pretty paper. true stories. {and scrapbooking classes with cupcakes.}

Several new releases at My Mind’s Eye, but not all easy to photograph on display! This is the line I’m excited about though: Lush.

The Lush collection includes many flocked prints, including chipboard albums with flocked covers and plenty of damask designs, in six colours: red, brown, black, aqua, green and pink.

If you liked the Paperie line from Making Memories (and I did!), I think you’ll like this too.

And one more thing from My Mind’s Eye… if you’ve been scrapping a long while, be prepared to feel old:

Because Frame-Ups are ten years old and there is an anniversary release.

Yeah. Well, I’m sure I wasn’t quite ready for a die-cut to make me feel old, but I’ll go with the flow. No need to go check my older albums to count up just how many pieces from this original line made an appearance. The correct answer is: many.

Click here to shop for My Mind’s Eye products!

xlovesx

Comment [4]

Making Memories is one of those companies that are looked to for innovation at each and every show. This show they definitely went in a new direction — and I’m interested to hear what you think about their choices!

My favourite part of their new release is the Panorama collection, with a travel theme. I’m a sucker for anything travel themed!



This is my must-have from MM: the felt portfolio album. They have done these in a few collections, and I used one for this album and would love to use this one for something exciting too. (I have the Christmas portfolio album set aside for something special next December too.) I just love the 8×8 size and the mix of pages, pockets and other bits and pieces. Happy to see a new one!

I never tire of MM word stickers, so these are a lovely addition. I love that this collection will mix and match with last year’s Great Escape collection, with similar tones in darker colours.
This collection ships in May, but you’ll find other collections earlier.

Design Shop is a collection of dimensional stickers in different themes, including London landmarks. These are shipping in April.

This year’s baby collection, Pitter Patter, hits stores in February. There’s a pink line and a blue line and then some items that work for both. The albums are cute! Love that die-cut felt.

There are new Slice cards each month too — baby themes in February, Parties in March, Pets and Summer in April and Travel in May.

An innovation in gadgetry for this show: a hands-free kit for the Slice die cutter. A special magnetic mat and base attach the cutter without the need to hold it in place. And you don’t have to buy a new machine – it’s an optional add-on to the existing cutter. Very cool!

Something entirely different from Making Memories: a make-your-own jewelry line. It’s called Vintage Groove and it’s sold by the piece and only requires a few basic tools, so you don’t have to buy tons of stuff to get started. I do wonder if we will see scrapbookers putting these pretty pieces to use on paper projects as well as fashion accessories, since they will be a great addition to minibook bindings and tactile projects like that. What do you think about this shift? Something you think you’ll find at a scrapbooking store? This collection hits stores in March, so we’ll see then!

Click here to shop for Making Memories products!

xlovesx

Comment [4]

If you’re a fan of kraft, you’re a fan of Jillibean Soup, and there is even more new stuff for you!

These fabric flowers are my must-have. I love that they aren’t just canvas – which was a big trend all around the show floor – but they are printed. Love the typed letters on off-white canvas! And the buttons are a perfect fit too.

Plenty of patterned papers — some on white, some on kraft. Love that paper that looks like an eye chart, which will be a nice switch up to the papers that look like handwriting workbooks. Plus it reminds me I need to go get my eyes checked!

Love these kraft journaling tags! Will definitely use these soon!

And new stickers too: a new font in lots of colours plus themed sticker sheets to coordinate with the paper collections!

and a bit of inspiration from the adorable trees at the Jillibean booth:



(I had to include the typewriter, didn’t I? So lovely!)

Click here to shop for Jillibean Soup products!

xlovesx

Comment [4]

Ready for the final day of CHA images? Still plenty to share and the weekend just did not allow me to spend much time at the keyboard! So today it is: and Bella Blvd is up first this Monday morning!

They have three new collections: Estate Sale, All Inclusive and Man of the House. Each collection includes double-sided papers, including two with titles, borders and other bits and pieces on one side, plus two 12×12 sticker sheets and two printed chipboard sets.

All three collections ship to stores at the end of February, so not too long to wait!

Estate Sale mixes pinks with slate grey, brown, muted turquoise and spring green.

All Inclusive has summer holiday shades of royal blue, orange and sunny yellow with brown accents.

Many people said there have been plenty of collections for baby boys and young boys but not much for older boys that didn’t have an outdoors/going fishing vibe: well, this is the collection you need, I think! Masculine shades of olive, blue and brown with a range of words and phrases that would apply to boys right up to grandfathers.
By the way — check out that tiny alpha that runs down the side of the sticker sheet — every letter is on a tiny circle. Love that!!

And plenty of drop-dead gorgeous inspiration around the Bella booth! Layouts you just know you’re going to bookmark and come back to when you’re stuck for how to make something lovely!

Amazing, right?! Loved everything here!

Click here to shop for Bella Blvd products!

xlovesx

Comment [8]

Cuteness by the bucketload is to be expected at My Little Shoebox. They brought all those tiny little letter stickers and I seriously do not know how I ever coped without them!

Here are the five ranges they had at the show: Imaginary Friends (complete with monsters), Flying High (with birds, houses and flowers), Away We Go (with cars and road signs), Just Add Butter (with cupcakes!), Lil Critter (with hedgehogs!) and All A Flutter (with butterflies).

And here’s a look at the inspiration from their supercute booth:

Click here to shop for My Little Shoebox stash!

xlovesx

Comment [7]

Just a short post here to show you the new punch line up at EK Success. It’s the punch third from the left in the medium section that has me super excited: it punches a ring of circles but leaves the centre intact. I use the 7gypsies stamp that is a similar design all the time to highlight little elements that can get lost on the page and to add to layers of flowers, punches and other things in layered embellishments. Love the idea of being able to punch this design as well as stamp it now.

(And that small cupcake punch has not gone unnoticed either, clearly.)

In the large punches, there’s a similar design that reminds me of the Fireworks stamps from Banana Frog, plus some great label shapes for journaling and titles.

And the border designs, including borders that are pieces entirely on their own rather than just a fancy edge to the paper. These are all in the compact design that flattens down the actual punch for storage too…so we’ll all have room for several, right?

Most of these should be shipping to stores imminently, and you can find many EK Success punches right here.

Now…to download the second flash card and find what’s left to share! I know there’s Heidi Swapp and Cosmo Cricket on there, amongst other things!

xlovesx

Comment [4]

Five new collections debuted at the BasicGrey booth, with their releases in February and April.

The Green at Heart collection hits stores in February. Bright tones of fuchsia and spring green with hedgehogs and other cute creatures, but these appear mostly in a few embellishments so the papers remain very versatile, true to the BG look. New in the embellishment ranges are the ribbon doilies (my must-have, I think!), cozy posies (flowers made with pipe cleaners), pieces (labels and journaling die cuts), canvas (printed and eyeletted die cuts on fabric), bloomers (stitched flowers with buttons) and more journaling accents.

The Kioshi collection will also be available in February. At first glance, I thought the lavender made it a very cutesy-girly set, but a better look at the papers revealed blues, browns and aquas in patterns that will definitely work for boys too.

Then three new lines for April release: Capella, Max & Whiskers and BG Basics.

Capella is a formal collection but much more delicate than the Black Tie set from a few years back. I’m sure the two could work together if you still have Black Tie in your stash! This will work obviously for weddings and heritage pages, but grey is very trendy now for other things too — so I’m interested to see it paired with other colours like yellow or turquoise for pages that are far removed from formal topics.

Max & Whiskers is a pet-themed line, but again with plenty of pieces that aren’t necessarily puppy dogs and kitty cats, so you can use this line for anything really. Rich browns, reds and yellows with a shot of turquoise — which is the colour of the year, after all!

A little bummed to wait to April for this, but when it arrives I hope they have plenty printed: the BG Basics collection. White, brown and cream sets of barely-there patterns like notebook paper, grids, ledgers, dots and handwriting mean you can use these as your background and entirely eliminate that difficulty that comes with adding BasicGrey patterned papers to a stark sheet of cardstock. In addition to the papers, there are label, border and letter stickers to coordinate with each colour. Something so simple and yet so very important — I’ll take a collection pack of each please!

And as if there weren’t enough photos in this post, how about some more pictures from around the BasicGrey booth?

Click here to go shopping for BasicGrey supplies!

xlovesx

Comment [10]

GCD Studios have switched things up a bit by bringing on designer Melody Ross to create three new ranges of products: one bright pinks and turquoises, another darker more vintage collection and a third dominated by tools and techniques.

I love the happy colours in the Homespun Chic range. Somehow I missed photographing the papers, but there are reds and yellows in there too to balance all that pink and turquoise. Lots of printed chipboard embellishments – a bit like the Chatterbox ‘Fabulous’ range that Melody designed for 7gypsies last year, which I liked.

This is the Ava collection — some of it looks quite dark but that was partly the way they had it displayed to contrast from Homespun Chic. If you check out the pictures of the papers on their blog you’ll see the Ava papers are much lighter in colour. There are lots of pretty butterflies in the range (both papers and die cuts) and tons of border strips.

And finally, the Chip Art collection — this was one of the new tools released at this show. The idea is a bit of a mix between leather craft and paper craft — using metal tools and a mallet to imprint a design into a piece of chipboard. If you ever stamped your name into a leather keychain at summer camp, you will know exactly how to do this. The chipboard gets more pliable when it is wet, then you can make impressions and let it dry, then paint or finish as desired. In some of the samples the chipboard takes on a clay or ceramic look. They showed finished pieces as wall art, jewelry, journal covers and smaller embellishments for scrapbook pages — all very pretty. The start up cost with the mat, mallet and an impression tool will be between $40 and $50, but then you can add additional sets of impression tools between $6 and $10 for the set of three designs. There are also full alphabets that come in fancy tins, and those are around $40 for a big set.

And here’s a look around the inspiration at the GCD Studios booth:

Look for all of this to hit stores over the next month!

xlovesx

Comment [5]