Craft & Hobby Association Mega Show 2016 part 1

Time for my Craft & Hobby Association Mega Show 2016 recap, part 1! CHA, otherwise know as the Craft and Hobby Association, has a Mega Trade Show once a year, full of arts and crafts manufacturers, new products, tech, demos, classes, designer showcases, new trends and networking galore.

In this part of the recap I will be focusing on the Amazing Casting Products/Alumilite Corp booth at CHA. The Amazing Casting Products Design Team, of which I am proud member of, was asked to submit some of our best projects to be showcased at their booth and to do demos. I took loads of photos of the booth so lets take a tour of the booth, see the artwork and meet the artists showcased!

First day of artists doing demos at the booth, Design Team Leader Susan M. Brown, Tina Walker, Melissa Johnson and I. It was so wonderful to see Susan again and finally meet Tina and Melissa in person!

Elena Lai Etcheverry of Charity Wings stopped by the booth to talk to President of Alumilite, Mike Faupel, about all of the crafty applications and products of the amazing Casting Products line!

This year I decided to create some booth samples showing not just traditional uses for resin but how Amazing Clear Cast can be applied to paper, canvas and dried plant life.

Here is a close up of my 16X20 Autumn canvas, I wanted to show how simple papercrafting supplies could create a lovely home decor piece. The base layer is canvas painted with acrylic paint, with a thin layer of Amazing Clear Cast, some glitter and tiny gold beads. To the second layer of resin I added Alumidust powders, more glitter, mica flakes and tiny paper leaves. The third and final layer had a base of glitter and top layer of resin to seal all of the embellishments in.

Here is my 16X20 Abstract canvas, which reminds me of a Nebula. I started by casting some cabochons in Amazing Casting Resin and Amazing Clear Cast tinted with Alumilite’s Dyes and metallic powders. I painted the canvas with acrylic paint and poured a layer of clear resin, placing the cabochons on the canvas, along with different glitters and small beads. The next two layers were applied in a manner similar to the Autumn canvas.

Mike Faupel commissioned these stunning wood and dyed resin pieces from an artist in Michigan. They were created by pouring Amazing Clear Cast over wood and carved on a wood lathe.

More of my jewelry and Remelt samples on display at the booth. The Mesoamerican necklace tutorial can be found here.

Here is a close up of some of the new resin jewelry pieces I made as booth samples for this year’s CHA show.

An associate of Mike Faupel created this wonderful and rather fun Pangaea chess set. It’s all made out of Amazing Casting Resin and molds made of Amazing Mold Rubber. The artist who created the set made sure each dinosaur had a different facial expression and were all hand painted!

Melissa Johnson‘s beautiful food safe hand painted resin plates were just lovely in person. You can see one of Brenda Burfeind‘s wine bottle shaped resin cheese platters next to the plates, to the left one of Lyn Gill‘s polymer and resin pendants, and on the right you can see one of Sandra Strait‘s hand painted mini fish ponds.

The booth was just full of beautiful Design Team artwork, from Susan M. Brown, Melissa Johnson, Lyn Gill, Maria Soto, Rachel Whetzel and more, along with pieces made by Cat Kerr; my photo doesn’t do her work justice so please make sure to hope over to her blog to see her work!

There was even more amazing work from Cat Kerr, Tina Walker, Sandra Strait, and Aimée Wheaton.

This beautiful model miniature was made of out Amazing Casting Products, from the rocks, water and inner core by the very talented Lloyd’s Layouts. Their use of resin and mold making products to create realistic miniature scenes is outstanding!

The handsome Santa in the background was made with Amazing Casting Resin and my “Cosmic Radiation” gown was on on display again at the booth

For demos at CHA I decided to show how to apply resin, powders, glitters and beads to acrylic painted mini 5X7 canvases. Each day of the show I showed to apply a new layer of resin with embellishments. People responded so well the demos I already have two orders for the mini canvas art!

Once home I sanded the edges of the canvases and prepared them for the final coat of resin. I can’t wait to make more.

Come back later for Craft & Hobby Association Mega Show 2016 post, part 2!

Until Next Time, Safe Travels!