ACCI 2004 Highlights

I spent this past weekend in Chicago at the ACCI convention where heaps of new scrapbooking products are unveiled. I spent hours wandering around the floor of the convention trying to absorb as much as I could to bring you an "ACCI Wrap-Up" complete with photos and valuable information about the great new products that are in store for this fall.

While there is no way to show you ALL of the products I encountered, below you'll find short descriptions and links to images of some of the brand new products that caught my eye! On top of the excellent additions from our favorite companies, many new companies introduced some fantastic new products to the industry that you're sure to love.

Paper
Color is back in a big way this year! Everyone seemed to be offering papers with vibrant, rich and bold colors. After a year of a lot of brown, gray and green collage-style pages, some added color is a welcome change.

*Basic Grey - These gorgeous paper lines have such wonderful color schemes with a distressed textured look. They have an artistic, painted feel to them and feature wonderful geometric designs.

*Flair Designs - The Numbers Collection really caught my attention. It's perfect for birthdays, anniversaries, and any "number" page you might have. The variety of number stickers, as well as the versatility of the colors, makes this line an awesome addition. I was also very impressed with their more vintage-style lines which include song book music sheets and toile designs.

*Mara-Mi - These papers feature bright colors, retro designs, and unique patterns. From cute to elegant and sophisticated, this line has a lot to offer!

AW Cute
Darby Paper Company
Deluxe Designs Alphaworks Line
K & Company
KI Memories
Memories Complete
PaperFever
Reminisce
Sassafras Lass
Scrappy Cat
SEI
Suburban Paper

If you're looking for the vintage, soft muted colors we've grown accustomed to this year but want some new designs, don't worry! There are still plenty of "new" vintage paper lines for you to feast your eyes upon!

Blue Cardigan Designs
Cloud 9 Design
Diane's Daughters
Melissa Frances
Mustard Moon
Paper Love Designs
Scenic Route Paper Co.
Sweetwater Scrapbook

Themes
Themed product lines were as popular as always this year. I enjoyed seeing some fresh ideas for hard-to-find themes. Scrapbook companies are getting creative and are listening to scrapbookers who are looking for specifically themed products for different aspects of everyday life.

*Reminders of Faith - These Christian-themed papers and embellishments are a wonderful way to scrap your spiritual life.

*Reminisce - This retro-style colorful line has hard-to-find themes such as Doctor, My Two Front Teeth, and The Hat Collection.

*Scrappin Sports & More - They've designed themed papers for each year of school. The design grows with the child and reflects the age group at each year.

American Traditional Designs - Pets, Holidays, Faith, Travel
Autumn Leaves - Scouting
Fiddlerz3 - Holidays, Seasons, Birthday
From Jenn's Pen - Animals, Party, Travel
Outdoors and More - Masculine outdoor sports
Out There Scrapbooking - Beer and Liquor
Princess Scrapbooking Design - States
Provo Craft - Outrageously Red Hat
Rocky Mountain Scrapbook - Educated Man, Fatherhood, Hunting, Sports, Fishing
Sandylion - Disney Characters
Stamping Station - States, Travel

Specialty Paper
Specialty handmade papers were my eye-candy of the show. I saw multiple booths with absolutely gorgeous displays of imported papers in extravagant designs, with varying textures, and unique materials.

*Be Unique - I was especially impressed with the textures and designs this paper line offered. Papers made from straw, textured cardstock in unique designs, and woven textile sheets all in an array of colors make this line a must-have for texture-seekers!

*Select Imports - These are gorgeous handmade papers with unique patterns, textures, and materials.

Artistic Expressions - Transparencies
Bhavi Vikas Creations - Handmade papers
Magic Scraps Natural Textures Paper - Straw, Mesh, Canvas and Particles papers
The Leather Factory - 12 x 12 sheets and borders made from leather

Rub-Ons
Rub-Ons are going to be the best new thing of Fall 2004. After Making Memories released their Simply Stated line last year, many other companies seem to be jumping on board with colorful and funky rub-on designs. If you love rub-on words and alphabets, but are ready for some new fonts and colors, you'll love several of the new rub-ons available from these companies.

*Me and My Big Ideas - MAMBI Monograms rub-ons come in sheets from A to Z. Each letter is featured in a variety of fonts, sizes, colors and styles on a sheet of its own.

*Junkitz - Junkitz Expressionz in a variety of colors and designs are a great way to use rub-ons in your pages.

Autumn Leaves
Doodlebug
KI Memories
Making Memories
Scrapworks
Wordsworth

Ribbon
Ribbon was the second-most often seen product at the show. Ribbon dyed to match their company's paper lines seemed to be very popular. Self-adhesive ribbon, printed ribbon, and even lick-able ribbon were all some of the options displayed in different booths.

*Happy Hammer - Frills self-adhesive ribbon comes in monochromatic sets. The adhesive on the back allows you to quickly adhere it to your page.

*Little Black Dress Designs - Lip Smackin' Ribbon sticks to your page just by licking the back! You can write on it, stamp on it, print on it with a printer, curl it, crease it, iron it, emboss it, crimp it and shred it.

Die Cuts With a View - Adhesive and Non-Adhesive ribbon to match the Match Makers line
Embellish It - Bazzill Monochromatic Ribbons
Colorbok Sticky Stitches - Self-adhesive stitches and Ric-Rac
Scenic Route Paper Co. - Hand dyed twilltape
Creek Bank Creations - Plain twill tape

Embellishments
I don't think there will ever be a shortage of scrapbooking embellishments. I saw plastic buttons and tags, three-dimensional embellished stickers, and all kinds of alphabet options. It looks like embellishments are being packaged more and more "complete," giving you the ability to put a layout together in your own special way using pre-made elaborately decorated products rather than having to create every piece from scratch.

*Nunn Design - Their metal charms, frames, paper clips and borders are wonderful tiny details to add to your pages.

*Prima - Prima has dozens of handmade floral embellishments with intricate details and beautiful colors.

Crafty Secrets Publications - vintage cutouts
Creek Bank Creations - faux metal stickers, Office Werks line of cardstock embellishments, Ice Accents
Doodlebug - Oh My Words, 123's and Etc's tile letters
Imagination Project - layered die cuts
Junkitz - zippers, buttons, license plates, zipper pulls, buckles, rings, tiles
KI Memories - Metallix, Icicles Ice Candy, Icicles Bubbles
Lil Davis Designs
Little Black Dress Designs - Unbuttons, Loosie Fibers, Rockettes, Flitters
Maya Road - fibers, metal charms, metal frames
Me and My Big Ideas - Soft Spoken
Pebbles Inc. - metal word charms, chains, keepsake pockets, shaker bubbles
Simply Origami - folded art designs

Monograms/Alphabets
Just like you see on the runways, on television, and in fashion magazines, monograms are hot in scrapbooking as well. To feed the addiction, new alphabet stamps, stencils, stickers, wooden and plastic tiles, jumbo die cuts, and stone letters are just a few of the new alphabet options you'll find this fall.

*My Minds Eye - These large monogram die cuts are presented in four different colors and are perfect for adding abbreviations, monograms and initials to a page.

*Technique Tuesday - Clear precision cut alphabet stamps in large font sizes make creating titles and enhancing journaling fun.

*Pine Cone Press - This Alpha Wheel stamp product allows you to stamp up to 14 letters at once without having to painstakingly line each letter up individually.

Die Cuts
Laser cut die cuts in intricate and elaborate designs are still a staple in scrapbooking. I saw many beautiful laser cut titles. Some were cut from cardstock, others from photographs to enhance a theme.

*EzLazer Designs - These are beautiful laser cut titles, alphabets, scrapbook pages and more. EZLaser Designs also offers metallic paper die cuts that can be sanded and chalked for various artistic effects.

Legacy Keepsake - Die cut titles, frames, 12 x 12 pages
Scrapbook 101 - Die cut photo titles

Kits/Mini Albums
Page kits and mini-album fillers are another popular product this year. The all-inclusive kits make creating themed albums a breeze and usually come with idea sheets and instructions for creating a sample project. You can find kits to create albums in all of the available sizes from 12" x 12" to tiny little accordion booklets.

*Autumn Leaves Foldables - Fold a 12 x 12 sheet of paper to create a beautifully decorated mini-accordion book.

*My Mind's Eye Squared - This layout kit is a unique package of double sided cardstock and matching square accents. Used together, it can create a two 12 x 12 layouts or an entire 6 x 6 album.

All My Memories - Mini Mementos
Boundless Memories - tribute mini-album kits
Scrapbook Wizard - coordinating layout kits

Albums
If you've been bored with the album styles you've had to choose from, this year get ready for patterns and high style! Whether they are in mini 8" x 8" or large 12" x 12" format, these companies have worked hard to bring you some unique albums that allow your personality to shine through.

Amanda Blu
We R Memory Keepers

Quotes/Journaling/Title Aids
If you're like me, journaling is the hardest part of scrapbooking. Especially for pages that you feel don't need a whole lot of journaling. Journaling aids are a great way to add some sentiments to your pages without having to rack your brain for an idea. Many new companies are offering vellum quotes, transparency word sentiments and all kinds of stickers with printed wording to use in your pages.

*Die Cuts With a View - Vellum Quote Stacks, Vellum Title Stacks and Quote Stack Stickers are all great ways to add journaling and titles to your page in just seconds.

Autumn Leaves - vellum quote sheets
All My Memories - Vellum Accents and Twill Stickers
Paperwhite - borders
Princess Scrapbooking Design - Scripture cards
Quick Quotes - quotes and poems for journaling
Sweetwater Scrapbook -Transparencies
The Crafter's Workshop - WordComplements Cardstock

Fabric/Labels
Get ready for lots and lots of fabric to creep its way into your books. This year fabric labels and fabric swatches seem to be an emerging trend.

*Michael Miller Memories - These beautiful 12 x 12 papers are actually treated fabric pieces in colorful print patterns.

*Junkitz - Junkitz fabric swatches and woven labels coordinate perfectly with the rest of the line of embellishments.

Colorbok - Sue Dreamer Woven Accents
Lil Davis Designs - Linen frames, tags and pockets
Me and My Big Ideas - Jumbo Threads

Storage
Storage for all my scrapbooking supplies is a constant problem for me. While there wasn't as much offered this year in the way of storage, I did run across a few handy products.

*Paper Coops - The Rollaway Coop and the Coop Deluxe are great solutions to your paper storage problems. It's easy to assemble, is available in two colors and holds tons of paper.

Scrapbook Sally - Paper Packer, Scrapbook Sally Tote
Sunshine Papers - Paper Packer

Overall, I was very pleased with the new products released at ACCI. The colors were gorgeous, the patterns versatile, the embellishments easy, and the designs innovative. It was a refreshing look at the scrapbooking industry. It changes so quickly, you hardly have time to get bored and there are so many options you're sure to find the products that are perfect for you.

Happy Shopping!

Visit the Scrapjazz Product Review section for more ACCI product images and reviews!

*Editor's pick.