Good Glass Fun at CHA

Today was the only day I could wander around CHA, also known as the Craft and Hobby Association show. It’s usually held in Anaheim, CA, which can be a bit of a trek from Los Angeles, where I’m located. As luck would have it this year’s show was held in Los Angeles. Yea ha!! Just 15 minutes from my store and house. Lucky me!! S I walked the aisles searching for items I can use for fusing and mosaic and metal clay and I found a few things. I do need to go through my catalogs and brochures and business cards to find everything there is to write about. I do want to mention the bottle cutter at the Diamond Tech booth. It makes glass bottle cutting more precise and a whole lot safer. They also sell a wide variety of mosaic supplies as well as stuff for fusing, glass bead making and stained glass. They are going to require multiple postings to talk about all they do. And they’re the perfect place for the beginner. They even have microwave kilns…

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Deborah on February 1, 2011 3:25 pm
Oh how I envy you! Can’t wait to see all the delicious mosaic and fusing treasures you found at the CHA. I would be like a kid in a candy store. I don’t suppose you picked up doubles of all those business cards, brochures and catalogs, that would be a great giveaway! Have fun going through all of them.
cathimilligan on February 1, 2011 4:35 pm
It was such a fun show but not as much stuff for glass as I’d like to see. I talked with the Vice President of CHA and she said if I had any suggestions of vendors they could contact to let her know…there should at least be more mosaic stuff.
Deborah on February 6, 2011 1:11 pm
I don’t know about Cali. but here in Indiana mosaic is still pretty much the “orphan” art form. I spend just as much time at shows answering the question, “what is it?” now as I did 12 years ago and people still want to call it ceramics. I have yet to do a show where there has been another mosaic artist even when I go to the larger shows.
There are some wonderfully talented mosaic artists here, we just seem to be spread out across the state so we each have our own area & only see each other when we visit each other’s studio.
Now I am finding the same thing with fused glass, the newspaper even came out to do a story because they didn’t know what fused glass is. Now I am holding free “fused glass events” where I do a very basic fused glass demo. The response has been great and I am getting a lot of students from it so it’s been worth it.
I guess it’s true, we have to educate consumers. I have always wondered if it is like that in other states.
You would think there would be more glass art at the CHA though as popular as it seems to be but if you think about it, compared to other art forms there probably aren’t as many web sites or online vendors for glass art as there are for say fiber arts, scrap booking or sewing. We just think there are because it is what we love to do & it’s the sites we visit the most.
Sorry for the long post, you just got me thinking LOL.