Hello friends! I’ve been back home in my snowy Minnesota for a few days now and have put together a recap of my trip to Creativation in Phoenix AZ.
Creativation is an yearly event where all the creative minds of the industry connect, learn and discover new products. It is a trade show targeted more towards wholesalers. I walked the Creativation show floor with my Tombow USA team and that is actually my favorite part of the show. Yes, there are all the new product releases being shown, and everything is on trend and fabulous- but really, you want to enjoy it all with people you know. Discussing the new trends with dear friends is more fun than capturing them on photo.
While I spent about 5 hours walking the Creativation 2018 show, one could easily spend 5 days perusing everything that is on display. So much to see, but I do feel you would need to take breaks in between because it all can get overwhelming at once.
I LOVED the Pinkfresh Studio booth- so fresh and beautiful. I got to meet Kinnari, the owner and all of her stamps and dies are amazing and trendy. Paige Evans Turn the page booth was simply a personification of her. It was colorful, pretty and floral all at the same time.
I put together a quick-ish video overview of my Creativation show walk.
The Lion brand had a new yarn called Flikka that looks so pretty! They also have a new tubular yarn and a Flikka yarn that looked so good! Also, how punny is this huge wall display?
One of my favorite make and takes of the entire show was at the Jillibean soup booth. Such an unique idea that was quick to complete and unique.
The Panna booth made me stop in my tracks. They have embroidery kits that have such beautiful details! The fabric for embroidery has the image laser printed onto it and then we can add embroidery details onto the print. I had never heard of this company before and but was super impressed at once.
One thing that you saw almost everywhere- in all the booths displays were paper flowers. Large gigantic paper flowers were very popular.
Another one of my favorite booths was the Webster Pages’. Their color crush planners are adorable!
The 3birddesign booth had such unique items! I LOVED their huge yarn cross stitch wall and not only that they had kits which you can use to embroider on wood.
I also loved Maggie holmes and Crate papers Flourish collection. Pretty paper makes me so happy. Their new magnetic boards and ephemera was super cute too!
The Fair Isle yarn booth was so colorful! Everything looked so inspiring!
The Lia Griffith booth had a stunning crepe paper flower display and so many wonderful colors of crepe papers too!
So many cacti! I don’t know if it was because it’s Phoenix or if they were an emerging trend, but they were everywhere.
Bazzill papers had a rainbow cardstock 3D display. All those pointy triangles!!
There were a lot of florals, botanicals and geometrical shapes all around the show. Also lot of wood crates and metal items.
Other than these, the Clover booth had a new tassel maker that was adorbs, there were fewer make and takes this year, but the Sizzixs one was awesome. I loved the Sunny Studios stamps booth, red heart yarn, doodle bug and the kunin felts booth too! I also discovered a new to me company called 49th and Market that had beautiful laser cut paper goods. Very intricate and detailed.
So that is my quick recap of events from the Creativation show. I had been to one previous CHA show (Crafts and hobby association) as it was called back then.
One thing is for sure, you come home from a creative trade show filled with inspiration and new ideas! Lots of blog post planning is happening on the back end and I can’t wait to share it all with you soon!
