I got an email this week from a friend in the UK thanking me for updating my blog… she said that she was getting worried about me! Well hold on, here’s 2 updates in one week! Will wonders ever cease? Not to worry – I’ve just been really busy and you are about to see why.

For the last year, we have been working on the future of Anna Griffin Inc., the kind of future that takes the company to the next level, the kind of future that celebrates what we do and expands us in a new direction. We created Blend – the licensing division of Anna Griffin Inc. – to provide our customers with the same superior product design, yet in a contemporary style. Each licensed artist will be showcased in a product collection that includes everything from fabric to gifts and stationery.  The debut of Blend Fabrics is just three days away! Below are just a few of our exciting new collections. To see more go to www.blendfabrics.com!

Spice up your sewing with Kitchy Kitchen from Maude Asbury, a fabulously fun fabric collection with a retro twist. Produce infused patterns, kitchen utensils, lemon and lime wedges, funky fruits and vegetables and bold graphic geometrics combine with navy blue, citrus orange, flamingo pink and bright shades of green to create a recipe for stitching success!

Brontosaurus, triceratops, stegosaurus and tyrannosaurus rex dance happily among leaves, dots, stripes and playful geometrics to create this fresh and fun children’s collection. Sharon Kropp of Little Yellow Bicycle and I go back to the days of CKU when we were both teaching scrapbook classes. Her collection, Babysaurus celebrates the young imagination with dino dots, tiny stripes, friendly dinosaur faces and fun, stimulating patterns. With bold primary colors, soft pastels, storytelling designs and even a flannel collection, Babysaurus boasts something special for everyone.

My dear friend Jone Hallmark and I have wanted to work together forever and now we can! With fanciful fairies, whimsy florals, butterflies and paisleys, Jone’s collection Believe is filled with all things feminine. Delicate lines, painterly ginghams, soft colors and even the ABCs combine perfectly to create this whimsical, fairytale collection. Color palettes of pastel greens, sunny yellows and soft pinks, along with oh-so-soft flannel create the ideal collection for a little princess!

Songbirds singing, cheerful birds chirping and lovebirds flirting make this conversational fabric collection something worth chattering about! The Feather N Stitch Collection y Sarah Watts is a celebration of marriage between this delicate group of birds and fresh color palettes featuring olive green, turquoise and sky blues, lavender and pansy purples and muted shades of brown.

Be inspired by the organic elements of nature with Garden of Delights by Jules Davis. Jules and I worked together at the John Harland Company way back in the late 80′s (my first job, I might add). This collection features delicate butterflies and flitting hummingbirds, buzzing bees, along with garden tools, flower petals, leaves and winding vines to transform the simplicity of nature into a dynamic celebration of prints, patterns and colors. Bold fuchsia, lime green and sky blue with pops of tangerine orange and hot pink blend flawlessly to create the invigorating and refreshing color palette.

and….there’s so much more! Check out www.blendfabrics.com and let us know what you think!

Well it’s about time I posted something here, don’t you think? I was interviewing a new employee yesterday and she commented that she had been reading my blog and I thought, oh my goodness, that dusty old thing? I feel bad that it has been so neglected. There just hasn’t been time to craft it as I would like. There are so many exciting things happening with the Anna Griffin company!

My plan is to go back and fill you in on the last 10 months, but first, a look ahead to next week and the exciting International Quilt Market in Houston! We have four new fabulous fabric collections debuting…

The Fleur Rouge Collection is all about romantic, vintage florals with a contemporary twist! Beautiful reproduction fabrics from turn of the century France make up the lovely group. Traditional French cottage designs in classic reds and indigo blues exemplify the country French aesthetic. This collection flawlessly blends a magnificent floral, block print, paisley, medallion pattern and ombre stripe into modern day heirloom quilting projects for the sophisticated sewer.

Our first Asian inspired fabric collection, “Honoka” is derived from the Japanese female name meaning “harmony flower.” Honoka is an elegant collection of antique Asian patterns and original Japanese silk screen prints, with symbolic subjects like dragonflies, fish and flowers, creating a harmonious balance of patterns for sewing enthusiasts. The color palette of steel gray, plum, gold and coral is simply stunning.

Introducing a tropical paradise of fabrics, the Palmer Collection is inspired by the historic pink beaches and cottages of classic Bermuda. Retro inspired palm fronds and pineapple geometrics perfectly combine to create polished picnic quilts or to adorn your entire beach retreat. Palmer boasts a uniquely vibrant palette of exquisite pink, enchanting blue and welcoming green – all perfectly breathtaking.

Introducing our newest Christmas Quilting Fabric Collection, Twinkle Bright, a fun, retro approach to the 2012 season that combines bright shades of jadeite green and rouge red with metallic gold. Vintage patterns of poinsettias, multi-color holly and sparkling snowflakes bring inspiration from Christmases past. These playful Christmas prints are a holiday gift from our home to yours!

The quilts made from these groups are amazing! I can’t wait to post pictures from the market of what Joanie & Melanie from Tailormade By Design and Jeff & Debbie from Metropolitan Quilt have created. Every project is a home run! For those of you ready to sew, we have  just posted free quilt projects of all our current collections for download from www.annagriffin.com

I am starting the year off with a fast start. I feel like I’m on the Amazing Race going to Trade Shows around the world! My third pit stop is HSN this week for my First Anniversary. It’s hard to believe that a year has passed since our HSN debut. It has been the best experience and I am really excited to share with you a sneak peek at our Today’s Special for this Thursday, January 20th!

If you are like me and don’t have a lot of time, but want to make the cards you send people this year, this kit is for you! I designed it in a way that you can make beautiful handmade cards in 4 easy steps. The hardest part is choosing which beautiful embellishment to use!

The kit makes more than 30 cards and there is a card for all occasions – and I mean all! It’s not just for birthdays and thank yous…there are cards for major holidays, graduation and even sympathy cards. Trust me, you are going to LOVE it!

Good things keep getting better because I have created three more kits that you can get throughout the year – a 30 card Birthday Card kit, a 30 card Thank you card kit and a 30 card Christmas Card kit – all on autoship because these three occasions stand all on their own!

This is a sample from the Birthday Kit

This is a sample from the Thank You kit

This is a sample from the Christmas kit

I’d love for you to tune in at midnight for the launch of this product – plus the entire hour of our newest product collections. If you miss it, I’ll be back on at 4:00 pm with even MORE new things. I told you I’ve been busy – just wait until you see it all! It’s going to be great!

My HSN show is coming up next week! July 19th at 3pm eastern. I thought I would mention it here in case you don’t get our email blasts. (to sign up – http://www.annagriffin.com/rsvp.html). There are lots of fun new things in the line up…new tote bags, a new instant scrapbook and really beautiful new lace clear stamps. Make sure to watch! It’s my only hour until September.

It’s about time I posted pictures of our International Quilt Market booth in Minneapolis this summer. Every show is a chance to express creativity and visually delight buyers.

Our new Cecile Collection was the perfect wardrobe for a Mad Hatter’s Tea Party.

The five foot tall antique engraving cut outs were outfitted in bow ties and dresses that made the characters come to life.

They were so adorable, the booth won the Creativity Award! Many thanks to Joanie and Melanie of Tailormade by Design for their incredible skill and enthusiam for my crazy projects!

Happy Summer everyone!

This is the time of year where I seem to be running hurdles, jumping from one big event to the next. We just finished our 17th consecutive National Stationery Show in New York and tomorrow the International Quilt Market opens in Minneapolis.

The Stationery Show was fantastic…full of long time friends and customers. The show energy was positive and our 100 new products met with rave reviews!

Our newest line features handmade all occasion greeting cards – soooo pretty!

There was work and then there was play… creativity was all around us. These are pictures from my Saturday stroll down Madison Avenue.

The windows were as incredible as the merchandise inside. This one, the back drop is made out of candy. No doubt inspired by the movie “Up.”

At Henri Bendel the dresses were made out of hair rollers, rock candy, cupcake wrappers and even feathers!

At Bergdorf’s they must have known all the paper people were in town because all of the dresses were made of paper.

Fantastic paper folding! A crafters dream…

I sure love my iphone camera! Next up, Quilt Market…

I’ve been cleaning out over the last few months and asked myself how on earth did I collect so much stuff?! I came by it honestly, growing up in a family of collectors… there were antique furniture collections, car collections, Victorian Valentine collections, perfume bottles and the list goes on! Lucky for me, my Mom collected “me” too. She saved every creative piece of my childhood. When I tell people that I have been crafting since I was 7 years old, Mom saved the cross stitch sampler to prove it. A couple of months ago, I went home to North Carolina and was cleaning out a closet in my old room. Low and behold, I found the treasure of all treasures…my first scrapbook!

What a blast from the past! 12 x 14.5 must have been the scrapbook size in 1978. Imagine my surprise when I looked in the back for who made it…CR Gibson…the logo stamp says Norwalk, Connecticut. This design should be resurrected from their archives. Funny that I would be licensing design to them 32 years later.

Here are some things that you didn’t know about me and I have not thought of in years…I was quite the photographer with my Polaroid camera…I learned to sew in 4-H (you have to be from a small town to know what that is!)

I was an avid roller skater with many certificates to prove it…I had red and blue tennis shoe roller skates, I had white leather ones with pink and gold pom poms and spent nearly every Sunday afternoon “shooting the duck.”

Once upon a time there were airlines called Eastern and TWA that I flew to Egypt with my Grandparents. Notice that I threw in my roller skating medal with my travel memorabilia…

I remember riding a camel and seeing the pyramids, taking a cruise to the Greek isles and mostly I remember not liking the food. Glad that changed!

The photo in the top right is of my Grand Dad and I sitting on the edge of the Parthenon…can you still do that?

Cheerleading and dance classes occupied my after school hours…

Would you look at all that hair!

I must have been quite the certificate collector. I even had one for my braces…smile!

And finally…the pageant…all southern girls must partake in at least one pageant in their lifetime. I, however did as many as I could! Note the journaling, you have a former Miss Congeniality on your hands!

Many thanks to all of you who tuned into to HSN on Monday for my first Today’s Special! It was such an amazing success. Even after talking about it for 2 straight days I am still enamored by the idea of a scrapbook that is made for you. The time saving, the money saving…it’s all just perfect! Here’s to all of us creating at least 1 book this year! Many thanks to everyone involved in making such a big idea come to life!

You should know that HSN is one hundred percent behind developing craft programming and I couldn’t be happier about that. If you haven’t noticed this already, the products are loaded on their website as soon as they receive them. You can get a jump on ordering! www.hsn.com

My sincere thanks again for your enthusiasm and support! I read all the message boards and wanted to say “we hear you!” Now, there’s no rest for the weary. I am off to work on what is next… Any suggestions? Any requests?

4 Gift Shows, 2 HSN Shows and 1 CHA Show later… I finally get back to this Blog. Whew! January came and went in about 20 seconds flat.

We’ve just released the most product we’ve ever done. It’s “go big or go home” time! There are 12 new patterns in our fabric bags and accessories, there are over 150 new stationery and invitation items and 4 brand new scrapbook collections. We are shipping like crazy – check your local retailer!

Here’s a pretty picture of our booth at CHA.

The only thing prettier than our new Cecile Collection was the flower arrangement from Jason Kenneth Designs. They are one of our Invitation and stationery accounts in Costa Mesa California. Gorgeous! Can’t wait to see what they come up with next year!

That’s me standing in front of the giant paper flower display I made for my Dynamic Store Displays class. I haven’t taught a seminar at CHA in years, but I was inspired to teach by all the wonderful things retailers were making out of paper to showcase their products.

This is a photo of the 50 retailers folding and cutting. It was a sea of white petals!

We made a giant Valentines Day back drop complete with flocked paper hearts from our new Valentina Collection…

Spring has sprung with our new Isabelle Collection. We made 3-D paper butterflies – what fun!

Last but not least, the beautiful white display is for a wedding window. I love working on a giant scale, the bigger the better!

A good time was had by all…talk to you later!

Thank you to everyone who watched my HSN debut! You all made the launch a great success!

I promise to get the hang of looking at you in the camera by March – after all of this time on TV, it still makes me incredibly nervous! I couldn’t have been happier with those of you who called in to talk. Thank you for being so generous with me.

HSN was such a great experience and I look forward to going back. It was like a great big hug, everyone there wanted us to succeed!

I took a few photos to show you the behind the scenes…

Tracey and I back stage setting up the tables. Everything at HSN is white and every detail counts in HD. I really liked how the broadcast glowed. The lighting made the projects look fantastic.

This is our cute buyer, Danica. She and our supervising Producer, Erin stayed up most of the night to be with us. She’s on the set with the 3Birds Today’s Special overstuffed card kit. It was fun to meet Donna Stork and everyone involved with that innovative brand.

There were many things that made us feel special – the first was our very own Green Room. It was nice to have a place to relax and watch the craft presentations.

The second was the salon – wow, they give you the works!

Lastly, they made us a set complete with our paper patterns lining the drawers of the cabinets. HSN went above and beyond the call of duty. Thanks everyone! Now on to the celebration…

We celebrated by going to Bern’s Steakhouse – (See my post entitled What to do with Frequent Flyer miles). Above is a photo of a wine our table neighbors were enjoying from 1899. We actually got to taste it!

As a special celebration, Tracey, Danica, Laura and I enjoyed a Chateau Mouton Rothschild from 1994. It was a once in a lifetime experience!

That just about wraps it up. In case you missed the debut, you can shop HSN online for our items all the time. I noticed that they even loaded the show days before I went on. So if you want to get a jump on things next time – bookmark my crafts store on hsn.com.

I’m back on March 15th with a Today’s Special that you are going to love. Here’s a hint – I made a scrapbook for you!

It’s time to prepare for
Christmas Day…
The postman will soon
be on his way…
Handmade cards make one
squeal with glee…
Come create your holiday cards with me!

I finally had the card making party that I’ve wanted to have for years! I have always waited until the last minute to send out my cards. Not this year! They went out the first week of December!

It was so fun to fill my dining room table with friends and half the contents of the craft room from work.

I made a disposable table cloth out of a roll of kraft paper. I jazzed it up with oversized scalloped edge scissors.

One of the party favors was this gorgeous bag filled with crafting supplies. The bag is from my friends at Punch Studio that I found at Home Goods. Love it!

Here we are in action! What a beautiful mess.

A good time was had by all! Happy holidays everyone!