A few months ago, I attended the Craft & Hobby Association trade show in Los Angeles for the first time. One of the things I loved about being at the show was how much easier it is to spot trends when you’re literally walking into them!  One color in particular, which has not made a huge dent in my scrapping stash, seemed to be everywhere—purple.

Since the show, I’ve noticed lots of pretty purple products (try saying that ten times fast!) that are available for scrapbookers, and I’ve rounded up a few of my favorites today.



First, I love the elegant colors and homey patterns of Lily Bee’s Picket Fence line. Porch Swing and Fresh Air are two of the new Lily Bee papers that use a soft, grapey shade of purple.


And the coordinating label stickers bring in the purple and mix it in with other pastel and jewel-toned colors.


Ella Friend Jenni Hufford created a gorgeous layout with the Picket Fence line:



Pink Paislee’s Soiree line is fun and energetic, and uses a brighter, lighter shade of purple.

The embellishments in the line use purple in an unusual way, adding bright yellow and aqua hues to the mix!



Kaisercraft was also getting in on the action with their Magic Happens line:

 
Purple is popping up everywhere, but if it’s not a go-to color for you, it can be tricky to figure out how to use it. 

One surefire way to conquer a new color is to work with a black and white photo.  Black and white photos don’t compete with the colors of patterned paper and embellishments, so are an excellent match for a trickier color like purple.   When it comes to accents, I find that neutral color embellishments, in shades like black, white, and cream, add a subtle but elegant counterpoint to the rich shade of purple. 

On my layout, “No Matter What,” I let my photo and message take the starring role front and center.


I embellished the layout with neutral elements, like the Studio Calico Notions flowers and Pink Paislee pleated ribbon in cream.  I added white gel pen and white Thickers to contrast with the purple, and the kraft background grounded the layout. 


For another take on scrapbooking with purple, you can take a cue from Pink Paislee’s Soiree line and match a brighter, more saturated purple shade with bright primary colors.

On my layout, “The Things We Carry,” I used a brighter shade of purple to create a layout with a lighter feeling. The kraft works here again to ground the layout, while the pale blue provides contrast to the purple without competing.




So there you have it! Enough guidance to get you through the aisles of purple at CHA  this year.  Whether you’re scrapbooking grapes or plums or Barney the purple Dinosaur, I hope this article helps you tackle the purple in your life!

It's that time again, folks! Time for us to share a few deals with you that we've found out on the web! Only the best for our Ella Publishing Co. crew. :) This time, we rounded up a few offerings inspired by the topic of our newest eBook, How to Scrapbook Your Personal Heritage by Wendy Smedley and Aby Garvey.

#1

Free Roundtrip UPS Ground Shipping on Orders of $50 or More from ScanCafe.com! Use Promotional Code: FEBFREE
ScanCafe is a scanning service (for your old heritage photos, negatives, and more) used by pro photographers and Pulitzer Prize winners. It’s available to you from just 35 cents an image! And until February 28, 2011 only, you can get free UPS Ground shipping both ways if your order totals $50 or more. Use the code FEBFREE to get this discount!


#2
But what if you've already got those heritage photos under control and you're really looking for a solution for those old home movies? Well you're in luck, because here's a chance for you to save 20 percent as you get started transferring from VHS (or Beta or whatever) to DVD.


Share Home Movies
Convert from Tape or Film
Watch and share home movies online
www.iMemories.com


#3
Continuing on our little heritage theme, we also found Family Tree Maker software (from Ancestry.com) on sale for 20 percent off! This product made O Magazine's "Holiday Edition O List." (It was actually Dr. Phil's pick.)


ALSO Now Available - Family Tree Maker for Mac

Enjoy everybody! Hope you had a fabulous President's Day.

p.s. Does anyone else understand the link between President's Day and mattresses? Why are there always huge mattress sales in honor of Washington and Lincoln's birthdays? Seriously, what does one have to do with the other? Sure, presidents do now sleep on mattresses, and they always have, as far as I know. But who doesn't?

(And no, we didn't find any lingering mattress sales to direct you to, so sorry for bringing it up.)

How would you like to save a little dough? Every now and then, we at Ella will be sharing some fabulous discounts direct from our blog and eZine sponsors! And if you read on, you'll see how you could win a $25 gift certificate just by reading this post and leaving a comment. :)

Here are this week's offers!

#1 ScrapbookingAlley.com

Enjoy 20% Off Most Scrapbooking Products at ScrapbookingAlley.com! We tested this 20 percent off claim ourselves by searching for a single random product on this site as well as two other competitor sites to compare the differencxe.

Our choice was the Monarch Butterfly punch from Martha Stewart Crafts, which is featured prominently in our Eight is Enough eBook, and we love it. The claim held up! On one competitor site, this punch was $15.99 + $7.01 shipping for $23 total. On the other site, it was $16.99 before shipping was included. On ScrapbookingAlley.com, it's just $11.94 + $5.95 shipping (and apparently if your order totals $50 or more, shipping is free).

But do you want to know what we really loved about ScrapbookingAlley.com? When you click on a product description, the shipping charges are included right there! You don't have to search around or add the product to your cart before you know how much the shipping will be, as is the case on many other sites.

 

#2 ClarkColor.com

Register with Clark Color: and get 40 free 4x6 prints with your first order. Additional prints for as low as 8¢ + unlimited storage.

And that's not all, they're also offering a FREE desk calendar with the coupon code you see below. (UPDATE 2/3/2011: The coupon code automatically disappeared from the banner when the offer expired, and the offer was replaced with Free Shipping on $15 purchasees.) While we haven't personally ordered from Clark Color Labs yet, both of these offers give you a chance to try out their services for free, and we'll probably be taking advantage of this offer ourselves...

 

#3 Kolo.com

Order an $18 photo album and get 25 free photo prints with your order - Save $5! Kolo albums are some of the best out there, and in particular the Noci album in this offer is hardcover, premium book cloth with a sewn spine. Your photos come already slipped into the plastic sleeves (rather than printed on the pages). A good deal for a great (and simple) photo album or brag book.

Note: the banners above are affiliate links, which means that if you click on the link and purchase something, a portion of that purchase goes to benefit Ella Publishing Co., which helps us continue to bring you great content here on the blog and in the eZine for FREE. And that's a win-win-win for everybody! You save money, you discover cool new companies, the companies find new customers, and we earn a little bit for referring you. And we hereby vow to never refer you to lame companies.

 

And now for the contest...

Leave a comment on this post sharing which of the above offers most appeals to you personally. We'll choose one random winner who'll receive a $25 gift card to online superstore Scrapbook.com! Comments close February 3, 2010.

UPDATE 2/3/2011:
And the randomly chosen winner is...commenter #41, LauraBean! Congratulations. Thanks all for entering.

Welcome to the world baby Keira and welcome to motherhood Angie. It is time to celebrate this new beginning and to be a part of this share your advice in the comments or post something on your blog/website and link to this post below.

Can't wait to see what everyone shares.

Many of us scrapbookers like to listen to music or watch TV while we scrapbook. I enjoy listening to scrapbook chatter while I am scrapbooking and wanted to share with you awesome Ella blog readers what I recommend and please share what you listen to or watch.

* Paperclipping Roundtable

This show is a casual discussion between 3-6 scrapbookers who work in the industry (plus Izzy) and they cover topics from product trends to the latest news to IKEA. You can listen either in itunes or on via their webpage. However if you subscribe in itunes you are helping support them. (and it is still free)

* Listen to Stacy Julian talk about scrapbooking by color and other topics

* Former counselor turned paper crafter/scrapbooker Amy Coon hosts interviews with industry influencers and discusses  the most interesting topics

* and of course the Diva Craft Lounge is another favorite

*Creating Keepsakes magazine has started an informative and focused series, check it out

What else is out there that you listen to or watch?

Share!

Did you know you could earn a little bit back every time you recommend an Ella eBook on your blog or website? It's true!

We haven't quite gotten around to putting up a dedicated page on our website related to our awesome affiliate program (it's coming...eventually!), but the program has been up and running for months already! So it's about time I put up a quickie announcement here.

We're set up through a company called Share-a-Sale. All you have to do is register your blog or website through Share-a-Sale, and then search for Ella Publishing in their company listings. Once you find Ella, you'll see lots of links, banners, and book covers that you can add to your site, and you'll earn 10 percent of all ellapublishing.com purchases that originate from those links!

Interested? Click here to learn about the five-step process of becoming a Share-a-Sale affiliate. You could be earning dozens of dollars in no time! :-)


Above: This is what the screen looks like after you've been approved through Share-a-Sale and you start browsing for banners. You just click the "Get this Banner's HTML Code" link, then you copy and paste the link into your blog or website. It's that easy!

After the CHA-Winter tradeshow, the Daylight company generously offered to send Wendy and I review models of two new lamps we saw at the show. I have to say that I have seen the light about one fact in particular: light quality does make a difference to my creativity, motivation, and color perception.

I had the Daylight Table Top lamp to test in my home. The light was even, natural, and it flooded a surprisingly large space. Wendy Smedley, Elizabeth Dillow, and I crowded into my family room last weekend during a girls-only sleepover, and we all had plenty of light (from just one lamp) to paint our canvases for an art project! (To see our finished projects, visit my blog sometime in the upcoming week.)


The lamp is off in this shot. We're relying on the uneven overhead lights, which cast strong shadows.


The limits of my photography skills aside, you can see how clear and natural the light is. What you can't see is how large an area it lights.


Here's another view, this time showing an optional magnifying attachment arm, which is covered by a white fabric cloth. I had everything out of the box, set up and working within 5 minutes.


Here's the optional magnifying arm. You can attach it or not; it's up to you.


And here's an image from the Daylight website that better shows the scale of the lamp.

I'm used to working underneath an old artists' lamp, circa 1986. (It looks exactly like the lamp in the Pixar logo that hops into place at the beginning of any Pixar film.) The light it casts is very yellow, and it gets so hot that I'm surprised I haven't caught on fire yet. So the difference was amazing! The Lucas household is hooked.

And as for the Smedley household, they're on board as well. Wendy was able to try out the Twist Portable Lamp, which is small and compact and easy to take to crops or move from room to room in your house. It would be great to take to a crop as well (as long as there's an available power outlet) to help combat the unpleasant fluorescent light at many crop venues.

This image, borrowed from the Daylight website, shows the lamp itself better than I could. (You can clearly see how you can angle the lamp to light up your workspace, and how it folds into a tube for easy transportation.) But I did take some illuminating photos of a layout Wendy recently created.


The lamp is off in this picture. But isn't the layout adorable, nonetheless? The journaling says, "I forget you are nine years old SOMETIMES. I know that seems silly, but after all, you do have four older brothers, and they are all teenagers. You know the newest lines from The Office and have a vast knowledge of popular music. I reguse to let you have your own email address or Facebook page until you are older, even though you ask regularly. I do try to do things with you that are age appropriate and sometimes it is just you, me, and dad heading to the park. For now I try to balance the big kid stuff with enough fun stuff for your age because I do not want you to grow up too fast."


Now we'll shed some nice, natural-looking light on the subject. The colors of the layout in this picture are far more true.

Are you convinced? Well, the Daylight Company is offering to give one of each lamp away to a lucky Ella reader! Just leave a comment letting us know what kind of light you use in your scrapbooking (recessed, chandelier, fluorescent, floor lamp, table-top lamp, etc.), and we'll pick two random winners to receive either the Daylight Twist Portable Lamp ($74.99) or the Daylight Table Top Lamp, with magnifier ($129.99). Let's hear it!

p.s. You can still comment on yesterday's giveaway until midnight, April 1! I'll announce winners for both contests on Monday.

Enjoy a quick little video where Wendy and I demonstrate how to print your eBooks and magically transform them into classy, professional-looking keepsakes. (Hang in there through the hair disclaimer—it's short! Er, the disclaimer is short; the hair is actually getting quite long and unwieldy.)



Products mentioned in the video:
Text Tricks for Scrapbookers by Margaret Scarbrough and Sara Winnick
Stretch Your Sketches by Donna Jannuzzi
PhotoBookCreator by Unibind

Thanks for watching, everyone!

p.s. Did you download our FREE Super Sampler yet? If not, get on it! If so, which project inside was the most exciting, intriguing, or inspiring to you?

1. An Ella Publishing eBook was featured in Utah's largest newspaper, The Salt Lake Tribune, on Sunday! My mother-in-law Beverly (who is my main Source for Breaking News, Weather & Sports) called immediately to alert me of the mention. Click here to see the story.



2. Ella Friend Moon Ko sent me the most adorable handmade elephant pincushion in the mail! I think everyone should have one. I blogged about this at my Yeah, Write blog today too, because I want everyone to know how awesome Moon is. Thanks friend!



3. Alert reader Leah McLean, who lives in Brussels, Belgium, sent this cool photo from the Royal Museum for Central Africa. Wooden elephant sculptures? In the immortal words of Liz Lemon from 30 Rock, "I want to go to there!"


Elephants rule.

Stacy Julian, who is authoring an eBook on creativity for February (hurray!) mailed me this fun magazine clipping when she sent in her projects to be photographed:



I just had to share! How cool are those paperclips?

And shortly after we finalized our brand colors and logo, I spotted this beauty at IKEA, which now holds a place of honor in my office:


Three cheers for elephants!

On another note, I hope my fellow Americans are having a fantastic Martin Luther King, Jr., Day! In parting, I'd like to share two of my favorite quotes from Dr. King:

"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."

"Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness."