get around and you can immediately find answers to your questions . All sellers are extremely service minded, and the jumps and skips to show us all their latest news. And curiously, it is, that when one presents itself as a Dane, so there are actually many Americans who have a distant relative or know of other, originating from Denmark. But certainly not get the impression that Denmark is an unknown land over here.
And I find rather quickly out of, I can impress them, asking me about where in Denmark I come from, when I say that I live on an island with almost 4.000 residents, have an hour's ferry ride to the mainland and we do not have a single traffic light on the island! So you can get a little talk about, where overwhelming Los Angeles, with sine cleat 18 million inhabitants (when you count all the suburbs with), 7-tracked motoveje (mind you in every direction) and motorway junctions in 4-5 floors.

A very large proportion of the booths, demonstrations or make-and-takes,, and here it is again an impressive selection of celebrities, it says and shows the products. Tim Holtz probably need no further introduction, and it is also clear to him that brings together the largest audience. One can then wonder, for the female audience is most interested to look at him or at the, he does. There is certainly no doubt that the man's sovereign good at her job, but there are so many other, more or less known, and at least as skillful, designers ready to show and guide around the exhibition, so besides the aforementioned none mentioned - none forgotten!

There is so much variation between how different companies have built up their booths and demonstration areas. provo craft impress with their great make-and-take area that has both a small stage to the teacher and a lot of tables, where each participant each has access to a Cricut machine. DieCutWithaView have made a catwalk with wax mannequins dressed in gowns of paper and Graphic45 have built their entire condition completely in line with their products. Bird cages and chandeliers are hot in time and are repeated in many of the more chic standopbygninger. All very impressive, and it stands in stark contrast to the charms- and gem dealers from the Far East, there just has hung long rows of their products into small bags or boxes.
The make-and-takes, we shall visit a range enormously wide, it is from small stylish hårclips with homemade flowers, over glitter tattoos on our arms, the decorated sakseetui'er with feathers and bling. So we are certainly plenty of ideas to take home every day - both from workshops and from the exhibition hall.

Second messedag being spent on a meticulous review of all the paper-related objects in the great hall, and there is plenty to look at more than 500 exhibitors spread over two halls. Of course, not all, there are real led to scrapbooking, but there is no doubt that our hobby, after all, is by far the largest at the fair. It's an amazing experience to be able to "see with your fingers" instead of just seeing things in a catalog or on a computer screen, and I'm glad I brought along a small notebook to the style ideas, product naming, companies and so on down, I did not forget anything along the way or have been sweating it all out again when I get home. I find my superior M / K in punchede flowers, but fortunately, people are really nice to learn from him and give their tips on.

Monday is our fourth day on site, and this third messedag we take as a kind of heat collecting, we must check whether there is anything we have overlooked, look at the booths covering other creative areas (one would not want to miss anything,) and then I finally see that I put in some orders around among different companies.

As we leave the LA Convention Centre half hour before closing time on the fourth day with peace of mind over, that we have now seen everything there is to see inside scrapbookingverdenen, We are getting good saturate paper and scrap, but not more than satiate that we headed back to the hotel the tour around one of the great American hobby stores, Jo-Ann's.
The disadvantage of participating in a closed trade fair as CHA's Trade Show, is that you can not buy as much as one tiny little thing with home. Så i Jo-Ann’s får jeg shoppet lidt papir og pynt i amerikansk stil og med Stars & Stripes tema, so I have something I can use when I need to scrap the pictures from the trip, including the four subsequent days sightseeing in Los Angeles and environs, once I have returned to Denmark with a lot of good memories (and a sizeable stack of brochures) in backpack.

After a trip to the world's largest hobby trade fair, where you have seen ALL (almost as), it's as if the planet at the same time both have been very, much larger, but also very, much less - because you now have a much better overview of what's available and what is happening on the front. But manufacturers inventor really enough both new techniques and new products shortly, so it will be "necessary" to get off to CHA again a second time! So for safety's sake I better start saving up now!