CHA Part 2 - Cricut Circle and the SuperShow

Okay - this is going to be another long one.  There's just so much to show you!

The drive into Rosemont from my Mom's house in Waukegan wasn't bad at all.  I was expecting a ton of traffic (I was driving at the tail end of rush hour), but it was great!  I was glad to see that the tollway construction was done, and they've done a wonderful job.  I found the convention center and the parking garage with no problems, and here's what I saw when I walked up to the door:

Learn, Create, and (most imporantly) Buy.  :)  I had pre-ordered my ticket to the show, so I went right up to the kiosk to get my ticket printed.  Then I headed up to the Cricut Circle event.  There were so many people there that I was a little overwhelmed at first - I knew some of them from the message board, but not well enough to spot them from their pictures.

I sat in one of the chairs along the wall, wondering if I could get up the courage to talk to people more.  Some of them had seen my Circle charm bracelet - I added charms from my carts made from shrink plastic (check my blog tomorrow!) - and they talked with me some.  But then Cyndy came up to me and introduced herself.  She lives fairly close to me and will be going to the Cricut Circle event in Waukesha, WI next week.  How cool is that!  Well, that helped a lot, and we talked to other people, including a few Cricut folks from Texas, and one of them is a follower of my blog!  Hi, Scootingranny!

The meeting was great - they gave us a lot of information, including a description by Provo Craft's spokeswoman, Jinger, about their new Imagine machine (see later in this blog for pictures and a video).  They answered some questions, and gave away a lot of gifts, including 2 Imagines!

As you can see, Provo Craft's Cricut made a special appearance, and we could take pictures with him:

They also took quick videos of each of us so they could put faces and voices with our names, Cricle numbers and forum usernames.  They also gave us a goodie bag - a cloth tote bag, a set of markers for the Cricut, replacement blades, and a dark blue Cricut head for the charm bracelet.  Oh - we also got a few pins and some googly Cricut Imagine sunglasses:

After that, Cyndy and I met up with her husband for lunch at their hotel.  We then headed over to the SuperShow and were quickly overwhelmed.  It was enormous!  Here's just one picture of the show:

This was just a subset of what was there during the trade show the few days before the consumer show.  I can't imagine what that looked like!  Well, we jumped right in and started doing the make 'n takes - there were pins, jewelry, scrapbooking, and other crafts.  We didn't do anywhere near all of them.  There were so many, and there were so many people waiting to do them all!

Here's a picture of the stuff I brought home - make 'n takes and free stuff:

Yes - I got a T-shirt, too!  That was a cool airbrushing make 'n take from Color Artz.  I only used purple inks, of course.  The ornament is from Sparkle N Sprinkle.  Here's a picture of Dana filling the glue-filled ornament with glitter:

The cutest booth we saw was Taylored Expressions.  They have great stamps, too, and the best price I saw on Quickie Glue pens!  Here's Karen:

The neatest thing I saw was the Flip Pal mobile scanner.  It has batteries so you can take it with you (hence the "mobile" in "mobile scanner").  You can take it to your parents' house and scan their pictures and documents without even taking them out of the albums.  You can scan 12x12 pages, one section at a time, and there is stitching software that will easily make them into one picture.  I didn't see that, but it sounded cool.  Here's a picture of the Flip Pal in action:

Shantel Hansen, Flip Pal's Social Media Specialist (doesn't that sound like a great job?!?) showed the scanner to me - she placed it on the picture and pressed the green button you can see on the right side.  Then you position the scanner for the next part of the picture and press the button.  I was expecting a high cost, but it's only $149!  I can't get one now, but I'll definitely be saving my pennies!  I have hundreds of 12x12 pages I want to scan, just in case we have a fire or something - yes, I'm a little paranoid.  Also, it would make it so much easier to post my pages to show you!

Someone else I met was Drew Emborsky, The Crochet Dude®.  His 7th crochet book, Crochet It, Love It, Wear It! is coming out on September 1st.  He said the sizes go up to 2X, and the pictures look great, so I'll definitely be checking this out!  I don't think I'll be making the strapless dress for myself (it's cute, but not for me!), but I see a number of things I would love to wear.    You can order it from Leisure Arts or reserve your copy from Amazon using the link above.  Here is Drew:

I saw so much at the Show... I can't tell you everything.  Am I missing anything else huge?  Hmmm... Let's see...  oh, yeah - Cricut!  Their booth was huge with demos of a lot of their products, including Cricut Cake and the new Imagine.  They also had a few giveaways - one at 4:00 and one at 7:00.  Cyndy won a set of Halloween Cuttlebug embossing folders.  That was perfect for her - she loves Halloween!

Here's a video with Tammy who demonstrated the Cricut Cake machine.  I must warn you, it's a long video, so don't click it unless you have a high speed Internet connection!  It's really neat, though - the machine actually cuts out edible shapes and letters for cookies, cakes, cupcakes, and whatever else you can think of!



Finally, here are pictures and a video from the new Cricut Imagine - the machine that prints and cuts!  The video will be last - it's not as long as the one for the Cricut Cake, but it still is pretty big.

I already told you about the door prize I won, and after I got that, Cyndy and her husband took me out to dinner to Morton's steakhouse. I tried to protest, but they wouldn't let me. Here's our waiter, Ryan, with a platter of steaks to show us what they had:

Doesn't that look great?  Well, dinner was excellent, and I even had enough for lunch the next day.  At this point it was about 9:30, and I headed home.  I made great time, and I was home in less than an hour and a half!

Wow - that was an awful lot, huh?  I hope I didn't lose you, and I hope you check back tomorrow to see the charms I made for my Cricut Circle charm bracelet!