Yesterday was the second day of the Trade Show. This place is HUGE. I still have not made it to all of the paper crafting booths yet... and I wonder if I will get to see them all. I did spend a lot of time at the Provo Craft booth. The booth is really whimsical in appearance and I like it a lot. The photo above is just the stage portion of their area. I love the huge 3-D house on top of the storage area.
I cannot remember if I mentioned yesterday but there is a special Cricut Circle Members only section - a secret room where you go in a meet a couple of the PC designers. While there they gave us Circle lanyards (because you MUST wear the badge at all times at CHA) and we got to look at albums full of cuts from future cartridge.
A word about being a Circle member and being here in Chicago. 99% of the Circle memeber who are attending the trade show are store owners, designers for stores (like me with Custom Crops), or are manufacturers of their own products (like My Pink Stamper and again like me). It costs about $100 to get into the show and the CHA membership is about $150. So those who feel that all Cirlce members are not equal (on theMB), please remember that some circle members are business members of CHA.
I share the above paragraph because there were some unhappy feeling regarding those of us who were invited to the Gala receiving a Cricut Imagine machine for free. Most of those in attendance were store owners, etc who will demo the machine in their stores so it was an investment in future sales for PC. In my case I spoke with Brad, PC VP and he told me that they expect me to have projects made uising the Imagine posted on my blog so that everyone can see what this machine can do.
In the photo above Donna Mundinger and I are posing with Suede from Project Runway. He used a new machine, E-CRAFT to cut the dresses displayed being us. I must share that I think the e-craft is an AWEDOME machine. One of my jobs here is to help Custom Crops find new product to see in their store. This machine is a MUST HAVE for the store. It is another die cut machine but it does not use mats and the software comes with the machine. I suggest you check this machine out if you would like to add to your cutting machine stock.
Finally Diane (Capadia, who is my roommate here at CHA) and I went to dimmer with about 15 women from the message board. I had such a great time and met some truly nice women.
In the photo above I am posing with Chirsty from Provo Craft. She a Jim Colby joined us at the dinner. They were SUPER NICE and we had a great time. In fact, Christy picked up the bill for all of us and that was an unexpected treat!!
The photo above shows the group that attended, all but Dawn, Nurse Viper, who had already left when we pulled out the cameras. Below Diane and I posed for a silly photo with our empty glasses.
When we returned to our room were were joined by Joy and Melanie from Everyday Cricut for some girlfriend time. I do not know when I have giggled so much. I just wish my BFF girlfriends from home could have been here too. They would have loved this.
And with that said, I am now a half hour late for today's show so I have to run.........