Crafty Chica Takes on the 2005 Craft Convention

By Kathy Cano Murillo
Special for GetCrafty.com

ATLANTA – There’s Sundance if you’re into film. New York Fashion Week if fashion is your bag. But if you’re a sucker for glue guns, acrylics and knitting needles, it’s all about The Crafts and Hobby Association National Convention.

The annual event spans five consecutive days, a million square feet and is crammed with nearly 4,000 exhibitors including manufacturers showing and sampling their latest products, book publishers hawking their newest titles, production companies searching for the perfect TV host, designers displaying their talents and geez, so much more.

So who gets to go to this shimmering shebang?

Sadly, like Sundance and Fashion Week, exclusive credentials are required. CHA is the largest show of its kind, and draws more than 8,000 attendees from around the world. These are retail buyers (think Michaels to mom and pop scrapbook shops), journalists, craft designers, television personalities and other card-carrying members of the organization.

They all are in search of the answer to this: What will craftaholics like you and me will be creating this year? The truth is, most of the offerings were things we craftistas have already been doing the past year. But, who cares? That doesn’t make the show any less fun.

I’ve known about the CHA convention for years, but never had the time, opportunity or funds to go. I used to daydream about it while crocheting a rasta tam for my husband, or stirring the pasta on the stove. I thought about the stories I heard of people who took an extra suitcase to the CHA show so they could cart the massive amounts of goodies home. I even read blogs about artists that went and scored book deals and TV gigs.
Could all this be true? I had to find out!

With four how-to craft books under my belt, my dream came true when I was invited by my publishers to attend for book signings. I was only there for two days, but wow, what two fantabulous, glorious days they were. All I can say is walking into the first gi-normous exhibit hall (there were two) provided a bigger rush than when I discovered spray-on varnish.

Before I go into the blow-by-blow of my experience, I want to encourage everyone to check out http://www.hobby.org to see how you can find a place in a future show. It really needs our presence there. Come hell or hot glue, I plan on buying a Crafty Chica exhibit booth there at next year’s event in Las Vegas! Hope to see you there too!

The Visionaries
To be honest, there wasn’t any one particular booth or product that jumped out at me. My biggest high came from meeting hordes of successful people that found a way to turn their creativity into a profitable business. Like Joey Heiberg, the Dolly Mama, (http://dollymamas.com). She is an illustrator that has tiers of products (cross-stitch patterns, greetings cards, mugs, rubber stamps, etc) and the Art Girlz (http://www.artgirlz.com) who make these super-duper collage kits. I was also inspired by craft book author Sherri Haab (http://www.sherrihaab.com), who actually makes a full-time living by writing how-to books for publishers like Klutz and Watson-Guptill. If you are a hardcore crafter and have a vision, check out these web sites and read these women’s stories. I guarantee that you’ll pull out a pen and start a business plan of your own.

Trekkies with a Glue Gun?
I also loved the whole sub-culture of convention. Seriously. It was like a Star Trek convention with glue guns. Lots of women walked around in rhinestone tiaras and feathered boas. There was an awards show like the Oscars (“…and the nominees for Best Adhesives are…”), crafty gangs in matching outfits (The Scrappin’ Mamas) and hundreds of chicas auditioning their hearts out on an oversize empty stage for a hosting gig on the DIY Network. Their performances were played on two big screens in front of an audience. Every time my feet ached, I schlepped my stuff over there, sat and watched. It was my guilty pleasure of the event!

The Goods
Alrighty, products. There were lots of them. The one that people kept raving about was Translucent Liquid Sculpey (http://www.sculpey.com/Products/products_access_tls.htm). It comes in a squeeze bottle and you can use it in all kinds of ways. It works as a transfer medium, a glue, a sealer - the list goes on. You can incorporate it in jewelry, paper, and mosaic projects.

Yarn and threads had big stake at the show. DMC debuted a new line of wool and linen threads, and Lion Brand has a whole slew of furry fibers in a rainbow of colors.

Half the show was dedicated to scrapbooking. There was something for every niche market. From urban cool to retro chic, the papers were amazing. They came in a variety of textures, colors, fibers and sizes. Even if you aren’t a scrapper, at least check out the designs from Grassroots (http://www.grassrootscreative.com/grassrootscreative/home.html), they have a global spirit and are great for card making or paper collage, etc.

I found two Hispanic product lines, three African American, one travel and a few military. There were a lot of faith-inspired lines as well. More than I could count.

Cool things that caught my eye:
- Acrylic purses that you can slide your artwork into.

- All kinds of photo transfer sheets for making decals and embellishing fabric.

- Collage pictures and ephemera galore.

- Tools for crafting with metal (little rollers with imprinted designs).

- Wool crafting felt in gorgeous colors and weights.

- Texture paint. It comes in a tube and is thick and creamy, almost like a smooth stucco…

The Not-So-Good
The trends I’ve spotted in my day-to-day crafty life are things like silk screening, felting, and precious metal clay and canvas art. I didn’t see anything representing these areas at the show. Hint, hint! There’s an opening that needs to be filled pronto! So if you have an idea -- now is the time to sell it!

What I did see was slightly horrifying. This is the part where you can call me a crafty snob. There were more kits than there are NYC street vendors! I’m all for kits for an artsy jumpstart into a genre or to add a little help due to time restraints, but many of the products/kits made me sad. Do these manufacturers truly want to see all of us give up our originality and go for stuff like this?:

- Pre-embellished scrapbook pages. All you do is slap your pictures on.

- An expensive suction tool to pick up small objects. What? Tweezers aren’t good enough?

- Beads that come in a tub of adhesive. All you do is smear them on.

- Knit without needles! You just wrap yarn in different directions around a flat piece of plastic. Can you imagine? “Hey, let’s go to the Wrap and Bitch tonight!”

- Fake bottle caps.

- Clear plastic sheets with words printed on them that you lay over your scrapbook pages.

I’ll stop there because you get the gist. The weirdest thing I saw was this display of plaster crafts. The biggest idea they had was to make replicas of your newborn baby’s fists and use them as handles on a dresser drawer. That one made me shiver.

To sum it up, the crafty forecast for 2005 is this: Get out there and do-it-yourself! With a drought of cool crafts represented at this convention, it's time to get off your booty and make your own funky craft dreams come true.

Kathy Cano Murillo is a national craft columnist, book author and artist. She lives in Phoenix, Arizona. Visit her web site at http://www.CraftyChica.com.