News Notes: CK Media, Layle Koncar, Renee Pearson, Jessica Sprague, Angie Lucas

A lot of news has crossed my desk in the past few days…here’s a round-up of the highlights:

Layle Koncar moves to Basic Grey

Well-known scrapbooking designer/instructor Layle Koncar was let go from her position at Scenic Route in January due to economic concerns at that company. She announced this week on her blog that she will be starting a full-time position with Basic Grey on April 8th.

Creating Keepsakes revamps website; Sprague to move tutorials

CK Media rolled out an unannounced revamp of their scrapbooking and papercrafts websites today. The new site has a new social media-style community on it (existing alongside the old message board at the moment, at least). The new layout is heavy on banner ad space and has a more “web 2.0″ feel than their previous design.

Unfortunately it seems some popular content was lost in the move to the redesigned site. In response to complaints about her video tutorials from past issues no longer being on the CK site, Jessica Sprague has indicated on the message board at JessicaSprague.com that she is planning to move the tutorials to her personal site. Sprague, who has been a valued talent of CK Media in the area of digital and photography, indicated she was “very tired of the unreliability of the CK web site”. It has long been a common complaint about the site that bonus content links being advertised by the company’s magazines are not correct or active.

Renee Pearson’s book “delayed” by CK Media; Pearson plans new website

CK Media was scheduled to release the latest book from fabulous digital scrapbooking instructor Renee Pearson (recently let go from Digital Scrapbooking Magazine) this month. However, she revealed on her blog in late February that Digital Designs for Scrapbooking: Getting Started with Photoshop Elements was being “pulled from the publishing schedule” due to the financial situation at CK Media and that she did not expect it to ever be published.

There is some exciting news coming for Pearson’s fans, however. She is about to launch a new website at www.reneepearson.com on April 1st where she will be able to teach all of her popular digital scrapbooking classes. Visitors to the site now can take a look at a preview video and sign up for the mailing list so that they don’t miss anything when it actually launches.

New website is online home for Angie Lucas

Former Simple Scrapbooks Managing Editor Angie Lucas has launched a new website to be her online home now that she is no longer with the defunct magazine. Yeah, write is devoted to topics of “journaling, scrapbooking, and other -ing verbs” according to Angie.