Review: Two Books by Ella Publishing

A few weeks ago, Ella Publishing had a sale going on, which prompted me to make my first purchases.  I've read their great  e-zine for a while now, and was impressed with their free book, the Super Sampler.  I was excited for the opportunity and chose two books, Design Workshop by Lisa Dickenson and Stretch Your Sketches by Donna Jannuzzi.

The tag line for Design Workshop by Lisa Dickenson is "Become a design genius in 10 easy steps."  I like the idea of being a genius, so this caught my attention.  One of the things I feel limits my scrapbooking is my lack of a background in design (did I mention my B.S. degree in Marine Sciences and Biology?).  This e-book is really helpful for anyone dabbling in design principles.  Lisa lays out 10 basic design principles and how to apply them to your pages.  She also throws in some extra bonus tips, so you really get more than just 10.  Lisa describes all of the principles in easy to understand terms.

As with all the Ella Publishing books, the design of the book is nice and clean, the photos are great, and there are lots of beautiful layouts demonstrating the discussion in the book.

Like I mentioned before, I'm a sketch-lover, so of course I was drawn to Stretch Your Sketches by Donna Jannuzzi.  This book is chock-full of great sketches with ideas ranging from following them very literally to how to use them on a different size layout.  Each idea is illustrated beautifully, and *score* there are a ton of sketch variations and bonus sketches in the back!

I really liked both of these books.  For the price, you get a lot of information and inspiration, and I'd recommend these for any scrapbooker, especially for those at the beginner and intermediate levels.