The New Exhibitor at CHA Winter 2007 section was of course filled with new companies hoping to make a splash in the paper and embellishment segment of the scrapbook market. While many of them had interesting products, a few stood out from the crowd as companies that had everyone talking.
Luxe Designs was certainly one of those companies. A first look at their catalog tells you that the company is unusual. Certainly no other scrapbook company I know of sells their product using the philosophy of legendary designer Coco Chanel! Luxe’s color palettes are cutting edge and high-contrast, while the designs themselves are graphic and retro-inspired. The company’s die sheets are printed double-sided so that the die cuts can be used visible on both sides – a very unusual feature. Luxe is groundbreaking while still rooted in industry-wide trends such as the black-and-white palette and Asian themes that were seen widely at this show. I expect we will see much more of them in the future.
Dream Street Papers offers a wide variety of designs because they are made up of 10 designers, many of who are familiar to those who follow the freelance scrapbook design community. The result of their joint efforts is a group of collections that provides something for almost every taste and artistic style. This company is not pigeon-holed by a single creative vision. My personal favorite of the new lines was Dana Miron’s spring colored “Baylee’s Garden”, both because it is perfect for little girl pages and because it is named after the amazing daughter of a friend of mine. But if boy pages are your topic or you prefer a more sophisticated look, Dream Street has beautiful offerings for you as well.
Tinkering Ink was another company that people noticed – and not only because you could see their brilliantly colored papers from across the room! Their bold, bright patterns are available in several trendy color palettes, but what really caught my eye were their embellishments. Tinkering Ink offers gorgeous coordinating Monogram Letters for all of their collections that are a beautiful font filled with detailed patterns. But the most amazing embellishment they offer is their finery. Tinkering Ink’s “Finery” are felt elements with gelly decorations on them that are truly fabulous and that must be seen to be appreciated. Oh, and last but certainly not least, if you are a digital scrapbooker you don’t have to miss out on Tinkering Ink’s creative vision. In a highly unusual move, they are making all of their collections available for purchase on CD for digital scrapbookers to use.
While chipboard is not new to scrapbooking, Magistical Memories’ take on it definitely is. The company sells chipboard embellishments that are highly detailed designs, similar to die cuts in the past. Magistical offers a series of highly unusual border chipboard designs as well as very edgy designs by Susan Rodriguez that include skulls and flaming photo corners. And if you haven’t already seen them, check out their Ribbon Wrap cards, which I’ve been a fan of for awhile now to store my ribbon on!
Stay tuned to Scrapbook Update for more reports on CHA Winter 2007!
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Nice reports – keep’em coming