My day at the CGTA gift show with artist Robin Davis

I attended the Toronto CGTA show with my creative friend, Robin Davis on Sunday. I've known Robin for about 19 years and she is currently living her dream ... she is an artist and is licencing her art to a number of different companies in Canada and the USA. Robin has sooo many wonderful collections that she has been working on ... I don't know how she comes up with so many ideas. 

These are a few pictures of Robin in front of her new Children's line are at CCR Gifts ... an amazing Canadian wholesale company that makes a lot of their product right here in Canada! Love that!

Robin was at the Atlanta Gift Show a few weeks earlier and you can see more pictures of Robin's product lines from Atlanta on her blog here.

The CGTA is a trade only show for Canadian retailers and I have not been to it for a number of years. It was so inspiring and my head is spinning with lot of ideas for projects and decorating. I saw so many great trends ... coloured burlap, antique keys, words (vintage handwritting and "subway" type), lots of birds (yeah!), vintage (everything) and it seem that our love affair with all things Parisan is still strong. It was also interesting to see how much "handmade" and "papercrafting" have influenced the styles of much of the product that was being shown. It was also wonderful to see how manufacturers are now promoting up and coming artists from around the world and making their mass produced products "look" more hand crafted. I feel like we are back in the 1920's when the Arts and Crafts movement was happening, a time when people appreciated the work of the local craftsmen and did not want things that were "mass produced" by machines.

I'm off to finish a mixed media collage for one of my classes and to ice a cake for my wonderful hubby who turned 50 today!