Not too long ago, rub-ons were a novelty introduction to the scrapbook market. Available for years for other craft markets, Making Memories made them a mainstream scrapbooking tool with their alphabets and phrase sheets. They produced only a few font options and only two colors – black and white. A few other companies, notably Scrapworks, joined the trend and added a few more alternatives but still until very recently there were very few design options if a scrapbooker wanted to use rub-ons.

What is it about rub-ons that has made them be the product of choice, almost replacing stickers for many scrapbookers like myself? First is price. I find per letter that the rub-ons are generally less expensive than stickers. Second is the visual effect, where the rub-ons lie flatter on the page than a letter sticker would and can have a finer line than a sticker that needs more physical structure to hold it together. Third is ease of use. At least in my case, I have found rub-ons to be usually easier to use than stickers. This is especially true since I discovered the Making Memories stylus, which is way more comfortable to use and more effective than the popsicle sticks which most rub-ons are packaged with.

So following the success of the first such product introductions, it was inevitable that, as fans like myself hoped, many more companies would produce rub-on product lines. And that was definitely in evidence in the products on display at CHA from most of the major manufacturers! Virtually no product line is now complete without some kind of rub-on product. This means that there is now a wonderful assortment of styles and colors available to rub-on aficionados so they now have an appropriate option for virtually any page design.

Making Memories, who ignited the trend, continued to grow their offerings with seven new alphabets available in multiple colors instead of just black and white. They are also offering 8 sets of colored themed image rub-ons as well as 12 colored themed word/expressions sets. Other mass-market scrapbook manufacturers like Colorbok and Creative Imaginations are also jumping on the trend. Creative Imaginations is offering impress-on alphabets and decorative elements in several of their signature lines, although with the exception of some of the Karen Burniston products, all the designs are black, white, gold or silver. Colorbok’s introductions are notable for their size – two of their four alphabets, each available in eight colors, are well over 2″ high! In addition to the alphabets, they are also offering six different collections of phrase and decorative element designs, each with a distinctly different style and color palette. Product lines such as these will almost certainly make rub-ons a product accessible and usable by even casual or beginning scrappers.

Specialty scrapbook companies of the sort usually available only at scrapbook-specific retailers, also are offering a wide selection of products to rub-on fanatics. Stylistically, the available products now range from the 6 bright colors (along with black and white) of the Doodlebug Design alphabets, to the weathered antique look of the five Rusty Pickle alphabets. In between, there are rub-ons from Tapestry by C.R. Gibson, Junkitz, Heidi Grace, Karen Foster, Melissa Frances, Scrapworks, and many more. The good news for consumers about this wide range of product lines and manufacturers is many-fold, including availability, design flexibility and price competition.

I must admit that I was skeptical about their usability when I first saw the new Making Memories rub-on alphabets, what seems like oh-so-long ago. But I was hooked from my first use of them and am absolutely delighted to now have so many color choices and style options to create from!

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!)

It seems everywhere you look these days you find scrapbookers using ribbon on their layouts. This became true even before scrapbook supply companies began selling ribbon. Scrapbookers were already going to craft and sewing stores and purchasing ribbon on spools and by the yard to use in their work. Ribbon is a perfect embellishment, available in an endless array of styles and colors to suit almost any look an artist is trying to create. It is also widely available to even those like myself who don’t have a scrapbook store close by. And ribbon is very affordable, available as low priced as $.30/yd, or even less on sale. Since a yard gives you three feet, even if you are scrapping a large 12×12 page size, that yard gives you three page widths of trim to play with! Adhesive companies have even jumped on this trend with the introduction last fall of Glue Dots’ Glue Lines. This string version of the round glue dots are perfect for using with ribbon and provide the adhesive hold necessary to hold a fabric item like ribbon.

Given ribbon’s hold on the scrapbooking world, of course it couldn’t be long before the scrapbook supply companies tried to elbow their way into the ribbon market, and that was very evident in the offerings at CHA. Whereas some supply companies like Making Memories had already been offering ribbon as part of their general embellishment lines, at CHA it seemed that no line of coordinated products was complete without it’s complementing ribbon, often with gorgeous results!

Although the scrapbook companies ribbon price points were definitely somewhat higher than buying ribbon through other outlets, the prices are still low enough to make it a very affordable embellishment, and the convenience factor of coordinating product definitely is worth a small premium in price to myself and most scrapbookers. Carolee’s Creations is adding 29 ribbons of varying styles, some with text printed on them to coordinate with their text print papers and some with other coordinating designs. They come on 1yd spools at an MSRP of $1.20 each. Doodlebug has introduced 24 new ribbons that are absolutely beautiful and coordinate with their candy collection. The 12 striped 5/8” grosgrains and 12 dotted ½” sheers in bright colors like pink, blue, green and purple come on two yard spools at an MSRP of $1.99. Creative Imaginations will be introducing in May eight different ribbons to coordinate with the new Narratives pastel papers they showed at CHA. The two different designs, a Victorian filigree and a script, are available in four pastel colorwash tints, are a ½’ wide and will be sold by the yard for an MSRP of $.80/yard. The above mentioned lines range from vintage to bright to colorwashed and are an example of how ribbon is now available for virtually any style scrapbook page.

In addition to those detailed above, there were many more ribbon offerings at CHA. For instance, Flair Designs is introducing six ¼” wide velvet ribbons that are in beautiful deep colors to coordinate with their paper products, and All My Memories is making a dozen monochromatic ribbon packs (one yard each of 5 designs) in mostly vintage tones to complement their paper lines. Rusty Pickle was showing an extensive collection of 25 ribbons that coordinate with their paper collections, and there were even companies selling nothing but ribbon, aiming at the scrapbook market for the first time.

So the good news from CHA is that ribbon aficionados will find something to make almost everyone happy. Beginners can purchase ribbon with coordinated product lines to simplify the process of assembling a layout, and advanced scrappers of virtually any style will find something that they can love. So make room in those ribbon organizers, scrappers…ribbon has scrapbookers all tied up!

Looking around at CHA, I saw a definite continuation and expansion of a theme that has been evident in scrapbook product design for some time: the use of text as embellishment. Instead of just being a functional element on a page used to create a title and journaling, text has evolved into a decorative element, being used to add style and enhance a layout’s theme. It is being used on everything from background paper to decorative elements. Creative Imaginations’ Narratives by Karen Russell is an extreme example of the use of text on everything from background paper to stickers to overlays, and that line was greatly expanded with newly released product at CHA. And in addition to being everywhere, text is also getting bigger in physical size as well.

The enlarged size is certainly the newest aspect of this theme and it was evident in many different products being introduced at CHA. Text size of 2-3” high was conspicuous in many companies’ offerings. Making Memories was encouraged by the success of their original foam stamp alphabets to expand that line by introducing three new fonts and adding a lower case to one of the existing alphabet sets. Creative Imaginations is also introducing 4 fonts of foam stamps. The fonts from both companies include a stencil font, a very popular look in many of the new product lines. All My Memories, Heidi Swapp, Creative Imaginations’ Art Warehouse and Rusty Pickle are all offering variations on a stencil-look cardstock or chipboard letter alphabet. Monograms are also becoming a popular decorative use of text, either as a drop cap in a title or other element, or on their own. Fontwerks, Heidi Grace, Creative Imaginations’ Art Warehouse and SEI are all offering some style of large monogram type alphabets. Making Memories even has introduced metal and beaded monogram alphabets! Large text size has also invaded the world of rub-ons with the introduction of products such as Colorbok’s Memories Made Easy rub-ons. The four fonts vary in size from 1.5” to 2.5” tall and each come in 8 different colors. Creative Imaginations was another company utilizing larger rub-ons, including them in the Art Warehouse line.

Background papers is another area with a heavy use of text as a decorative element. In Carolee’s Creations’ newly introduced Ting-a-Ling lines, each set of themed papers includes one paper design that is purely text, for a total of 19 text designed papers. Rusty Pickle’s Inspirational line includes 11 papers that are completely text designs, and their Sports Collection includes 16 such designs. Similar papers, where the design consists solely of lines or varying sizes of text repeated over the whole background, can be found sprinkled throughout the current product lines of such manufacturers as DejaViews, Sweetwater, Pressed Petals, Flair, Creative Imaginations’ Art Warehouse and Jone Hallmark, and Karen Foster. Creative Imaginations has also introduced Word Transparencies, the design of which is solely text in varying fonts repeated over the entirety of the page, and of course their Narratives line has also included similarly designed transparencies for some time.

Overlaying text on top of other elements like photographs is becoming a popular design element for scrapbookers, and the available products for doing that are expanding. Creative Imaginations has included in their Narratives by Karen Russell line for awhile such elements as negative strips imprinted with words, and the line has now been expanded to include transparency postcards as well. In addition, Creative Imaginations is partnering with an online photo service and will soon offer the ability to print a Narrative design overlay directly on your photo when it is processed.

The array of text-based embellishment elements is also rapidly expanding. Several companies, including Tapestry by C.R. Gibson, All My Memories and Carolee’s Creations, are offering ribbon or twill elements with text printed on them. Quotes and phrases have become extremely popular, being offered at CHA as such things as stickers, die cuts and rub-ons from companies as diverse as Tapestry by C.R. Gibson, Flair Designs, Colorbok, All My Memories, and DejaViews. In addition, there are extensive offerings of those types in the Creative Imaginations lines of Jone Hallmark, Marah Johnson, Art Warehouse and of course the Narratives collection. Quotes and phrases can even be found now in metal and acrylic embellishments, as Making Memories has long offered metal examples in their line, and metal can now be seen in the products of All My Memories, along with acrylic or epoxy text embellishments in several of the Creative Imaginations lines. Their Narratives by Karen Russell collection offers everything from tags and envelopes to slide mounts that are text embellished, and similar items can be found in addition in several other of their collections.

The above are just examples, but everywhere I turned at CHA it seemed I saw text being used as an embellishment element by virtually every company. It really did seem to be a pervasive theme throughout the offerings on display for the scrapbook market.

As text embellishment has become more and more accepted by the scrapbook community, the offerings of those designs are becoming more numerous and more diverse. There are now available text design elements for everything from collage to cute to retro styling and everything in between. Text has become a design staple, and will probably remain so for quite some time if the current product offerings are any predictor!