"When the moon is in the seventh house and jupiter aligns with mars...."

Whoops sorry, I have Age of Aquarius on my mind and 1970's style was front and center trend-wise at the show today. All the palettes and motifs were there, only thing missing was the macrame or perhaps I didn't get to that yet.

Color palettes- very important was Adams Blue with Adobe/Rose Red with white accents. Otherwise plenty of pink and green and brightly colored groups with happy yellow undertones.

Motifs: We spotted the owl and the butterfly. Still plenty of birds. Danish Modern stylized trees with leaves and mushrooms. Still some bird stamps and emphemera flying around.

Themes:

Baby, Baby- most companies had baby on the brain with new collections that were shown as pages, cards and home decor. Not much in the way of teddy bears, more in the way of circus animals incorporated in the prints.

Oh Boy- lots of juvenile lines from sports motifs to rockets and robots. If you are a mom frustrated because you can't find cute clothes for your son, at least you can find adorable paper.

Wedded Bliss- Very impressed by what Ellison showed- whole bridal suite from the dress (die cut fabrics to create faux lace) to invitations, favor boxes, paper floral nosegay and more. Shows the mileage you can get with party planning using paper.

Find photos and more product trends at the editor's blog at www.memorymakersmagazine.com.

Other  observations:

The aisles weren't packed but traffic was steady.

A visit to the new product area was well worth it with neat lines from Jenny Bowlin and Pink Paislee.

Great keynote from Suzy Orman who went to the trouble of trying to customize her speech to this audience.Her advice: "People First, then money, then things." Oh and she wants everybody to check their FICO scores!

In the pressroom- again not alot of year  which is shocking for the amount of vendors at the show. Vendors- you are missing out on a great opportunity to put your info into the hands of editors. There seemed to be a preponderance of chunky kits  Lots of chat around that. As for most of us a great press kit is releases and great photos on a CD maybe with a product sample tossed in.

I'm starting to fade because the east coast body clock had me up at 4:00 am so more tomorrow morning!--Beth