Monday, July 21, 2008

10 Things I learned at CHA...

1. The easiest way to work with jump rings.. is to twist them open, and not to pull the edges apart.. Learned this at the Heidi Swapp booth, where we made a very cute jeweled dangle. It has quotes on a thicker acetate, as well as a little crown at the bottom. Fun!
2. Ali doesn't blend... Ali did some demo's at the Ranger booth, showing how she uses the alcohol inks. As people walked up to watch, she kept saying "We're just dropping! I don't do blending. If you want blending you have to come back when Tim is here!" Cracked me up. I was really pleased to see that she was using a Clear Scraps word book to demo on!


3. Grungeboard is moldable. If you heat it up, and bend it into a shape... once it cools down, it stays that way. Who knew?? {well, obviously TIM did, but I didn't!}

4. Speaking of Tim.. I also learned that if you slide your stamp on the ink pad, you can get the same look of a second generation stamped image, without wasting as much ink. Clever! Why didn't i think of that sooner??

5. Petaloo has some AWESOME flowers. Silly me didn't take any pictures {What was I thinking??} But they have some really awesome mulberry and other paper flowers, as well as some gorgeous embossed velvet flowers. Their wild roses are freaking amazing, and just beautiful! They also have some packages set up for Halloween, Christmas etc, in some really cool color combinations. (I think the Halloween ones are my favorite!) I am SO hoping to have some of these flowers in a design team kit.
6. The Paper Gator will work on Acrylic! How awesome! If you haven't seen the Paper Gator, it is a corner rounder that cuts a ton of papers at one time. And acrylic - I tried it on a Clear Scraps tag, and it was SO easy! I also tried the Zutter ones.. which are more portable, but to be honest, hurt my hand when punching the acrylic.

7. Prima donnas do exist. Can't really elaborate on that one.

8. Some people are crazy enough to stand in line for almost an hour for a bag and a CHANCE to win a prize {pleading the fifth on this one LOL}

9. Copic markers work REALLY WELL on the Clear Scraps acrylic. Yep, I carried acrylic tags with me to play with them. Not only do the copi markers work, but once dry, I was not able to scrape it off, even with my thumbnail! That makes these the best markers I have found for working on the acrylic. I also like how they are color coded so help with matching.

10. Sometimes the car that gets the best gas mileage isn't the new hybrid. Ok, so I learned this one AFTER CHA... I have a 14 year old Ford Escort. Which for the last 4 years, I have alternated between hating and calling the green lemon. But this weekend, this little car drove me to Chicago and back, and to Ames Iowa, and back, with no complaint. 1000 miles in 4 days, though one of those days it rested in a very nice parking garage. The best part? 39.67 MPG - this included all the driving I did in Chicago! I filled up south of the Des Plaines River because I didn't want to pay Chicago's gas prices. I didn't fill up again until I got back to West Quincy... 407 miles later! If I hadn't taken a wrong exit at Springfield {habit from taking that route to school for 4 years!}, I probably would have made it to Taylor, MO, and made 40mpg.
{This photo is the bridge that goes over the Des Plaines river.





2 comments:

None None said...

love the tips you shared - I will have to try the molding grungeboard trick and sliding the stamp. Could you clarify that some more? Is it just sliding the stamp across the ink pad? How does that give a second generation look? I would think it gets blotchy or concentrated on one end. (confuzzled here) :)

Terri Moore said...

Love all the suggestions you made - yes, I knew one or two already but always good to have them repeated because I'm old and tend to forget. Sounds like you had a fantastic time even with the Escort!! You go girl!! Thanks for sharing.