Hello everyone and thanks for stopping by. Today we have some cool digital layouts and a free digi kit for you to download!
Sweet Shoppe is celebrating a big anniversary, giving tons of goodies away, and introducing lots of new projects, so you may want to pop on over to their blog.

Now for some layouts from two talented Ella Friends:

From Noel
Scrapbooking is one of those fabulous hobbies that helps you celebrate the thousands of little blessings that fill your life. How could that possibly be a bad thing? Well, I suppose, if you asked my very neat husband, he may come up with some reason like the piles of housework I manage to put off while recording our blessings. So today, if you're looking for a good excuse to leave that load of laundry in the basket just one more day (or two), check out the digital the goodies over at Sweet Shoppe Designs. Since I'm always looking for an excuse to put off laundry, and household chores in general, I quite enjoyed spending the better portion of an afternoon perusing their shop. As an added bonus for a chore-avoiding girl like myself, they add new goodies every Saturday.

Enough about my not-so-domestic-goddess like self, lets get to the fun! Sweet Shoppe has a great variety of digital styles, from cute and sweet to classic to manly and everything in between. But one of the greatest offerings for scrappers with time restrictions, are the great template kits by Janet Phillips. She even has a whole line of templates for that person with "2 Many Photos"

As a girl with a camera that can snap 8 frames a second, I find this a VERY handy line! Even as a straight paper scrapper, digital templates can be used just like sketches for layout inspiration.

I worked with three of the wonderful kits from Sweet Shoppe:
Absolute Cherry Crush
U and I
Close to the Edge

With so much variety available at Sweet Shoppe, I foresee many more chore-avoiding days in my future!

From Jodie

credits: alpha (blackjack by fee jardine) + stitches (bad sewing machine by traci reed) + papers, buttons, ribbons, flowers (a love to last by julie billingsley) + font (djb how cute am i by darcy baldwin) + photos and layout by jodie mcnally (www.jodiemcnally.com)

Ready to get some treats? Well, they made a kit just for our readers, yeah!

A few layouts from the gallery that caught my eye.

The color scheme and scalloped border work so well together, from Marnel

Once again the colors caught my eye on this layout by Keely B and the vertical design.

I'm excited to share some creations I made using more of the KiKi Art goodies featured here on The Daily Trumpet last week! (And visit my blog for a fun giveaway.)

These pictures were the perfect match for this paper & Donna Jannuzzi's Sketch from the first week of Six Weeks of Sketches. I adapted Donna's Sketch from 12x12 to 8.5x11, rotated it & played with the placement of the title and journaling. Since I live in a house of boys it was so much to work with pictures of my best friend's daughter.

Supplies: Patterned Paper (KiKi Art) + Cardstock (American Crafts & Stampin' Up!) + Chipboard Letters (American Crafts) + Font (Traveling Typewriter)

With Valentines Day just around the corner, I was excited when I saw the red, green & white glitter paper. I've had this unfinished clothespin in my project stash for years & thought it would be perfect to hold love notes between my husband & me. I painted the clothespin, used ModPodge to adhere the paper & added a few embellishments. 

Supplies: Patterned Paper (KiKi Art) + Cardstock (American Crats) + Letters (K&Company & Making Memories) + Precision Pen .05 (American Crafts) + Embellishment (Anna Griffin) + Wooden Clothespin + White Paint + Mod Podge + Sanding Paper

I fell in love with this paper, which meant I had to finish a frame with the whole sheet.  I was inspired to add the flowers after I saw a tutorial on the Studio Calico Blog for paper roses.  Once it all came together, I knew the perfect picture would be one I've already scrapped but had a 5x7 copy I planned on sending to my best friend. Instead, I'll be sending the finished frame
as a sweet Valentine's surprise. 

Supplies: Patterned Paper (KiKi Art) + Jewel Brads (American Crafts) + Wooden Frame + Brown Paint + Mod Podge + Sanding Paper

Please visit me on my blog, Without Filters, for the giveaway. Hurry, contest ends Friday, February 12th at midnight CST.

The company we are highlighting in this product showcase is called, KIKI Art. They are a new company based in Montreal (Canada), and are proudly influenced by the many cultures, languages and stories inhabiting the city.  One of their goals is to transfer the multicultural perspective they experience everyday into the creation of their products, so they can serve in the making of unique projects and layouts for people from around the world.


Two of our Ella Friends, Barb and Katie, played with their products and produced these cheery projects.

Barb created some cards and a layout:





Supplies: cardstock (Bazzill) + chipboard shape (KiKi Art) + chipboard letters (American Crafts) + brads (American Crafts) + decorative tape (KiKi Art) + photo corner punch (EK Success) + ink pad (Tsukineko) + pen (Signo Uniball)

I trimmed the chipboard shape, originally 12 inches wide, to fit on my 8.5x11 page, and I added the black brads under the swirl to accentuate the shape. I used the decorative tape with the zigzag stitching to pull the whole page together, by repeating of the colour black and anchoring the entire design to the bottom of the page.

Katie made a few layouts:

Supplies: October Afternoon; KiKi Art; Cosmo Cricket.

I made this by pairing colors that don't normally go together, and I love how it turned out


Supplies: KiKi ARt; Heidi Grace; October Afternoon; and Miss Elizabeth.

This layout uses one of the hot colors of 2009, orange. I used just a touch of orange product to work with my daughters photos.





Here my daughter is again, wearing orange. Notice I used just a little bit of orange to complement her photos. My new favorite color combination may just be, orange and purple, who knew?

To learn more about KIKI ART visit their website, sign up for their newsletter, or stop by their blog. Thanks KIKI for joining this awesome industry.

When we spotted these adorable Christmas layouts by Valerie Mangan (one of our favorite new discoveries through our submissions page!), we couldn't resist sharing them with you. The fresh color palettes, fun takes on the topics, cool product combinations, and great design approaches really put us in the Christmas spirit. And it proves that three layouts can do a fine job of capturing the highlights of an eventful December.

Here's what Valerie had to say:
"When scrapbooking holiday photos, I’ve always tended to do the big overview 2-page layouts. This year, I decided to focus on a few specific moments. I’m so glad I did because these three layouts truly reflect the spirit of the Christmas we had in 2008."



"I was actually inspired to make this layout when I saw the gold chipboard 'Believe.' I knew I had these great pictures from our annual Santa visit and the word 'believe' was what came to mind every time I looked at them. I couldn’t resist making a layout around this embellishment and telling the story behind of our visit with Santa last year. (Kind of long so it’s hidden on a tabbed card behind the photos). We are in the peak years of Santa-belief in our house. I know they are fleeting, and we might only have 2 or 3 left, if we’re lucky. This layout will always help us recall these special years, and 2008 in particular."



"My son’s reaction to the arrival of his new Curious George toy was so joyful that I knew I would need to document it in a significant way.  I knew the photo on the right would speak for itself so I kept the journaling to a single line. This layout will always remind me of my son being that age where Christmas is pure magic and it will remind all of us of the day Christopher and George became best friends."



"For me, seeing my kids happy and smiling during the holidays is the best part.  I really wanted to capture a collection of the ‘smiley’ photos together in simple, playful layout.  The candy colors of this Basic Grey collection (Eskimo Kisses) really helped me stick to the plan. These were happy times. This layout will always remind us of that."

To see more darling designs from this talented scrapbooker, check out her blog, Paper and Cookies. There are mouth-watering paper creations galore, but that's not all. We sure wouldn't mind partaking of her baking talents, if we were anywhere near her neighborhood! Baking cookies, making cards...that's what the holidays are all about, and you'll fiind plenty of both on Valerie's blog!

Merry Christmas everyone!

News Item #1

I picked up an adorable stamp set (Jungle Pals by Sassafras Lass) at the Scrapbook Expo over the weekend. I couldn't resist creating a pile of mini cards with my new elephant stamp! There's nothing like a bit of mindless, mass-produced creativity. The patterned paper is Enchanting by Pink Paislee. Just had to share.

News Item #2

We're working on finishing our blog this week, so please pardon our dust! Watch for a much more professional look and feel (Ella really likes to dress up), a new set of useful side links, a weekly poll, and better navigation. And best of all? An RSS feed! We know, all your dreams have just come true.

News Item #3

We have a winner for our Year of Free eBooks contest held last week, in conjunction with our exciting Grand Opening Ellabration! All you had to do to enter was sign up for our free newsletter at any point in the history of Ella Publishing Co. And we chose one random name from the list (#957), who happens to be:

Jackie Schimmel! (Well, according to her email address anyway. For all we know, her real name could be Mandy May McGill but she chooses to use a more sophisticated name as her email address. In any case, we'll be contacting "Jackie," or whoever she is, at the email provided to award the prize, so there will be no ambiguity.)

Thanks everyone for your love and support during our Grand Opening Ellabration week! Our website has been live for exactly 14 days now, and it's been a blast so far. We couldn't do it without you!

Cheers!
Angie