If you're looking to learn a variety of new craft projects, One Artsy Mama is a site you definitely have to check out. One Artsy mama is the brain child of Amy Latta. On her site, she shares a variety of creative projects including home decor, kid's crafts, sewing, jewelry, and more. She recently published her first e-book Crochet 101, and it's absolutely fantastic and a must-read resource for anyone looking to get into Crochet.

Amy has tons of awesome DIY and craft projects that I'm absolutely in love with.  I've selected some of my favorite projects and posts from Amy's blog that I think you'll fall in love with.

First of all, if you're interested in learning how to crochet, Amy is an expert. Be sure to check out Crochet 101 and get started today. Amy provides you with all the resources and tools you need to get started.

Create Crazy and Colorful Coasters with Amy: I love this project that Amy came up with. It's so cool, creative, and easy to make.

You Are My Sunshine Framed Art: I absolutely love this project. It's perfect to put around your house or use as a gift for a loved one.

Ever wanted to throw a Lego Party? Amy shows you how to through the perfect lego party complete with Party Favors, a Lego cake, and tons of Lego fun.

Tissue Paper Cherry Blossoms: I love this idea for decorating my apartment. It's absolutely gorgeous! I really want to set aside a time to get this done!

Shabby Chic Jewelry Organizer: Make a jewelry organizer with Amy. I absolutely love this gorgeous jewelry organizer.

I hope you've enjoyed these awesome craft tutorials from Amy Latta on One Artsy Mama. Be sure to connect with Amy on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.

I've always wanted to come up with unique ways of saving my memories, and scrapbooks have started to become my creative outlet. I can spend hours a day just choosing different patterns and clip art to combine to really make my memories come to life in the pages of a scrapbook.

I searched the web to find some of the most colorful and creative scrapbook pages, and I hope they inspire you to create awesome projects.

If you're looking to create some colorful scrapbook pages and paper printables use these awesome papers and graphics from Creative Market:

Hand-drawn illustrations add personality and depth to websites by bringing the digital world in conjunction with the physical. I love seeing hand-drawn illustrations on internet because it adds a sense of character to the page itself. These sites are some of my favorites that feature hand-drawn illustrations.

Just Dot: I love how this website combines the trendy chalkboard element with hand drawn graphics and a sketched font.

Bowtie: features a completely hand drawn background with hand written fonts and other styles of typeface. I love the colors and interactive layout of this site as well.

Bootb: this site utilizes a hand written type face as well as hand drawn doodle frames to create a friendly landing page. I like the different colored frames on the black background along with hand drawn buildings.

Denise Chandler: this designer's site features an awesome hand drawn image that has been animated, as well as, a variety of quirky and cool hand drawn fonts.

Carsonifide: uses fun text bubbles and hand drawn graphics to highlight the important parts of their site.

Tennessee Education: I love all of the cool hand drawn doodles that are found throughout the site. This site really brings education to life by adding hand drawn elements on top of writing paper.

Products from Creative Market to help you enhance your site with hand drawn elements and illustrations.

The key to making a website or blog with hand drawn illustrations is to combine hand written or drawn fonts along with intricate hand drawn images, lines, and vectors. Creative Market, offers a variety of hand drawn elements to help you create an amazing website like the ones featured above.

Sketched Font                                    Handwritten Font

Hand Drawn Frames                               Hand Drawn Arrows

Hand Drawn Photo Corners                              Hand Drawn Arrows

Hand Drawn Photoshop Brushes                                Hand Drawn Hearts

Doodled Frames                                  Hand Drawn Social Media Icons

Hand Drawn Flowers

This guest post is written by Alex Black. Alex writes for printing company Print Express. In his spare time he enjoys studying graphic and web design and works on his Photoshop skills. You can follow him on Twitter at @iamalexblack.

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As the saying goes, you only have one chance to make a first impression. When you’re marketing a product or service, if your landing page doesn’t make a great first impression then it’s unlikely that visitors will return, much less use your product. Good landing pages show off the product, sell it’s benefits and do a good job of leaving the visitor with the impression that it’s well designed. Great landing pages, on the other hand, do all this and also stick in your memory – they stand out and are remarkable.

Of course, this is much easier said than done – how do you create a landing page that’s remarkable, and memorable while still being beautifully designed instead of garish? One of the ways in which you can do this is to focus on creating a tastefully bright, vibrant and colourful design. Use a bold, daring colour palette – or use subtle, muted colours but with bright, impossible-to-miss contrasts on the buttons you want users to click (like the “sign up” or “try the demo” buttons).

The use of colour in landing pages is an art form in itself, and we’ve brought this collection of designs together to help give you some inspiration for your next landing page project. We hope you find the collection useful and entertaining.

Viximo

Viximo is a company that works with developers to get their games published online. The landing page stands out instantly by using big, bold illustration and the muted colour palette grabs attention without being too garish.

Paint Chip Pals is a recently launched Kickstarter project and brainchild of Andrea and Cliff Currie, the creative minds behind HandMakeMyDay.com. Think adorable, paint-chip inspired, plush characters designed to add a bit of colorful personality to the everyday world of blah.

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Andrea and Cliff are trying to raise enough money so they can bring one of these inquisitive characters to life, and backers get the chance to choose which one it will be. Check out their project video to learn a little bit more about the people and ideas behind Paint Chip Pals.

Howdy COLOURlovers! We've had a great time browsing through all of your colorful website design entries for the past week. It's like you guys know a thing or two about color. ;)

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This contest was brought to you by our friends at Squarespace. Squarespace's mission is to provide creative tools that power the future of the web. From designers creating the next generation of web and mobile experiences, to anyone managing their own online presence for the first time, Squarespace provides elegant solutions that set new standards for online publishing. By focusing their efforts on the fusion of design and engineering, they strive to create long-lasting products that delight and surprise their customers.

This is a friendly reminder that the entry period for this contest ends TODAY at 6pm Pacific. Which means now is the time to go vote for your favorite designs! Voting will remain open until this Sunday, September 23rd, at 10pm Pacific, and we'll be announcing the winners here on the blog on Monday, September 24th.

It has been quite a fun week over here at COLOURlovers. Between our iPad contest with Zazzle, book review on the new Smashing Magazine book, Redesign The Web and so much more!

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FAVORITE BLOG POSTS:

Some of our favorite blog posts from this week are crafty projects you can do with magazine pages and some fabulously colorful digital art by Andy Gilmore! Also, Zazzle is hosting a COLOURlovers iPad Design contest! If you haven't entered, now is the chance, the winner will receive a $500 cash prize.

CMYLK by DESIGN MILK

Design Milk (one of our fave blogs over here at COLOURlovers) has created a brand new column called "CMYLK". Each week, they round up some images – products, interiors, and art – and their associated COLOURlovers color palettes to inspire and delight. This week, features some fabulous paintings by Kristy Gammill. Check out the blog post for more palettes!

Do you "like" us on Facebook? Well you should be because we post awesome photos like those below all week long!

A few weeks back we held a Betabrand sock design contest! The 3 winning designs are now listed for pre-order on the Betabrand website! Pre-order your pack now!

LINKS FROM AROUND THE WEB

LINKS FROM AROUND THE WEB:

• The entire process of creating and building this colorful little room is posted on Design Milk Megan Geckler for Bobble.
• House Beattiful shows us 6 Cheery Yellow Bathrooms. This is great inspiration for those of you looking to spruce up your bathroom for the summer.
• If you haven't had the chance to get yourself a few Pantone Coffee Mugs, now might be a good time to go grab them.

Have any colorful posts you have seen yourself? Share them in the comments below! See you next week with some more colorful round-ups!

A bit ago we posted about crafting with paint chips. Today I wanted to post about another product you probably have laying around your house that you could turn into totally awesome art.

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Have you ever tried to find a use for magazines and catalogs that you finished looking through? Throwing them away feels like such a waste sometimes, doesn't it? Well today we are posting about various art projects you can do with those old magazines to repurpose them and bring those pages to life, for the second time. These projects are also a great way to give your kids something to do, using only products you already have in your home.

The magazine sunburst is probably my favorite piece of magazine art yet. All you have to do to create such an art piece is a roll up magazine pages and paste them together. Check out how she did it. Next to this fun DIY is a cool magazine clock that you can get off Etsy.

Source: Sunburst, Clock 

I know the holidays aren't upon us for quite a while, but here are some fun things you can create for the season. Creating bows from magazine pages is super easy and a fun touch that you can't find anywhere else.

Source: Ornaments, Bow

Magazine jewlery! Want to find something unique to wear? This is definitely a good route to take, and you can even make it yourself which is even more impressive.

Source: Bracelet, Necklace

Here are a few fun ways to add a little bit of magazine crafting into your home.

Source: Frame, Coaster

 Now this is one incredibly awesome vase! Even without flowers, this is such a statement piece for you home.

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This is a fun craft project for you and your kids! And they make for great storage after the fact.

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What are your favorite pieces? I would love to see the color palettes and patterns you all can create with such fun inspiration. And if you have the chance to craft with magazine paper, I would love to see pics of what you are coming out with.

So many fun things can be done to make Easter a little more festive. From crafty decorations to different ways to dye eggs, these ideas will get you excited for the Easter festivities.

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Craft up this yarn garland using balloons, glue and yarn. Check out the DIY tutorial.

These bags and tags are perfect for finding and gathering Easter eggs.

Source: Tag, Bag

Have you heard of cake pops? I'm sure by now the answer is yes. The fabulous Bakerella has thought of how to turn everything under the sun into a fabulous cake pop, and these easter eggs are no exception.

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Looking for fun ways to spruce up those eggs? I guess traditional egg dye isin't the only way to make eggs look awesome. My personal favorite are the neon dipped eggs. Oh how I love neon at the moment.

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Happy Easter from all of us here at COLOURlovers! We hope you enjoy your weekend!

A lot has happened this month already. This week I am going to keep it short and sweet as we have the holiday weekend ahead. This week I'll cover our last survey and a discussion about doing a tribute project for Sunmeadow's family. Thoughts and opinions needed on both subjects.

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Community Survey #3: Results Report

In looking at the last survey responses, it's fun to see how COLOURlovers use the site in different ways be that from your desktop or laptop or mobile device.

We had about a 107 entrants to the survey, double what we've had before - Thanks to everyone who got involved. I will be skipping a survey this week in leu of the Easter weekend and the Moo contest.

I will be accepting open suggestions for the next survey which will be based on Groups. Anything and everything Groups related. So suggest away!

The Sunmeadow Project: A Tribute & Family Gift

As a dark cloud shrouded the COLOURlovers community with the sad news that one of our dearest members had passed away, the mass of ways to show our love, life celebrations and tribute to dear Sunmeadow as a wonderful artist and person, have been happening all over the site. It's touching to see everyone surround her passing with such compassion and devotion.

Suggestions have been coming my way to put together a physical tribute for her family. The best suggestion came from, Penina of the COLOURlovers on Spoonflower Group - a book (possibly a Blurb-style book).

This book would include her works of art on COLOURlovers, but I also thought it might be nice to also include notes of tribute from her fellow community members and closest friends on COLOURlovers as her father had expressed an interest in being able to come back and read through all the wonderful things members had to say about her.

Tribute submitted by COLOURlover hana* located on page 2 in the APC Group Tribute to Sunmeadow

The COLOURlovers Team is in support of a project we could gift to her family as a colorful piece of Sunmeadows artistic expression on COLOURlovers.com.

Will any other members in addition to Penina, be willing to assist in organizing this project? With over 6,000 palettes, 10,000 colors and close to 800 templates it will be quite the undertaking to filter through what to include and in what order.

I am also up for alternate  suggestions for a tribute piece. A quilt has crossed my mind, but I think a book would certainly be able to fully encompass all her beautiful works and messages of love and support by members. Thoughts?

Another wonderful tribute piece of Sun's palettes by COLOURlover, hana* in the APC group on page 3

Sunmeadow was such an intensely defined COLOURlover that the reality of her loss was so great to many who knew her well and even to those who did not. Let's give the gift that Sun gave us, to her family to cherish and treasure as well.

*Sunmeadows wonderful works of art and account will remain online.

Group Tributes List to Sunmeadow

Sunmeadow: Colors | Palettes | Patterns | Templates

A tribute in Artist Palette Challenge (APC) - One of Sun's groups, now administered by WordofMouse.

FFP - SUNMEADOW, a tribute in the Freeze Frame Project Group administered by Gasp365.

Sunmeadow was honored in the March 2012 Remembrances, in the Remembrance Group administered by ketisse.

Sunmeadow Memorial HPP in the Haiku Palettes & Poetic Patterns dedicated to the memory of Sunmeadow, also administered by ketisse.

Sunmeadow Fields, a tribute section in The Anythings Group administered by American Women.

And lastly, a look back at Sunmeadows moment as CLAD (COLOURlovers Artist of the Day Group), also administered by American Women.

*Please let me know if I missed any.