A few of my Favorite Things – the Scrapbook Expo edition

This past weekend I was lucky enough to have the Scrapbook Expo in Anaheim. For those that don’t know, this is a large trade show that is completely devoted to scrapbooking. People come from all over to spend the weekend shopping and taking classes and they have crops going on as well. And lucky me, it was just a 15min. drive from home.

First a little commentary on the Expo itself, even though the pervious Orange County location was further away from me, I preferred it. They had it at a Fair Grounds. The place was more open. Had more parking (we were forced to park at a nearby hotel when they ran out of parking at 10:30AM! – and some had to park blocks away at Disneyland and hike back.) And I heard that even though the crops ran to midnight, the food at the Anaheim Convention center shut down early and it was freezing in the big room at night.

Ok back to the good stuff. I think I’m in love!! I happened upon a crowd around a demo.

As I crept closer I saw it. Teresa Collins Designs and Photocentric have teamed up to create the Stampmaker. http://www.unkit.com/2010/08/10/award-winning-stamp-machine/ It’s a UV light system that allows you to create your own clear custom polymer stamps, stencils, and embossing dies!! Make my own stamps!! I’m so in! Then I saw the price tag $150 and so I forced my feet to walk away – for now. It’s so tempting though. Image all of the stamps you can create. What stamps would you like to see? So it’s on my wish list for somewhere down the road.

The second thing that really spun me were these awesome papers: Core Impressions from Corédinations

This is an amazing thing. The cardstock is sandable! What this means is when you look at it it’s embossed and often all one color. When you lightly sand, either just a section or the whole thing, the raised areas show the dyed core (done in things like clocks in this sample) and you have a completely different look! These are a wonderful and wholly unique idea! I only kind of understand how they do it but I know I love it.

http://www.coredinations.com/index.php/products/core-impressions/

And my final favorite thing from the expo was a very cool Letterpress system. From our friends at Quickutz: http://www.quickutz.com/newsletter/2009/July/L%20letterpress%20release.pdf
Now we’ve all seen those wonderful professional invitations with a debossed, inked image or lettering. Now imagine being able to make those yourself at home. Can you say Etsy business?! I knew you could. Again the price tag (a familiar show theme at $150) had me forcing myself to back away slowly. But if you have a die cut machine that has the hand crank (like the Big Shot), there is a Letterpress Start Kit for a much more reasonable price of $69. Seems like a very good investment if you do. I have a different kind of die cut machine, but I’ll save that for another Favorite Things post!