Part II The Creative Connection

As promised, I am posting on the second part of  The Creative Connection I was so privileged to be a part of. I have to admit I was so caught up with tending my booth I did not take any classes but my daughter did. She took Wendy Addison's classes and actually got nothing done because they talked through the whole class. Wendy is such a sweetie and I have carried her designs in all my shops even before she sold them to Midwest. I love her work and was excited when she had her booth next to mine along with Tinsel Trading... (which was hard on my pocket book, I might add.)

One of the highlights of the show was to finally meet my friend Karen Valentine of My Desert Cottage. We have spent many phone conversations together and she has helped me on my blogshop but we had not met face to face, so it was my pleasure to give her a great big hug when we saw each other.

Isn't she beautiful... inside and out.

Karen Shopping...

Our first event that we attended was the Keynote Speaker dinner with Jo Packham, Nancy Soriano, Mary Jane Butters and Amy Butler.

Jo and Nancy...

Dinner

Mary Jane, is a sweetheart and wanted me to open a white shop for her in Idaho...

For dinner we had Cornish hen with wild rice and carrots and for dessert we had apple crisp... a good Midwestern meal.
There were so many wonderful artists/business women there, I can't begin to name them all but I did manage to take a few pictures. I am not good about taking out my camera, I am more of a "in the moment gal"... just ask my kids! 
Here are just a few...

 Jill Schwartz, I have carried her jewelry in the shop for years and I just love her. She bought some nice vintage rhinestones from us.

 Here is her booth.

My friend Carol that I met in Round Top, she is part of Gina Galvin's  posse'...

It was good to see Gina again too.

It was so good to finally meet Rebecca Sower, I love her work and I have talked to her online now and then. Her work with Haiti is inspiring.

Her booth and the Haiti by Hand she works so hard for.

Lisa Souers jewelry... very cute! I had to have one of her designs.
We also attended a book signing event with Ree Drummond and a thank you cocktail party. It was so much fun. Here are some random shots of the party.

That is Karen talking and she must have been saying something really tantalizing! Don't you love Kecia's of Lemoncholy's Flight of Fancy's hat?

Karen Valentine and ... Koralee from Bluebird Notes and Christine Hoffman who did the beautiful decor for all of our meals, thank you-Karen
isn't she cute!

That is Deb of Curious Sofa talking to Bittersweet Designs. Deb and I had a nice visit that afternoon. It was nice to see her again.

Jo and Nancy on the table tops... no, it didn't get that wild. Jo was thanking everyone and presenting her daughter with a thank you gift. It was very touching... she had us all crying.

 My daughter Jody and Ruth Rae talking.

My good buddy Darla on the left who was responsible for keeping everyone happy and keeping everything going smooth. Great job Darla! And the gals from Earth Angels.

All in all we had a great time and I can't wait until next year! Thanks to all who made this so spectacular!
I will leave you with random shots of everyone's beautiful booth's.

Kecia at Lemoncholy

Cherish  Designs

 Rose Mille

Bittersweet Designs

EarthAngels


Many Blessings
Rebecca

Honey, I'm Home... from Creative Heaven!

The Creative Connection... that is.

It is good to be back home and blogging again, I just want to say I have missed all of you and your blogs. My life has been a whirlwind the past few months and it will take a little while to catch up but I have so much to tell you and show you!

I am so excited to share all that I have learned and all that I have experienced this past summer and of course at the Creative Connection. 

We will start with the Creative Connection trip and post backwards... because that's just about how I am roll... backwards. This will be a two part post on the Connection, part one will be our booth and part two will be on friends I met, other artists, displays and some festivities we attended.

I spent a week in Mpls. my hometown, I have family there so the show was twice as fun for me. Jo Packham and Nancy Soriano at Where Women Create put this together and did such a fabulous job! There were tons of workshops, book signings, panel discussions and festivities for every aspect of art, crafting and business. Plus the fabulous artists they lined up for the handmade market. 

As you know I had closed my shop a week prior and had been working on the set up the week before fighting vertigo. My son James helped me the night before on the technical aspect of the display and he loaded the truck. I have been asking a lot of him lately and I just thank the Lord for such a wonderful son and family. My daughter Jody drove from WA with her hand-mades and I brought hauled our treasures to Mpls. on Tuesday. We got in line at 6 am on Wednesday for set up. Not knowing what to expect it was a little tense. We had a pickup truck and 2 other vehicles full! We got in around 7:30 and quickly started set up as their was a pre-view show at 6 that evening. We also had wonderful help from a friend and we couldn't have done it without him, thank you Eddie.

I painted the tarp to look like a French shop or atelier. I didn't have a lot of time to paint this and I ran into problems with the coarseness  of the paint tarps I used, so don't look too closely and I will have to work on it some more if I am to use this again.

The old doors I have had for display in my last two shops. They are one of my all time favorite display pieces.

We had a lot of dress forms between Jo and I. Some are available...

 I will be putting them up on my blogshop later this week along with merchandise from the show.

Here are some shots of the booth and our displays, if you see anything that you like just email me... it is for sale! :)

I will insert a little break time here... go get a cup of coffee and a cookie... I am making up for lost blog time. 

I haven't taken pictures in a while and I did go a little nuts with the camera.

Jody shopping...

And I did some myself...

But more on that later in the week when I do part two on the Creative Connection.

Thanks so much for all your support through out my many changes and it is good to be back!

I would appreciate any tips from you show gals out there, as I can use all the help I can get. I also am looking for more shows to participate in for the fall and Christmas, anyone know of any I should try and get into???

Thanks so much and as always I love hearing from you, and appreciate all of you.

Many Blessings

Rebecca