I recently had the pleasure of attending the Creative Painting show in Vegas. Have you ever attended? It is a great show with great classes, a wonderful trade show, and of course the opportunity to enjoy the sights and sounds of Vegas. Who doesn’t love Vegas? The weather was fantastic, light jacket weather and lots of sun. It felt absolutely glorious, the wind was blowing, but even that felt good after leaving winter weather in Montana. I reconnected with painting friends and came home feeling like my painting mojo had been given a big boost. There is just something electric about attending a painting show. Loved it!!!
The show was great, lots of new patterns and books at many of the booths. It seemed like most attendees were helping out the painting economy and spending their hard earned money. I saw many attendees carrying out bags of product. Zentangled projects were all the rage and were found on a variety of surfaces and are such an interesting genre. Janice Miller had a number of lovely projects in her booth that incorporated Zentangle with a variety of media. Gorgeous!!! Wooden keys were very popular and could be found at many of the booths from whimsical designs to prim and from a variety of artists. People seemed to be enjoying them. Ornaments were also shown in large quantities as well as anything Halloween.
I spent some time at the Loew Cornell booth watching Giselle Pope demonstrate their new brushes. Giselle is always such a fun individual and exudes her love and passion for painting. Having demoed brushes and my techniques at Creative a number of years ago, I can tell you that it is an exhilarating experience to connect with painters and inspire them to purchase a brush that will hopefully make their painting easier. I have had the pleasure of demoing both the Dynasty Butterfly Brush and the Dynasty Trifecta brush in the past and have posted some of those techniques on my C Hartman Designs Blog.
I was particularly interested in the glass etching demo from B and B Etchall. I have used their products and can vouch for their quality. Another item that sparked my interest were the metal stencils from Dreamweaver Stencils which I used in my recent tin tooling blog posts at C Hartman Designs Blog. As many of you know I am a huge fan of using stencils in my designs and have blogged repeatedly about their use. If you like metal stencils, these are amazing and so versatile.
I’m happy to report that my friends at the Ideal Wood Products Inc. seemed to be selling their amazing wood products as well as my patterns and the other artists that they carry. If you aren’t familiar with Ideal Wood Products Inc., spend some time on their website Ideal Wood Products and take a look at their Made-in-the-USA products. Many of you may be familiar with their former name, Turns in Time. Their plates, bowls, candle holders, and turned shapes are made at their shop in Wisconsin and are fantastic. Mark and Dan were busy connecting with painters in Vegas and doing a brisk trade and wanted to let you all know that they will be attending National this year and are looking forward to seeing all of you there. They are a fantastic company to work with and carry all of my original pieces that are painted on their surfaces as well as the patterns to paint each project. Mark was nice enough to allow me to take their photo and post it on my blog as well as here for all of you. I’m sure that many of the pieces that you see will look familiar and my patterns can be found here at the Decorative Painting Store as well as on my website.
It is always fun to attend a painting show and I always leave feeling like my creative energy has been renewed. Unfortunately, we can’t all attend painting conventions. and between living our lives and keeping up with the daily demands of those lives, we can start feeling our creative energy dwindle. Fortunately, we live in a technological world and at the touch of a keystroke can find opportunities to connect with other painters and artists from around the world. Online classes and blogs keep us connected with our creative side when we may not be able to attend shows and conventions. I know that part of my goal as a blogger is to inspire you and to keep myself inspired in the process. I hope that you have found this post of interest to you and that you will visit my blog and website and become a follower. I’d love to hear your thoughts as to how you keep your creative life energized. …review by Christy Hartman
To see the selection of Christy’s designs that are available as patterns by mail or as downloaded e-Patterns, click here.
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