You know an item has become a staple when We R Memory Keepers adds it to their lineup of basic embellishments. This season both tape and twine join the ranks of brads and other staple items on We R’s rainbow wall of embellishments.

Doodlebug Designs added to their Doodle Twine collection this season with several new colors, including a gray that’s very trendy! New Baby Girl, Baby Boy, and Boy twists have also made their way into the Doodlebug family, along with a new selection of twine cards to coordinate with the company’s latest paper and embellishment collections.

Jillibean Soup has long offered baker’s twine in colors that coordinate with their papers, and their most recent CHA show offering added three new cards to the mix. One is a much bolder color set than we’re used to seeing from the company, and coordinates well with their new Game Day Chili sports themed collection.

Bella Blvd. has added Designer Tapes to their rapidly expanding lineup of embellishments. These tapes are available in two different widths in a variety of trendy patters and colors that coordinate with almost all of Bella’s recent and past collections.

Tim Holtz’s tissue tape has been around for a few years now, and in his latest release at CHA Winter 2012 the veteran designer added a new Commute set of tape designs to coordinate with his new Destinations paper collection.

Maya Road is the place to go for embellishments of all kinds, and the company has now added large spools of baker’s twine (although they call it twine cording) in a variety of colors to their offerings.

The relatively new stamp company Lawn Fawn also expanded their catalog at CHA Winter 2012 by adding twine (along with a new paper line). The natural version of the twine is inkable and can be colored with mists, inks, and many other colorants.

Decorative tape is something totally new to Cosmo Cricket, who debuted two collection-independent sets of it in January. Though neither tape set is tied to a particular collection, both sets coordinate well with all the new lines they showed.

American Crafts has been a hot spot for trendy washi tape ever since the debut of Amy Tan’s first signature line of scrapbooking products with the company at CHA Summer 2011. Amy is releasing more tapes in her upcoming Sketchbook line that is shipping shortly, but unfortunately the tape prototypes didn’t arrive in time for the CHA Winter 2012 show and only a printed hang tag was available for viewing. Given how popular the last set of tapes were, though, I expect these to be a big hit, as well!

Studio Calico and Crate Paper, also part of the American Crafts family, are also producing new tapes for all of their lines, which is actually a first for both brands. It seems they’re benefitting from their new position under the American Crafts umbrella and have been able to expand their lines – something that’s great to see in an industry that’s been somewhat volatile as of late. Unfortunately, they also suffered prototype issues like their American Crafts parent so there were no samples on display at CHA Winter 2012.

If American Crafts is known for trendy tapes, then My Mind’s Eye has become the company that can be depended on for new baker’s twine. MME included coordinating twine in both the Follow Your Heart and Miss Caroline collections that were just released.

You can add October Afternoon’s name to the list of companies that have expanded their embellishment offerings this year. The company is adding several items to the lineup, including tapes for each of their new collections!

I can’t write an article about decorative tape without mentioning Hambly Screen Prints. Their washi tape was one of the biggest hits of CHA Winter 2011, and this season they are releasing two more sets, including a camera print that is sure to be popular.

One last company that I want to talk about on the decorative tape front is Bazzill Basics Paper. Long known for high-quality cardstock, the company has recently started to expand their offerings to patterned paper collections, and with their last release they debuted some new embellishments including paper tapes for each new line!

If you’d like to read more about past twine and tape offerings in the industry, you can check out two of my past Trend Watch articles here and here. I’m excited to see these items becoming staple offerings, and I can’t wait until the current crop starts to hit the market!

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With versatility like this, it’s no wonder that coral made an appearance in one form or another in almost every paper manufacturer’s booth on the CHA show floor. In fact, the color was so popular that I had to narrow down the list of collections to feature here to those that prominently used coral in their color scheme. In reality, there were many more lines that I could have shared that used coral as an accent color, but the range of images and styles shown here should give you a pretty good taste of what’s to come (and is in some cases already available!) from the new crop of collections.

Die Cuts with a View (also known as DCWV) made the color the focus of one of their newest paper stacks. Coral Couture pairs both the orange and pink versions of coral with aqua and yellow to create a sophisticated color palette. The addition of large floral and butterfly motifs give the line a vintage feel. For more on this line, you can visit my blog here, where I spotlight this new paper stack, and May Flaum also took it for a test drive in a post on her blog.

Cosmo Cricket infused two of their newest lines with shades of coral. The sultry and sassy Evangeline collection shows off coral’s pink side with lovely florals, while the funky, fresh Twenty Three pairs up a more muted shade with oranges and yellows.

The always on-trend Pink Paislee included a full spectrum of coral shades in the House of Three licensed Spring Jubilee line. Here again we see butterflies and florals in a coral-dominated line – it’s like the entire industry has spring blooms on the brain!

Hambly Screen Prints mixed up a brand new coral ink to add to their existing color palette. You can see an example of it below in one of their trendy new hexagon prints, and a brighter, pinker version in their new line of printed cardstock.

Two of Echo Park’s new lines - This & That: Graceful and Hello Summer - make use of coral, but in very different ways. This & That: Graceful sports a deeper, pinker shade, while Hello Summer’s version is more vibrant and leans toward the orange side of the spectrum.

Little Yellow Bicycle popped bits of coral into several pieces of their new Hello Spring! collection. Here coral is more of an accent color, but I wanted to include it since it shows up in so many of the line’s embellishments as well as the papers.

Fancy Pants brought two summer themed lines to CHA, and one of them – Summer Soul - is packed full of pinky-coral tones. The shade is just perfect for this summer/beach themed line!

Speaking of beach collections, Webster’s Pages’ new Palm Beach line is also packed with shades of coral, along with bright aquas and oranges.

That wasn’t the only place that coral was to be found in the Webster’s booth, though. Sunday Picnic also includes punches of the trendy color, especially in the omnipresent floral motifs.

Basic Grey’s Konnichiwa collection had me at “cherry blossoms,” and I love how they’ve paired up delicate, ethereal yoshino blooms with vibrant shades of coral.

I spotted a pairing of cherry blossoms and coral again at the My Little Shoebox booth, where the Aiko collection fuses the shade with sky blue for an airy look.

Coral was everywhere in the Prima booth – especially in their copious embellishment flowers – but nowhere was it more apparent than in the upcoming mid-release line, Doodle Deux. Here coral is coupled with a much warmer yellow than seen anywhere else in the show, which really amps up the punch factor.

Both Rhonna Farrer and Jen Allyson debuted new lines with My Mind’s Eye, and both designers made abundant use of coral in their collections. Rhonna’s Follow Your Heart: Be Happy line teams up coral and light aqua with yet more florals, and Jen’s Miss Caroline mega-collection also pairs up those same colors and motifs, but in a more vibrant and varied style.

It didn’t take long to spot the coral influence in the Teresa Collins booth! Spring Fling also makes use of the popular aqua/coral pairing. Though it also uses floral and butterfly images as many of the other lines we’ve looked at so far do, Teresa’s are a much more graphic style than we’ve seen so far.

Elizabeth Kartchner’s latest addition to her Dear Lizzy line with American Crafts, Neapolitan, was perhaps the poster child for coral at CHA Winter 2012. Filled with sweet pinks, yellow, oranges, and pale aquas to offset the lively bits of coral, Neapolitan was one of the biggest hits of the show.

Take Note by Studio Calico (one of their latest collaborations with the owners of former superstar company Sassafras) takes the vintage, eclectic flair that Studio Calico is known for and infuses just a touch of coral in the floral print as well as the journaling card sheet.

October Afternoon brought two coral-heavy lines to the show. Woodland Park teams coral up with peacock blue and animal icons, while the festive Cakewalk collection combines it with greenish-aqua and yellow.

I found coral all over the EK Success booth, as well, including in two new additions to the K&Company brand – Tim Coffey’s travel line and Bloomscape both show off coral’s versatility and range.

Graphic 45 is another company that came bearing coral in more than one collection. Tropical Travelogue, a mid-release collection that was actually available before the show, is a place you’d expect to find coral hidden amongst the tropical and beach themed prints.

What you might not expect, though, is to also find coral in a baby line! Little Darlings for the most part eschews pale pink in favor of a light shade of peachy coral.

Pebbles shows that coral works well in both floral and party themed lines. In fact, they brought one of each to the show in the form of Hip Hip Hooray and Country Picnic.

Popular stamp company Lawn Fawn debuted a new paper line at CHA Winter 2012 and showed that they definitely have their eye on trends. Coral is a major player here amongst the chevrons and touches of hombre.

Simple Stories shows how fabulous coral can be in their aptly named new collection…Fabulous! This collection is the more “girly” of the new Simple Stories collections, so the shade of coral used here is definitely on the bright pink side of things.

Janet Hopkins has returned to paper designs, and her newest collection from Bazzill Basics Paper, Wayfarer, literally puts coral on the map.

The last stop on our coral tour of CHA Winter 2012 brings us to a booth that has something to tie everything we’ve seen previously together. Petaloo manufactures embellishment flowers in every color imaginable, and their collections at this show were designed to coordinate with the top 20 paper lines being displayed on the show floor. With that kind of range, you know there’s a coral shade in there! Indeed, you can find it in the Hyacinth colorway of the Spring Darjeeling collection.

Did anything in that massive dose of eye candy catch your eye? Do you see yourself using coral in any projects in the near future? Chime in and let us know what you think of this new trend!

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Pottery Barn’s Sienna Paisley Duvet Cover & Sham

The duvet and sham have a gorgeous paisley pattern set on a soft blue background. The light blues and greens are accented with crisp white linens and I immediately pictured the warm breeze of a sunny, spring day gently rustling curtains around an open window. What also caught my attention was the richly textured headboard that the sham rests against. The dark hues of the woven headboard ground the other softer, lighter colors and provide a lovely contrast that showcases them all beautifully.

This is a beautiful photo. It sets the mood perfectly for marketing and selling this bedding set in Pottery Barn’s spring collection. As a scrapbooker, it also provided me the perfect inspiration for a layout.

All supplies from Designer Digitals | Template: Layer Works No. 100 by Studio Double D. Cardstock: Oiselet Rouge Solids Paper Pack by Katie Pertiet. Patterned Papers: Minst Melon Paper Pack and Solina Paper Pack by Maplebrook Studios.

The picture that I wanted to focus on is cheerful-looking but the circumstances weren’t so happy. My daughter has had some health issues recently and I took this photo to help us focus on the silver lining in the situation – that she was able to spend a lot of time alone with my husband and me.

Using the Pottery Barn color palette, I framed the page with light blue and light green patterned papers, but grounded the photo on a piece of darker brown cardstock. To bring more of the soft spring feel into my layout, I used Designer Digital’s Layer Works No. 100 template that includes the butterfly, ribbons, and soft stitching, as well as the brushwork and brackets. I added more strips of the blue and green patterned papers in the masks provided in the template, along with a third softly patterned paper that brought in a bit of the brown background. The pastel colors and hues, along with the spring-themed embellishments, help to convey the mood that I was striving for.

I hope that you’ll be as inspired by the colors and textures in the Pottery Barn photo as I was! As we head into warmer, spring weather, I’d love to hear what’s inspiring you. Let me know in the comments where you find inspiration and maybe I’ll use it in a future column. You can also follow my Pinterest boards here.

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The first Signature Series book focused on designer Teresa Collins. Known for her signature black and white vintage style, Collins has a company that bears her name as well as signature products (stamps, a stamp making machine) with several other companies. Her look is extremely distinctive, easily recognizable to her fans.

Signature Series: Teresa Collins is 130 pages long, and features a wide variety of projects – layouts, cards, and mini books as well as home decor, fabric and jewelry projects. In addition to Teresa’s signature products, the book features products from companies such as My Mind’s Eye, Ranger, and Cosmo Cricket as well as tools by We R Memory Keepers. In the extensive mini-book section, each of the example projects showcases at least 4-6 interior pages of the album – unusual and very helpful for getting a full feel of a project’s design. For some projects, as many as eight 2-page layouts are featured.

Available now, Signature Series: Teresa Collins is available in both print form ($17.95) and digital form ($6.95) from the Northridge Publishing website. A subscription to the series is available for $49.95/yr (print) or $4.95/mo (digital).

If you’d like to read Signature Series: Teresa Collins, you may be in luck! Scrapbook Update has copies of this Signature Series issue to give away to six lucky readers!

How To Enter: All you have to do to have a chance to be the lucky winner is leave a comment on this entry before Midnight U.S. west coast time on Wednesday night, March 14th. Make sure you include your email address in the line reserved for it on the comment form (for your own protection, don’t put it in the text of the comment, where it will be visible to the public – just in the line labeled “email” in the form where only Scrapbook Update staff can see it). We will need it to notify you if you are a winner. Winners will be drawn by random drawing from all eligible entries. One entry per person.

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Jessica Sprague

KI Memories and Linda Roos both have some newer chevron products available through Jessica Sprague’s Digital Store.

The KI Memories “Hot Date” collection (originally offered in print form) offers bright colors and fun chevrons throughout the collection. What really caught my eye, though, was the neutral alphabet with a tiny chevron pattern – just lovely!

Hot Date Paper Pack

Hot Date Alphabets

Linda Roos’ “Free Spirit Kit” offers two different chevron papers – one is a smaller turquoise patterned paper and the other one offers chevrons of varying colors on the same paper – both sized beautifully so as not to be overwhelming when used on a layout.

Free Spirit Paper Pack

 Two Peas In A Bucket

Two designers at Two Peas have new products that prominently feature chevrons.

Erica Hernandez’s “Chevol: Big Kit” consists solely of 12 chevron-patterned papers. It includes a wide variety of colors and beautifully-muted tones that compliment the larger pattern well.

Chevol: Big Paper Pack

Jen Martakis’  new overlay kit includes multiple chevron patterns that allow you to create your own papers.

Toolbox Kit Overlays – Chevron & Houndstooth

Jen’s “Colorblast Celebration” collection also includes several chevron variations, including a free journaling card set.

Color Blast – Celebrate Patterns

Color Blast – Celebrate Journal Cards FREEBIE

Designer Digitals

Katie Pertiet, Studio Double D, and Pattie Knox from Designer Digitals have brand-new chevron-themed products available this week. [Disclaimer: This author is a long-time member of the Designer Digitals creative team.]

Katie’s soft chevron brushes are a unique interpretation of the trend and true to Katie’s softly-blended style of scrapbooking.

Watery Chevrons No. 01

Studio Double D has a new layered template that utilizes chevrons as one of the main embellishments – this template makes a very bold and striking layout while still showcasing the main photo.

Layer Works No. 166

Pattie Knox has a soft pastel paper pack featuring a nice variety of chevron sizes perfectly themed for spring layouts.

Springtime Chevrons Paper Pack

The Lily Pad

Both Amy Martin and Amy Jaz Designs from The Lilypad have newer chevron-themed kits, too.

Amy Martin’s “Winter Chevies” includes 15 different digital papers, all with varied sizes and colors of chevrons. Most chevron patterns alternate just two colors but this kit also offers a beautiful multi-colored chevron pattern that I was immediately drawn to.

Winter Chevies

Amy Jaz Designs’ “You + Me” collection includes some very subtle chevron papers, embellishments, and templates.

You + Me Kit

You + Me Quick Pages

A chevron pattern can make a bold statement and add a fun, modern touch to a layout. I love seeing the selections that digital designers have offered recently. There’s a nice variety of patterns and colors – from soft, muted tones to bigger, bolder patterns – and truly something for every design style.

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