If you follow our Instagram, you know that the whole Buttons Galore team spent a good deal of the last ten days in Anaheim, California at the annual Craft & Hobby Association trade show. It’s one of the year’s premier events to display craft products to retail buyers to make wholesale purchases for their stores, and also a great opportunity for people from all parts of the crafts industry to meet and share.
The event took place at the Anaheim Convention Center and the show floor was open for four days.
Our booth, of course was wall-to-wall buttons – about 40 feet of them in all! In the picture below, that’s me (Buttons Galore social media manager Nancy Nally) standing in front of the rainbow wall of Color Blends, Button Basics, and Button Bonanzas. There’s so many choices, and they are great for my favorite types of craft projects that use a lot of buttons!
And of course we had walls of our 3D specialty button designs on display as well! This is just one small part of the huge wall to choose from.
Mixed in with the buttons, we had lots of fun button project ideas as well. Many of these will be shared on the blog and on our social media in more detail in the coming weeks, so make sure you subscribe to the blog, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest so you don’t miss any of them!
One of the projects on display may have looked slightly familiar to our blog readers….back in November I created this rag quilted patch tote in soft pastels for the Handmade Holidays blog hop. For this version, I went with bold fabric from a Lola charm pack by Quilting Treasures, and used a black Button Bonanza bag to create a Tic Tac Toe game on it. Circles win!
At the entrance to the booth, visitors were greeted by our papercrafting project feature wall. Buttons are perfect for cards, tags, and layouts!
We also took part in the show’s “Open Market”. At this immensely popular event – a first for the CHA Mega Show – attendees had the chance to purchase cash & carry product from us at discounted prices. We offered a selection of 3D specialty buttons, Button Bonanza and Button Basics bags to excited customers.
Buttons Galore co-owners Dan & Lisa Hagenman were quite camera-shy in the booth but with some stealth skills I managed to get them on camera for our readers during the frenzy at the Open Market. That’s the lovely Lisa in the foreground, and her husband Dan at the other end of the table, helping customers find what they were looking for in the product selection.
Of course the biggest excitement in the booth was the launch of the 28 Lilac Lane line by designer May Flaum.
May created a huge display wall full of samples for the booth (you’ll see many of them on her blog and ours in the coming weeks) and a beautiful demo table where she spent hours showing visitors what they can do with 28 Lilac Lane embellishments.
Of course, there had to be sample boards to show off the gorgeous color palette of the new kits and bottles! For the embellishment kits, embroidery hoop collages showed the entire contents of each kit. The hoops were even finished off with the ribbon or trim from the kit!
For the bottles, a color board shows the entire rainbow selection of all the kits’ schemes in one place:
We’re so appreciative of how many people stopped by the booth to visit us and see May demo her 28 Lilac Lane collection! It was such fun hosting you all and sharing the new products!
Here’s a peek at some of the friends that dropped by to talk all things buttons in the booth at CHA!
Scrappycampysisters stopped by and got a video tour of the booth from May personally:
And I finally got to meet Erica of Clique Kits when she dropped by!
And last but not least…who can forget the Periscope of a Periscope that created an internet black hole with Cathy Zielske and Sandy Allnock? (And then we Instagrammed it too, for good measure!)
CHA was so much fun we’re taking the show on the road again in less than two weeks! European retailers will have a chance to catch Dan and the fabulous Buttons Galore buttons – including 28 Lilac Lane – at Creativeworld in Frankfurt at the end of the month. We’ll be located in Hall 4.2 Booth G50, across from the Creative Impulse awards display. Please do stop by and visit if you are at the show!
