Scenes from a Scrapbook Expo (or four....)

As many of you are aware, I spent quite a bit of February and March on the road, traveling around the country to work at Scrapbook Expo shows for Cricut. I had previously been to local Scrapbook Expos in Florida in the area where I live, but the experience of attending four events within five weeks - spread all over the country - was a great look at the state of scrapbooking across the country, and a great chance to interact with many different types of scrapbookers.

Nancy at Scrapbook Expo

(Like my t-shirt? It's a Cricut Design Space "Make It Now" project, created with Cricut Iron-On material!)

The Cricut booth is filled with demo stations for the latest Cricut Explore machines!

Cricut booth at Scrapbook Expo Anaheim

Visitors can try the machines out, or get their questions answered if they already have a machine. It's a lot of fun talking to other scrapbookers about the equipment and hearing about what they use it for.

Cricut at Scrapbook Expo

Cricut Bug

In Anaheim, the booth had a special visitor who was very popular! Oh and this guy was much in demand too - Cricut CEO Ashish Arora, who visited both the Pleasanton & Anaheim shows. That's Maria DelPinto from our company's other site, CraftCritique.com, taping a video with him:

Ashish Arora

Two of the shows I attended were at Gaylord resort & convention centers in Orlando and the Dallas area. Another was at a fairground in Pleasanton, California (outside San Francisco), and the fourth was on very familiar territory - the Anaheim Convention Center, which has hosted the Craft & Hobby Association show in January for years.

Gaylord Texan

Anaheim Convention Center

No matter the location, each morning of the shows there was a long line of excited shoppers outside waiting for the doors to open. These attendees in Pleasanton, California got to enjoy a beautiful spring California morning while they waited!

Pleasanton entrance line

Meanwhile, inside, the vendors busied about doing their last-minute morning set-up, taking drapes off of tables and giving their booths one more walk-through:

Scrapbook Expo morning prep

Scrapbook Expo morning prep

Then, the doors opened and a sea of scrapbookers washed over the show floor, with shopping bags in hand ready to be filled!

Every shopper seems to have a plan when the doors open. For some, it's to snag an early chair at their favorite make-n-take spot on the floor. For others, the goal is to hit as many of the "early bird" coupon specials and sales as possible.

Scrapbook Expo doors open Orlando

So what will the shoppers at Scrapbook Expo find on the show floor?

One of the most popular make-n-takes at Scrapbook Expo in 2015 has been the one being run in the Fun Stamper's Journey booth by company founder and creative visionary Richard Garay. The project is a gorgeous card - and participants get to keep the beautiful stamp set they use! (Did I mention that it's free?) For a preview of the project, click here.

Richard Garay Fun Stampers Journey

Bargain hunters at Scrapbook Expo love the Scrap That booth, which offers product at heavily discounted prices.

Scrap That

Best Craft Organizer Scrapbook Expo

Scrapbookers are always looking for more and better organization, so Best Craft Organizers - a regular Scrapbook Expo vendor - draws a crowd! Steve from A to Z Scrapbooking (Cricut's vendor partner for the Scrapbook Expo shows) is my kind of guy. He wears (and sells) shirts that say things like "Housework only comes before scrapbooking in the dictionary."

Steve from A to Z Scrapbooking

The fun doesn't stop when the show floor closes at Scrapbook Expo. In fact - it starts before it is even open! For many people, Scrapbook Expo is a weekend long event. They stay with friends at the host hotel all weekend and crop and shop till they drop!  The night before the show opens (usually that means Thursday night), the crop area opens and it starts off with a Make n' Take event.

Make n Take event

When the show closes on Saturday, the fun doesn't stop in the crop area. This photo was taken right after 6pm, an hour after show close. While many people had gone in search of dinner after the show closed, you can see that many people had gone straight from the show floor to cropping! Many more had their stuff still set up, all set for another evening of cropping.

Scrapbook Expo crop

My next visit to a Scrapbook Expo with Cricut won't be until the Chantilly, Virginia show on June 12th & June 13th. But this weekend is the Scrapbook Expo in Puyallup, Washington, and then San Diego is May 29th & 30th (the weekend after Memorial Day). If you are in those areas, don't miss the fun!