Album options abounded in new, smaller sizes at CHA. There is something for everyone, as long as you want to think “inside the box” and work on a square canvas!
In addition to the now-ubiquitous 12×12 album size, virtually every company offering albums at CHA also was offering a smaller, intermediate page size – larger than a mini-album but smaller than the often overwhelming 12×12 page size. These sizes are perfect for holding a couple of 4×6 photos and a few embellishments and brief journaling. They are very practical for doing event or special topic albums and are becoming increasingly popular.
One of my favorite album companies (and not just because I was a winner in the Simple Scrapbooks Coolest Album Contest using one of their albums!), Pulp Paper Products was offering both 8×8” and 6×6” postbound albums. The albums come in 40 fabrics with an option of print or pattern. Tapestry by C.R. Gibson and All My Memories are also offering both of those page sizes. Heidi Swapp offers a selection of 6×6 and 9×9 spiral bound albums in her new product line, and those two sizes are also both offered by Making Memories in various designs of leather and linen. Chatterbox and Creative Imaginations have both jumped onto the smaller page bandwagon by offering many designs in an 8×8 page size, including three new 8×8 album kits by Chatterbox and albums in almost every signature design line available from Creative Imaginations. EK Success has been offering a selection of 6×6 page size albums for quite some time and will be continuing to do that this year as well.
While the smaller square page sizes were available in abundance, conspicuously absent from any of these lines was the smaller non-square page size of 8.5×11. Artists like Cathy Zielske are making this page size more and more attractive to many scrapbookers and it is thus becoming more widely used. But even so, one of the only companies that I saw offering albums in that page size was Colorbok, with a few of it’s designer lines like Susan Branch and Sue Dreamer. Dalee Bookbinding has of course offered it’s lovely albums in that page size as well for quite some time. But other than that, despite it’s growing popularity, an 8.5×11 scrapper’s album choices are severely limited. Why is hard to say…it would seem to me that that particular page size is just a market full of customers waiting to be tapped, unhappy with their current limited options and that with more options in that page size, it might even attract more scrappers to work in that size.
So it would seem from my perusal of CHA that fans of smaller scrapbook page sizes will have plenty to cheer about this year – as long as you don’t think outside the (square) box!
(Author’s Note: My apologies for the delay in continuing to post these reports, but as many of my readers already know I was taken by ambulance to the hospital in the middle of the night earlier this week, after suffering seizure-like symptoms. I appreciate all of your patience as I try to keep up with my work while also enduring all the tests and doctor’s visits necessary to hopefully learn the cause of that incident and prevent a recurrence. Thanks again for all of your tolerance and good wishes!)
About Nancy Nally
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