Hello all you Ella Fans out there! Would you like to become an official part of the Ella Publishing Co. family? We're now accepting applications for our second Ella Friends team! Part design team, part social-media ground crew, our Ella Friends team is an instrumental part of helping Ella spread the good news of scrapbooking far and wide.

We can't thank our group of inaugural Ella Friends enough for all they've done to help us through our first year in business. (Linda, Noel, Moon, Jodie, Monica, Tami, Katie, Katrina, and Barb, you've been the best!) Are you scrapper enough to follow in their footsteps?

(photo from Flickr Creative Commons, by epSos.de)

Answer our Ella Friend call! Here are the details...

What We're Looking For
Passionate scrapbookers who are active online, whether via blogs, online scrapbooking galleries, Facebook, Twitter, manufacturer design teams, and more.
Paper, hybrid, and digital scrapbookers. All creative types are welcome to apply!
Scrapbookers who offer a wide variety of styles, from simple to artsy
Scrapbookers from all over the world and from all walks of life
NOTE: Previous design-team experience not expected or required! We're looking to work with current influencers AND fresh new faces in the industry. This is not a popularity contest! And while we had nine Ella Friends last year, we are not limited to any specific number. We may choose eight, we may choose a dozen!

What You'll Do
Act as our marketing ground crew, helping us spread the Ella news via blogs, Facebook, Twitter, scrapbooking forums and galleries, and more!
Share ideas, insights, and anything else you'd like to share to help Ella grow and evolve.
Write articles, blog posts, and possibly even eBooks.
Support and participate in design challenges and product showcases on the Ella blog.
Offer feedback and guidance about Ella's upcoming editorial plans.

What You'll Get
Free advance copies of all new Ella eBooks.
Product packs from our sponsor manufacturers.
A profile on ellapublishing.com, with links back to your blog.
Opportunities to guest blog, write articles, and possibly even eBooks.
Opportunities to design pages and projects for articles, eBooks, blog posts, design challenges, and more.
Occasional "happy mail" from Angie and Wendy.

How to Enter
Send an email to submissions@ellapublishing.com with "Ella Friend Call" in the subject line by Monday, September 13, 2010. In that email, attach pictures of four layouts or projects that you feel illustrate your scrapbooking or paper-crafting style. And in the body of the email, please answer the following nine questions:

1. Why do you want to be an Ella Friend?
2. Why do you scrapbook and/or what are your scrapbooking goals?
3. What are your top three sources of scrapbooking inspiration? (Apart from Ella, of course!)
4. Where and how are you active online?
5. How many people are you able to reach with your online efforts? (Share number of Facebook or Twitter followers and/or blog traffic numbers.)
6. What design teams are you on now or in the past?
7. How would you describe your scrapbooking style or philosophy?
8. Please tell us where you live and with whom. (In other words, describe your family!) 
9. Give Ella one sincere compliment (insincere compliments are also welcome):

The new team will be announced on or around September 27, 2010.

As you may have noticed from the sudden infusion of PINK into our website, Ella's Essential Guide to Scrapbooking Girls is on sale now! (Don't worry, boy mamas, Ella's Essential Guide to Scrapbooking Boys goes on sale in September!)

To celebrate, we've decided to give some fun stuff away!

Leave us a comment telling us what kind of girl YOU are (girly girl, diva, tomboy, career woman, athlete, craft goddess, mama's girl, daddy's girl, fashionista, mama bear, etc.) and four random winners will win one of these amazing prizes:

A copy of Ella's Essential Guide to Scrapbooking Girls:

The "Perfectly Posh" collection from Imaginisce:

The "Flirty" collection from Bella Blvd:

The "Snugglebug" paper line from Little Yellow Bicycle:

You go, girls! (And by that I mean, comment.) I hope you win!

Hey Ella Loves you are in for a treat today!
Your submissions have been keeping me mesmerized and this month was no exception.
We had some amazing submissions and I can't wait to share my crush list with you.

First off is Nicole Pomeroy, with her layout "Old Soul"; second is Keshet Starr, with her card "Tweet"; third is Mindy Miller, with her layout " My Lens"; next is Hera Frei, with her layout "Sleep Over"; and last-but not least-is Diane Herman, with her layout "My Sister".

I attention was immediately pulled to Nicole's layout, "Old Soul". Not only is her daughter adorable, but I love the branch she used and all the texture she created by stacking paper behind her photo! You can find more wonderful layouts by Nicole at:

I love-love-love Keshet's ingenuity of using an amazing new product for such an outside the box project. Rose flower ribbon for a birds nest-pure genius! It makes me want to pull out my new ribbon shipment and get started. You can find Keshet's amazing talents at her blog.

I was absolutely drawn to the super cute baby grin on Mindy's page. I love that she took a different journaling perspective and talked about why we take photos. Not just because we love to look at them, but because we are capturing memories. Well said...well said indeed! Mindy will continue to inspire you at her blog.

Hera, my dear, I LOVE that you took me up on my quirky challenge and knocked it out of the park. I love the twist that you threw in with writing it from his point of view, but through your eyes...that is exactly what this challenge was about perspective! You can find more layouts from Hera at her Studio Calico gallery.

Diane's page with her daughters was so heartfelt...how could I not love it? I was enamored with the letter from her 18 year old daughter to her 6 year old daughter. It doesn't get much more tear-jerker...isn't that a moment that all parents dream of? I love it Diane, thanks for giving a whole different perspective on scrapping. Thanks for sharing Diane.

Lastly ladies, I wanted to leave you with a super quick page I made for my perspective layout challenge. It's about a time not too long after my husband and I had gotten married when he and his dad decided to go hunting and they didn't come home when they were supposed to. To make a long story short, they were fine and a little shocked that we had called search and rescue. It was a long scary night...that now makes for a hilarious story and scrap booking page.

I hope you all enjoy this months Liz's Loves, and that they inspire you to get creative...you never know, next month you might see your name on my crush list!

Hugs!
Liz

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Today's product showcase is brought to you by Nikki Sivils Scrapbooker.

This company is known for it's contemporary color palette and original designs as well as their textured embeliishments. See what some of our Ella friends have created using new product lines from Nikki Sivils.

Moon Ko is up first and she played with the Something for Everyone line and some burlap buttons

"I used Something for Everyone Cardstock Stickers to create the journaling blocks and die cut  one of the patterned papers for the title. Loved the burlap buttons and added those to a chipboard heart as well."

Now time for the prolific and talented Barb Wong. Her designs used the My Friend Birdie line and cool cord brads

"I created my layout using products from Nikki Sivil's My Friend Birdie line. I cut the blue and yellow patterned paper into a shape inspired by a newspaper ad, and I also cut the pennant banner from a sheet of patterned paper. I loved the fun colour scheme of the line... it complimented my photos perfectly. I used the label and alphabet stickers to help me tell my story, and I finished off with three corduroy covered brads. I arranged them to mimic the balloons in the photos. I love that the colours match the papers perfectly! 

Tami Morrison layers a variety of papers together to create the layout below and she used the burlap buttons also.

"My favorite product from this line is the adorable burlap buttons, which I used to embellish a vellum bubble. I loved the wide variety of label sticker options and stacked several together to create a layered journaling block."
 

Read more about the company and their reasons for starting it here. Stay in touch with them via their blog and check out the fantastic designs in their gallery.

Hello! My name is Debbie Olson, and I am happy to be a guest blogger today on the Ella Publishing Blog. I have to admit that I was hesitant to tackle a scrapbooking topic since my genre of paper crafting is primarily card making. I love layouts; I just don't have much free time to create them. I feel much more comfortable with an occasional mini album than with a 12" x 12" page.

Having spent several hours perusing various Ella Publications, however, I knew that I had a topic that my scrapbooking  friends could relate to: using your paper scraps and layout sketches. Today I would like to share some cards that take those layout sketches and paper scraps, and translate them to cards. I am using three sketches from the Ella Stretch Your Sketches e-book by Donna Jannuzzi. If you don't have this e-book, I highly recommend it to help you rethink and rework successful sketches.

I began with the three-photo sketch found on page 10, downsizing it to create a 5-1/4" square card. Square cards are a great break from the traditional 4-1/4" x 5-1/2" card, though postage costs a bit extra for them.

My stamp image was three flower stems and leaves together; the blooms were intended to be buttons. I inked the stems separately so that I could stamp three small panels rather than one large one, and I stitched a couple of lines for ground.

I stuck to the sketch faithfully, other than moving my sentiment down to the journaling block area, and adding the felt clouds and sun where the title had originally been. If you don't have image stamps, try some freehand sketching, or hand-stitch a stem and leaf trio. Use those scraps and sketches!

Next I have a birthday card that uses one of the alternate page 13 sketches shown on page 26. I simply reduced it to 4-1/4" x 5-1/2"-- one quarter of a letter-sized sheet of cardstock.

Since I had a sweet scrap of kite strings paper, I searched through my stamps for a kite image. (If you don't have a kite image, you can always cut the kites from scraps too.)


I wasn't as sure that this sketch would work for a card front with the title/sentiment turned sideways, but when I stamped it on twill and tied it around my card front, it worked well. I bumped the rectangles up slightly rather than leaving then in the center vertically since I wanted the knot and button detail to help frame that lower right corner. Still, it's recognizable as the alternate sketch and uses only scraps.

Are you ready to make some cards yet?

For my last card I chose the six-photo sketch from page 19 of Stretch Your Sketches.

With paper scraps this warm and cozy, I wanted to create a quilt card. While I have plenty of quilt- square stamps, I made a simple quilt from 1-1/4" paper scraps, sewn onto a pale aqua cardstock base.

One helpful hint when sewing cardstock: you probably will not want to knot your thread in the traditional way of going forward, reversing your stitching, and then stitching forward again. Instead simply leave the ends loose. You will have a thread on top and one on the bottom at each place that you started and stopped a line of stitches. Turn your cardstock over and pull gently on the thread in the back. A loop should appear that when pulled upon will bring the front thread through to the back as well. To affix the threads to the cardstock, simply dot some adhesive (I've used a tape runner here) near the threads and press them into the adhesive. That way you won't need to tie knots, and you will still have a clean front with no loose threads showing.

I added the sentiment where the title was in the sketch and tied twine around the card for lower element strip on this 4-1/4" x 5-1/2" card. A couple of threaded buttons finished my quilt with a minimum of fuss.

See how simple it is to adapt those sketches and use your paper scraps? You may discover a new hobby! Thank you for visiting today.
 

Supplies:
All of my patterned paper scraps today are from Cosmo Cricket's new Togetherness line.

Stamps are from Papertrey Ink (Blooming Button Bits; Up, Up, and Away; Scattered Showers Additions; and Vintage Picnic
Sentiments).

Cardstock and most accessories are also from Papertrey Ink.

Tools include a Martha Stewart Circle Cutter, a set of Papertrey Ink cloud dies, and a Spellbinders Paper Arts Classic Rectangle Nestability die and Double-Ended Tag die.

Inks were mostly Versamagic chalk ink.

a little about Debbie Olson

As a home-schooling mom by day and avid paper crafter by night, I am blessed to work with several paper crafting and stamping manufacturers, including Copic (Imagination International), Cosmo Cricket, JustRite Stampers, Lockhart Stamp Company, Papertrey Ink, Spellbinders Paper Arts, and Zva Creative. They feed my paper addiction! I also blog regularly on paper crafting at Thinking Inking.

I wanted to share with you some design ideas for creating a unique foundation on your page for your photos to reside.  It's a great way to begin a page because it gives your photos a "home"  and gives them a solid layer on which to build upon.  Obviously, a square of cardstock or patterned paper is the simplest way to create this base, but for the next few Fridays I'm going to give you some out-of-the-box ideas using supplies you may not have thought of before.

Use your STAMPS as a Foundation:

A border stamp can make a great photo matte!  On this holiday page, I used a scalloped border stamp to make a box that neatly holds my photos and title.  A few snowflake embellishments soften the corners and add a festive feel.

Supplies: patterned paper (Making Memories) + stamps (Studio Calico) + ink (Stampin' Up) + letter stickers (Making Memories) + sticker (Fontwerks) + brads (Making Memories) + machine stitching

Come back next week to see what other foundation ideas I share. if you missed last week, check it out here. To learn how to make layouts like ones shown here pick up a copy of Design Workshop for $5.99, authored by me, Lisa.

Week 1 winner is MEganKlaur

At my house, it is my youngest son's birthday. He is turning 10 on the tenth in 2010. Pretty cool! As we have been getting ready, it reminded me that everyone celebrates birthdays differently. I think it would be fun to know what you do at your house. At the Smedley house, the birthday child:

And that is what we do. It gets exhausting to do this over and over again (five times a year!), but hey, kids need to feel special.

Share what it is your family does.

How do you make birthdays special?

What do you do that no one else does?

Hi everyone! I’m Rachel Kaufman, owner of the kit club, inspirational source and online community, Scrapbooking from the Inside Out. Each month our kits are based on an emotion. We just celebrated our second anniversary this July, and we’ve covered some amazing topics – everything from freedom and gratitude to loss and safety. Our kits help you explore every side of yourself - your inner struggles and triumphs, your relationships, and your goals and dreams. Not only does each kit use color, design and symbolism to help you tell a deeper story, but our industry-exclusive FREE Inspiration Page each month provides you with a multimedia support system - including meaningful journaling prompts, a music playlist, quotations, stock photography and evocative challenges to make your tender heart and creative mind and hands flow.

I’m honored to have been asked by my friends at Ella to share what’s so special about what we do, and to show you some of the unique creative process of Inside Out-style scrapbooking. I’ve created a layout using July’s theme and kit, COURAGE. Check this out, and you might win your own COURAGE kit!



Materials: Patterned Paper, Die Cuts: Glitz; Chipboard, GCD Studios; Ribbon, Websters Pages; Alphas: American Crafts; Bling: Mark Richards; Paint: Making Memories; Ink: Tsukineko; Paper Glaze: Duncan; Pen: Sakura; Photo Credit: Tanya Sorkin Photography

The most important thing to me when I’m creating a layout is what I like to call ‘Visual Journaling’ – expressing the idea, the emotion behind the subject of the layout with visual ideas that reinforce the written journaling. It tells a much richer story than just good journaling or just a pretty page.

My subject for this layout was a big change in my life in the past few weeks that requires new courage on my part...I left my long-time career in fundraising and strategic planning and am now a full-time entrepreneur. It's exciting and anxiety-producing all at once. Have you ever experienced a change that was exactly what you wished for and then came face to face with new realities and challenges? I'm happy and nervous about what lies ahead and wanted to capture this feeling of new found courage...

Come join me on my quest to imbue my layout with more depth!

Color:

To reflect this month’s emotion, COURAGE, we specifically chose colors and patterns for the kit that are strong and resolute. The combination of deep red and clear blue connote power - like superman's cape and tights, or a waving (American) flag. For the base of my layout, I chose a patterned paper from Glitz with a bingo game theme to suggest a question: is what happens to us in life pure chance or beautiful synchronicity?


Photos:

While I'm often a single-photo scrapper, I used multiple photos on this layout, representative of the many parts of my life that come into play as I 'roll the dice'. It also reminds me that it's OK to have a variety of emotions at a time of transition.


Design:
The patterned paper I chose has a built in grid on it, so I took advantage of that symbolism in placing my photos. Three of them are lined up cleanly on the gird, and the largest is tilted - this represents the juxtaposition of the order of the stability of the past vs the 'off-balance' feeling of something totally new.

I used the chipboard star embellishments in a few symbolic ways. They serve as 'bingo markers', as I'm making choices in the game of life. The embellishment groups are also arranged like shooting stars with a bling trail, hoping for a bright future. The photos are nestled in among the stars, as I hope my destiny will be.



If you look closely, you'll see that I incorporated a tone-on-tone subtitle. I used cherry red American Crafts rub-ons to blend alliterative words - luck, love, life - into the red distressed paper strips. It adds some subtle interest to a visually flat area, highlights the photos, and sweetly and poignantly records what's at stake...




Technique:

I wanted to give the stars something more. I used one of my favorite painting techniques, learned from decorative wall painting...I used a plastic hair comb to distress the paint and create a wave-like movement instead of a flat coat of white. I then coated the stars with clear glaze to make the ridges in the paint pop. From a visual and symbolic perspective, the waves give the stars forward motion - a reference to life's trajectory.





Journaling:

I'm a big fan of hidden journaling. Why? My layouts are all about truth, and sometimes the truth is hard to share in an in-your-face way. Hidden journaling lets me feel free to express what's really going on and also symbolically show that some of my thinking is private. I trimmed out a section of the bingo grid so hat the journaling spot almost disappears. See the lace ribbon? That's the pull. But I always share my journaling with our members in a secondary photo, as does our whole design team - we want to encourage everyone to say what's really in their hearts...that's what the Inside Out approach is all about.



Scrapbooking from the Inside Out’s emotion-focused kits provide all-in-one value, unparalleled variety, exclusive inspiration and a heart-centered community to help you explore your inner world and motivate you to express yourself on the page with depth and meaning. No add-ons needed, just one big perfect kit with exactly what you'll need to Explore Your Inner World. Each kit is a unique, stylish creation that takes you to new places in your heart and your crafting.

Giveaway:
Would you like to win your own COURAGE kit? This kit’s retail value is $46.95 and it can be yours!



Leave a comment here and tell me what courage means to you, and you’ll be entered to win this beautiful kit.

Giveaway closes, Friday noon MST August 6.

And do come join us online…we're debuting our August kit, DISCOVERY. We would love to welcome you and join you on your journey to explore YOUR inner world.