Madge and Brini (in an original dress) for iLoveToCreate copyright Marisa Pawelko
Brini in her incredible dress she made from fiberglass vintage curtains! Just don't hug her...
Kristal Wick, Madge, Lisa Pavelka and Lilian Chen all CRYSTALLIZED Ambassadors
Cathie Filian, Jenny Barnett Rohrs of Craft Test Dummies, Candie Cooper and Madge
Loved this gal with her vibrant orange hair, she asked to take a pic with me and how could I refuse?!
Hair and Make-up Check.
The Crochet Dude Drew Emborsky had his own THRONE at the show! Go Drew!
iLoveToCreate's graphics and viral marketing guru Alexa Westerfield
CHA Round Two!
I arrived in Anaheim on Saturday afternoon and had a wonderful dinner at Café Tu Tu Tango with the iLoveToCreate blog team and my pal Ben Sander. I felt like a total loser when everyone whipped out their iPhones to take a pic of dessert and all I had was my pink razor. Wah...wah. It was great to catch up with Vicki Howell, Crafty Chica, Patty Donham, Traci Bautista, Alexa Westerfield and the lovely ladies from the iLoveToCreate powerhouse team. I wish Jen Perkins could have been there for the fun, but hopefully next time! I met up with my pals from Fiskars Angela Daniels, Stephenie Hamen and Rebecca Peck at my hotel and had a blast getting caught up.
The morning of the first day at CHA I felt a little bit off of my game. Sometimes that happens. Can’t say why exactly, but I had to return to my hotel room and reboot. Maybe it was getting up the nerve to walk around in my acid green wig, or maybe it was hoping that everything would go so well that I was overfilled with expectation. Maybe it was that my outfit didn't fully capture the funkitude of my wig. Or maybe it was just that old devil insecurity nagging at me, it happens to all of us sometimes. My first appearance was that afternoon. I had a demo with Brini at the iLoveToCreate booth. We had the most delightful folks stop by to play with us and everyone made absolutely adorable feather and glitter encrusted hair clips and pins. I went back to my hotel, coughed up a small cockatoo and Brini and I got ready for the ProvoCraft party.
ProvoCraft was celebrating their latest machine The Cricut Cake. It’s a Cricut for bakers. You insert thin sheets of fondant like icing and it die cuts them into shapes you can then apply to cakes, cookies and cupcakes. No more futzing with icing bags and tips. The dies are adorable. We were bowled over when we discovered they were giving each of us a machine and a set of dies! Can you believe it?! As soon as I get mine I’m making a video. Honey if I can decorate a cake with this machine, anybody can.
Monday morning I got a little time to walk the floor. I had two successful book signings with make it/take its that afternoon and a lovely dinner with the gang from Beadalon that evening at Orange Hill.
Tuesday Brini and I were up early to demo for iLoveToCreate. We had a little slumber party the night before and couldn’t stop chattering...so perhaps we didn’t get as much beauty sleep as we might have liked! We had another great demo with lots of crafty ladies. The delightful Tiffany Windsor interviewed us for Inspired at Home first thing and lots of friends stopped by to say hello.
Tuesday afternoon I had a book signing with my fellow authors and Beadalon Design Team members Katie Hacker and Fernando DaSilva. We rarely have time to catch up with each other and it’s wonderful to hear that our book has been selling so well. Katie has a fabulous new line of components with Beadalon called KatieDids she debuted at CHA, you have to check them out.
The last thing on my agenda was a class for Beadalon. Though not everything went as I’d hoped, my students were ecstatic and they all left with completed projects. I had 31 novices to teach, so this impatient crafter had to be extremely patient. I was just so happy to see that everyone had fun and learned something. Big thank you to the folks from ProvoCraft and Coats and Clark for donating crochet hooks to the students, they made the class! Also thanks to Beadalon for sponsoring and to CRYSTALLIZED™-Swarovski Elements for donating lovely crystal beads.
I was kinda beat up by the end of that day and I had to go to my hotel room and have a good cry. The thing is that the more you put yourself out there, the more you risk people either misunderstanding you or being threatened by you or just plain not liking you and there’s not much one can do about that except have a good cry and get on with things. We all screw up sometimes. No matter what we do, there will always be someone with their pretty little foot extended as we walk past taking great pleasure in watching us fall. The trick is to focus on those who are there to pick us up and cheer us on.
Here’s to those who wish us well, and those who don’t aren’t even worth rhyming about.
So...I dusted off my tiara, summoned up my Super Girlie Good Power™ and I went and had some fun with my pals Cathie Filian, Traci Bautista, Steve Piacenza, Drew Emborsky and Candie Cooper. It was just what I need to cheer me up. Also a pep talk from the indomitable Deb Quartermain and some bonding time with my pals Helen Bradley and Michelle Zimmerman helped. At the end of the evening I got to hang out with my BFF Rebecca Peck before crawling into bed and heading home.
There is never enough time at these shows to see everyone and get caught up. One feels the entire time like The White Rabbit. I’m already looking forward to the summer CHA show in Chicago. Brini and I are working on a big surprise for the Super Show, so stay tuned! I’m also energized with ideas for three big projects and hopeful I can sell at least one of them this year. This is my year my friends...I hope it’s yours too!
Until next time...
...craft on with your bad selves.
xoxo
Madge
No comments:
Post a Comment