Welcome to the blog on this wonderful, warm Thanksgiving weekend here in Canada! We hope that you have some food and festivities planned with loved ones, or even just a chance for a quiet time at home to reflect on all that we can be thankful for.
This post has been in the works for awhile now, as we have been collecting photos of our adventures from the whole month of September (and even prior to that!). If you are at all interested in seeing some behind the scenes photos or just learning more details about our FIRST TIME at the Creative Scrapbooker Magazine (CSM) Carnival, then please continue on!
First of all, we are so thankful to Jackie and Katharina, the Co-Founders of CSM, for welcoming us as a retailer into their show! We have been long-time fans of the magazine and Carnival shoppers for many years, so it was a totally new experience to be on the other side of things. We had a total blast and these two ladies are nothing but helpful, supportive, bubbly, hilarious, and just plain wonderful!
Now, on to the actual process of creating our booth. Because we are both Interior Designers by trade, we really wanted to go big on our display. Big it was indeed, but it was also HEAVY! Around the beginning of August we started building our main display wall. After a trip to Rona and a quick tour of Heather's family's shop (to help us find all the tools we would need) we were off!
Our puppies were very helpful! Mostly at getting in the way, moving precisely-cut wood to other locations, and creating a ruckus in general, but helpful somehow! Rosko is on the left (Suzy's guy) and Pippin is on the right (Heather's girl).
One of the panel frames is done!! We were really excited to see it all come together - and it was much easier than expected too!
After the wall framing was complete, we built the box bases that would support the freestanding wall. These were also covered in scavenged free palette wood and white washed to match the wall.
This is the aftermath of doing construction in shorts. White paint, grey spray paint, and a whole lot of dirt covered Heather's legs, with flipflop lines to boot!
Next came cutting out our logo to be placed on our wall. We used thick mdf and a scroll saw to create this look. Heather's skills slowly improved, but you can see how "close" to the line she was on this first letter!
Here are the completed letters all spray painted and laid out! They are ready for duty.
We ordered custom hoodies for the show and we were beyond excited when they arrived!
We were working on projects for our booth right up until the moment we left for the Edmonton show. Here is the truck all loaded up and ready on Wednesday, September 6th. We drove up from Calgary that night and were ready for setup on Thursday morning!
And this is it! The time has finally come and it is all feeling real. We had help from the amazing Kim Evans of Emerald Creek because she saw us struggling to unload our heavy wall from the truck. Yay for awesome friends and girl power!
The wall is in place and we are so excited! (And sweaty)
Finally the logo is attached. That was not easy and it involved some balancing and a borrowed stool from our neighbours, but we were able to leave it on the wall for the next show.
Setup is complete and we are pooped. The show hasn't even started yet!
We still have some packaging to do before the show tomorrow. We still have a truckload (literally) of paper to add to our grid wall.
We were so pleased to "pre-sell" our latest unreleased collections! Sweater Weather, on the left, hit the website on October 1st and Home for the Holidays will be available on November 1st! The shoppers and croppers in Edmonton and Calgary were the first to get their hands on these products!
These lovely ladies came to our make & take on Friday to create this cute stamped fox tag using the Strong & Free stamp set. We had such a blast teaching with our products!
These young crafters made it to our make & take on Saturday to create our Out & About stamped tag. We love when young artists take an interest in scrapbooking and cardmaking and we wish to continue to inspire more to join us!
CSM can put on quite the party! These Canada themed cupcakes were perfect for the Canada 150 theme of Carnival.
We are soooo excited to be at Carnival!
Here we are with our wonderful industry friends! Katelyn Grosart is in the back and we had the pleasure of featuring her as a guest designer this year. She does a ton of creative work in the industry. On the right is Kim Evans, the owner of Emerald Creek who was previously mentioned. We loved hanging out with these ladies and even got to join them for supper.
Midday on Saturday it was announced that we had won the best booth award! The croppers voted on this and Spellbinders sponsored it. We were very shocked to have won this amazing Platinum diecutting machine. Thank you Spellbinders and CSM croppers!
Here we are loaded up and ready to leave Edmonton on Sunday morning. We were lucky to have family help take down the booth and do pack up with us, so it was very efficient. We were also very lucky to be able to stay at Suzy's dad's house! Thank you for the awesome hospitality, Gene and Lois! Suzy's sister Sarah and Heather were totally twinning with red Vans and camo shirts!
And now we jump right back into it in Calgary! Two weeks later, on Thursday, September 21st we are setting up again.
Here is our incredibly talented guest designer Jenn Gagne on the left and our close friend Alanna Cirka on the right, who both helped us with setup. It went much faster than in Edmonton when we were on our own and had to figure everything out for the first time. Thank you ladies!
Again, we had some wonderful young artists join us for our make & take! These girls were very creative and did their tags in their own unique styles.
For our make & take on Saturday we had this crafty guy come along. He was honestly stamping like he had been doing it for years, but it was his first time! He was also very patient with fussy-cutting and assembling everything - and it sure shows! Great work!
Here we are teaching together at our make & take station! Thank you to Karla Yungwirth, one of our DT members, for covering the booth at this time and helping out ALL day long!
We are so proud of all of our designers, guest designers, and contributors! We had a ton of gorgeous projects on display in our booth all thanks to them! We wanted to recognize them as best we could, so we put up little name plates beside each layout.
Our traveller's notebook inserts fit so perfectly into this wire basket display that we just had to share it too. For the Calgary show we had this promotion to get a Holiday Style card pack for free! In Edmonton it was an exclusive traveller's notebook insert.
Here is our amazing cheerleader Michelle! She's been an incredible support since day one and we were really happy to see her at the show!
Did you see, we had Canada 150 ribbon for sale in our booth!
I just have to show off my adorable niece, Ariella! She was quite a fan of our sequin mixes.
Suzy's little cousin also paid us a visit! She loved using our Strong & Free stamp set from our make & take session.
You guys, did you know that Eileen Hull was at the show?! The EILEEN HULL who designs Sizzix dies and travels the country in her adorable trailer, Scotty! That is her on the left. In the middle is our talented friend and guest desinger, Julia Chupik of Paradise Lost!
Here we are with Eileen again. She is so wonderful, sincere, and down to earth. We had the pleasure of joining a group of amazing ladies for dinner at Kim's house and got to chat with Eileen a little more.
Another incredible talent - Nicole Wright! She taught at Carnival and even dropped off some samples for our booth. What a lovely lady!
After the show ended on Saturday, the amazing Karla hung back to help us pack up our booth! We have been so lucky to get all the help and support from so many people for both shows!
Well, that pretty much wraps up our long-winded post about CSM Carnival, but there was just so much to share! If you have any questions about ANYTHING, please don't hesitate to ask! Thanks for stopping by and congratulations if you made it all the way through!
Kristen
Looks like a lot of hard work mixed with some fun times ?
Linda Pekrul
You ladies did a FABULOUS job! You worked hard and it shows! I can’t tell you how proud I was to have two pieces on display on your wall along with so many other amazing ones! My only disappointment was I was sick for the Calgary show and couldn’t make it in to see everything in real life. :( May your second year be equally successful!
Jordan
That is so exciting you two! Thank you for sharing! Wish I could have made it back to Alberta for this! Looks like you had a blast! Love the hoodies and the booth! (and the “helper” puppies of course!)