What's Hot at CHA: Lily Bee Design

Typically, walking the floor at CHA means cherry-picking lines that are winners, finding them scattered around the floor, one here, another there. But every so often at CHA a company knocks it out of the park, introducing a whole show release of lines that are must-haves and sure to be winners with consumers. Lily Bee Design has managed that rare feat at CHA Summer 2011 with their Memorandum, Harvest Market, Jingle, and Head Over Heels lines.

Memorandum (pictured above) is the first one to grab your attention. Each of the line's 6 double-sided patterned papers have a reverse side that is an office-style print of some sort: graph, notebook, etc. These designs are quickly becoming staples in the industry, and paired with the trend-forward designs on the front of the line, which include damask, newsprint, and lovely geometrics in a trendy pale blue and red and yellow dominated theme, these papers make a statement.

Harvest Market (pictured above), the combined Halloween/Fall/Thanksgiving line, is a versatile collection that is only themed in the embellishments, making the papers useful for a wide variety of projects - and markets. I'm looking forward to using the 6x6 paper pad of the collection to create masculine card designs with the geometric patterns in fall colors.

Lily Bee's holiday line is Jingle (pictured above). This year they went with a traditional red and green color scheme for their holiday line, with touches of light blue like we've been seeing in many holiday lines at CHA Summer 2011. The small geometric patterns vary between formal and whimsical, and their scale will make them perfect for holiday card making using the 6x6 paper pad.

The final line, Head Over Heels, won't be shipping until October 17th but CHA attendees are already clamoring for it. This love/valentine themed line features bright pinks and turquoises and black and white, along with trendy design elements like sheet music, damask and doilies. This line is going to find its way into a multitude of valentine's day cards and mini-albums, as well as wedding and engagement scrapbooking.

The small scale of the designs in these lines' patterns is perfect for the color blocked style that so many people are using patterned paper in lately. They can be cut up and the pattern still stays identifiable. Sized down to the 6x6 paper pads, they scale beautifully for use on small projects like cards, tags, and mini-albums.

All of the lines, of course, have accompanying embellishments and Lily Bee keeps it simple...and very usable and affordable. Their cardstock stickers, ABC stickers, and Index Journaling Cards all retail for $5 or less. The eight different alphabets, including some that are even patterned designs, on each sheet make the ABC stickers an especially amazing deal for a retail of $5/sheet. The cardstock sticker sheets combine several hot trends right now, containing banner stickers and sentiments for cardmaking. And all four collections are available as 6x6 paper pads that retail for $5.99. (Anyone who heard Paperclipping Roundtable #73 already knows how awesome I think Lily Bee's 6x6 paper pads are!)

Releases like this one set the bar of excellence really high for everyone else. Like a perfect game in baseball, this occasional occurrence shows what is possible when talent, hard work, and inspiration intersect, and gives everyone else something to aspire to and a reason to push their game to the next level.