Noteworthy | 10.12.2012

We’ve got lots to cover in Noteworthy today! The holidays are coming fast, CHA is coming fast, and companies are announcing new lines right and left!

Love Ranger’s Tim Holtz Distress Ink Seasonal Colors? Well, now you can love them all year round!

Ranger has announced they are expanding the basic Distress Ink Pad color palette to 48 colors from 36, to include the 12 colors that have been released as “seasonal” ink colors in the last year.  The new colors, like the previous colors, will be available in both ink pads and reinkers as full-fledged members of the Distress Palette.

In case you missed them the first time around, the new colors are: Picked Raspberry, Festive Berries, Ripe Persimmon, Squeezed Lemonade, Iced Spruce, Mowed Lawn, Evergreen Bough, Salty Ocean, Peacock Feathers, Shaded Lilac, Seedless Preserves, and Gathered Twigs.

The addition of these 12 colors to the full-time Distress palette does more than give Distress fans more colors. It also provides a significant update to the palette in terms of color tone. The twelve new colors are distinctly brighter and more saturated than the existing palette, which will make the Distress Ink palette more relevant to current trends in scrapbooking as vintage is starting to give way to the dominance of a more vibrantly colored graphic look.

After conducting a recent survey on Facebook about whether their customers might be interested in purchasing stamps individually rather than in sets, Stampin’ Up! is now offering 21 stamps that are being sold by the individual item. The stamps are from the popular collections Perfectly Penned, Word Play, and Seasonal Sayings. The stamps are being sold in clear-mount only, and come packaged in a plastic bag.  The individual stamps are priced starting at $4.95 and up.

A few new design teams have been announced this week:

• Lily Bee Design
• Jillibean Soup 2012-2013 Design Team Announcement

NBC News has an interesting article up on their website debating whether or not it’s truly creating if you use a craft kit. There’s some thought provoking opinions from some experts in the crafts market in the piece.

Jenni Bowlin wrote a great blog entry this week. She called it a rant, but I call it inspiring. She bared her soul quite a bit about how the day-to-day minutiae of running a business can distract you from the passion that brought you into the business in the first place. More importantly, she talked about the steps she is taking to grab that passion back from the brink of the cliff it was teetering on. It’s a must-read for anyone whose job is also their passion.

If you are a WordPress user, you should check out Mashable’s recent article containing 6 tips on how to integrate your Twitter account with your WordPress site. Even if you think that you are in pretty good shape in that area, you might find a useful idea that you’ve overlooked in this fabulous article.

It’s not even Halloween yet on my calendar, but BasicGrey has just announced a new Valentine’s Day line already! The line is called True Love, and features a dozen papers in pink, red, turquoise and brown, along with a variety of other embellishments.

Graphic45 is also getting ready for the new year with a calendar themed line. “A Place in Time” is huge – it features 26 double-sided patterned papers! Each month of the year has a foundation sheet, plus a cut-apart sheet.

In addition to the 24 monthly sheets, there are two annual sheets, one with a blank calendar and one cut-apart with sentiments on it. Like all Graphic45 collections, A Place in Time also features chipboard and sticker elements as well.

And rounding out the new releases, we have some new peeks from My Mind’s Eye! They are adding to their blockbuster Lost & Found series to create Lost & Found 3!

The new Lost & Found will feature two sub-collections, Oliver and Ruby.

As you’d expect from the name, Ruby is full of brilliant red:

Oliver, on the other hand, is full of masculine blues:

BasicGrey isn’t the only company preparing for Valentine’s Day already – My Mind’s Eye also has announced a new line called Lucky in Love that is full of pink and red hearts and flowers:

The Mom Creative has a brief, but very helpful, article about what to do when you are behind on Project Life. She shares a few key tips that will help you get back on track without tearing your hair out, or losing your passion for the project that you started.

And lastly, how about a good laugh? If you are a manufacturer and need a demonstrator for CHA, you might want to try hiring this guy: