Happy Halloween!

The big day is here...and we're ready for it! My son is going to be a Jedi Knight (he actually got to do the Jedi training and fight Darth Vader when we were at Disneyland this September) and my little girl makes the perfect Tinkerbell.

This is probably the last card sample I'll make this year using our Spooked! set which makes me a little melancholy...I really love this set and hate to put it away! It's so much fun to use. This is the card I'm sending to grandma with a picture of the kids in their Halloween costumes. I love using Versamark for the ghost...makes sense to have a transparent ghost, doesn't it?! And I paired it with some cute Halloween-themed Doodlebug paper. Simple and cute.

Enjoy the day....remember, treats before tricks!

The ginormous pumpkins are here!!!

I had mentioned in an earlier post this family down the street from me that always carves out these GINORMOUS pumpkins (that I recently discovered they actually grow themselves!!!) and every year, everyone waits for the pumpkins to appear. It's a true sign that Halloween is near! So the pumpkins appeared today...look how awesome! How the heck did they strap that one pumpkin up like that?! Sheesh! It's so funny to drive by this display...you just expect a traffic jam because everyone slows WAY down to look at it...especially at night when they are all lit up! It's so much fun though. Props to whomever it is that does this every year! :)

Some Lizzie Anne Designs news...Craft Critique is having a LAD week and will be reviewing our products all week long...be sure to check it out! Also, Meridith has posted the new challenge for the week on our Splitcoast forum!

It's beginning to look a lot...like...Halloween!

I've got my treats ready to go! Know how easy this was to do? EASY. I just stamped the Sweets and Treats stamp in the Celebration Frames set and then my Spooked! set on white cardstock, punched them out with my super Marvy scallop punch, and attached them to the front of Reece's Peanut Butter Cups with a little tombo. It took me about 20 minutes for a whole bag. Aren't they cute? Everyone in my neighborhood knows me as the "stamp lady" so I better have a little stampin with my treats :)


And there SHE is holding the treat bowl...my Department 56 witch. Sigh. I love that witch. ha ha. Okay here's an 8th random fact about me (to add to the tagged post from Friday.) I LOVE Department 56 stuff. It's the only store other than a craft store that I'll consider dropping three digit numbers. And I did drop those numbers on this witch. She is so divine though...she has little beads hanging from her sleeves and those cute pointy shoes (though I failed to capture those in my pict.) This is her second October in my home. (And yes, I also collect the Dept. 56 Dickens Village Christmas houses, just in case you were wondering. ;)

Something else funny about this witch is a memory I have of this totally random, slightly sexist joke my husband made when I was buying her! We were just laughing about it on the couch. I was in a long line of women at the Dept. 56 store in Downtown Disney, waiting to buy the witch, when my husband walked in the store to find me. I said to him, "Wow I just love this witch. But dang she is expensive!" And he says, "Yep, they usually are!" As in witches/women. As in ME!!! I flipped around to face him and said "WHATTTTT?????" and then started cracking up...I could not believe he said that. Now before you ladies start hunting him down with pitchforks (like all the women in line with me were ready to do) let me first explain that I don't think I've ever heard Phillip say a sexist thing like that in my entire life, and that's why instead of sending him to the couch I was laughing all the way to the hotel room. It just cracked me up the way he slipped it in, so matter-of-factly.

Maybe this was a joke you had "to be there" for, but it still makes me laugh every time I see her. I know that my hubby was calling me his "witch" in the very nicest and loving of ways. :)

Another challenge card...and tagged

Here's another card I made for our LAD Weekly Challenge featuring our Spooked! set. It has Bat-shaped eyelets! I bought those at CK Seattle last year and forgot about them, ha ha! Perfect for this card. I tried something a little new today...I used my lavender Brilliance inkpad to stamp a shadow behind the sentiment, and then I double-stamped the haunted house, first in black and then in the brilliance pad. I think it turned out kind of cool looking! It's shimmery and Halloweeny looking (is that a word? :)

Also I've been tagged by Colleen. I'm always up for a good tagging, so here I go...

7 Random Facts:

1) I played the violin growing up. I can still play, but I was better when I was a kid!
2) I love to travel--especially to Europe-- and I've been to Sweden three times (one of my best friends lives there) London twice, Italy, France, Austria, and Germany.
3) The only sport I am good at is skiing. I love to ski, and I miss living by the ski resorts that I did when I was growing up in Utah.
4) I moved up to Washington (by myself!) after college to find a graphic design job. I knew one person up here and I lived with her mother for awhile. I didn't find a job right away, but I did find a husband. ;)
5) My very favorite flavor of ice cream is a flavor called Lemon Custard, but unfortunately it's very hard to find! I used to buy it at a dairy farm that I don't live by anymore. I've only seen it one other place since then...a little ice cream shop down by the Kirkland waterfront in Washington. I'll go there a lot during summer to see if they have that flavor (and they only do like twice a summer.) Anyone know where else I could look?? :) (And it has to be CREAMY Lemon Custard.)
6) I've been a blond, a brunette, a redhead, and I even dyed my hair black once for the Sundance Film Festival so I'd look cool and fit in with all the "indie" people up in Park City. (NOT a good idea.)
7) I could go to Disneyland every day of the year and never get sick of it.

Okay...I'm supposed to tag 7 other people, but I'd like to get to know some of you better rather than tagging people I know. If you read this post and would like to comment back 7 random things about *you* that would be fun!!

LAD Weekly Challenge!

Meridith is going to start hosting a weekly design challenge on our SCS Member Company Forum! So this was a card made from her sketch for the week featuring our Glad Tidings set. I have to say, I'm pretty happy with this one...I may choose to mass-produce a few of these for my Christmas Card list! I rounded the top corners...is that against the rules M? Are you going to kick me out of the challenge? ha ha :)

Stamps: Glad Tidings
Paper: Making Memories St. Nick/Holly Berry Stripe and Bazzill cardstock
Ink: SU Old Olive and Real Red
Brads: SU Old Olive
Glitter glue for the berries

Know what I did last night? I had myself a little mini cardmaking party...and invited only myself! ha ha! :) I stayed up until 1:30am making cards, and THEN I pulled out my new gallon of Dreyers Samoa ice cream. OMG this is the best ice cream...it has pieces of the Girl Scout Samoa cookies (my FAVORITE cookie in the whole world) mixed right in! And it's even the 1/2 fat kind of ice cream! I realize that all that means is instead of it being a gazillion calories it's only half-a-gazillion calories, but whatever, it eased my guilty conscience. Those folks at Dreyers are smart ;) Then I didn't brush my teeth, didn't clean up my cardmaking mess, and went to bed. I realize this was not the best idea in a lot of ways (especially when my baby decided to get up at 3:00am) but oh well. Sometimes a little me-time is worth gaining a few pounds, a few cavities, and being exhausted the next day. Know what I mean? :)

Looking for a Quick and Easy Gift?!

I love it when I find possible gift items in cool tins or packaging, because the gift is almost ready to give....all you need to do is add a little trim it's ready to go! Such was the case with these hot cocoa tins. Aren't they gorgeous? I've never seen this hot cocoa before...I was in the "uppity" grocery store the other day and there they were. The brand is called Bellagio if you go looking for it. I even bought a little single-packet of it to try at home to make sure it was yummy, and oh yes, it is indeed yummy (it should be because it's not cheap. ;) Perfect gift ideas!! The mint hot cocoa comes in this brown and green tin and the original flavor comes in the brown and light blue tins...how easy to dress up for the holidays?!

So, what I did is I created a topper for each can. I used my Marvy punches, Celebration Frames, Glad Tidings, and Christmas in the City stamp sets. I also created a gift tag for each tin. I added some cute, decorative ribbon, and it's done! How easy is that?! I like to have things like this around in case I need a quick housewarming gift if we're going to a party or if someone shows up at my door with a plate of cookies, because as much as I like to try and plan a gift for each family member, friend, and neighbor on my list, it doesn't always happen. This way I can go grab my pre-decorated hot cocoa tin, quickly write in names on the the tag, and it's done!

Product list:
Celebration Frames, Christmas in the City, and Glad Tidings stamp sets

Ink: SU Cool Carribean and Close to Cocoa
Paper: Bazzill Smoothie and SU Soft Sky
Punches: Marvy super circle, scallop circle, and mega scallop square.
Ribbon: Not sure...I've had it around for awhile. But I used some cool green/gold ribbon, white rick-rack, blue organdy, and silver and gold cord.

Candy Corn Tin...mmmmmm

Every time I've tried to upload a photo into Blogger the past two days I've been unable to! This is the first time it's worked!

This is the candy corn tin I dressed up for the Celebration Frames set we released on World Cardmaking Day. (Is it World Cardmaking Day or World Card Making Day? Meridith and I were debating about that. ha ha!) I used the Celebration Frames set together with Spooked! This is a super easy and fun gift idea...or actually, I have this sitting on my coffee table and it's pretty cute there too! :) It displays some of my all-time favorite candy. That's right, I'm a candy corn lover. I pretty much love anything with the word "candy" in it.

Some of you have been asking which Marvy punches work best with our Celebration Frames sets. For this candy corn tin, I used the Marvy super scallop circle punch. Both the super sized scallop and regular circle punches work well with this set. Use the mega sized scallop square punch though for the square stamps.

Swirly Leaves II

I'm not done playing with my swirly leaves idea....here's card #2. And I like this one *much* better...this one is Sketchbook worthy. Not all cards are Sketchbook worthy ;) I like the idea behind that card I posted yesterday, but there was something not totally flyin'--and I think it works better to do the Swirls in darker ink. On this card, I used a coffee bean Brilliance inkpad and then embossed it with the cream glitter (talk about some sparkle!) Some good ol' Pumpkin Pie and Wild Wasabi SU ribbon and paper and we're good to go (not sure where I got the brownish/red cardstock at the top...)

Oh, and doesn't that brad underneath the ribbon match perfectly? That's from Target if you can believe it!

I really do love this time of year...I love seeing all the leaves in the streets. I LOVE the crisp fall air. One thing I look forward to every year is this one family down the street from us always goes out and gets the HUGEST pumpkin they can find (they actually did THREE last year), and they put it out on the street curb so all the cars driving by can see it. It is so cool. Here's a photo of my son in his Stitch costume by the pumpkin last year. I'll go and take a photo of what this family does this year and post it to my blog on Halloween! I can't imagine carving out a pumpkin that huge...I have a hard time gutting the small ones..ha ha.

One thing I do not like about this time of year is that I always get SICK. I know I'm not alone...it's going around. But this year has been especially bad because I've actually been coughing so hard that I cracked some ribs. Did you know that you can crack ribs coughing? I didn't...but apparently you can because I did. Needless to say, carrying around my 5 month-old baby has been a struggle the past two weeks...especially when she's in that heavy carrier. Can't wait until this has passed...I miss doing yoga!!! Sorry to whine. :)

Stamps: LAD Celebration Frames,Celebrations, and So Swirly
Cardstock, Ribbon, and Ink: SU Wild Wasabi and Pumpkin Pie and Brilliance Coffee Bean
Brads: SU and Target

Swirly Leaves

This card features the new leaf that we included in the Celebration Frames set. We included a maple leaf in this set for two reasons...first of all, we wanted a nice symbol for fall, and what better symbol for fall than a maple leaf? Second, Julia told us that she would really love to see some type of stamp that could be used for "Canadian-themed" cards. And once again, what better symbol for Canada than a maple leaf?! :) So a maple leaf it was!

I tried a new technique today on this card and I love the way it turned out...I'll need to explain how its done. I first stamped the leaves across my orange paper with water-based ink in fall colors. Then, after the leaves were dry, I stamped a swirl across the leaves with my Versamark inkpad and then embossed the swirl with creamy, glittery embossing powder. It looks lovely! I'm hoping you can see the detail...sometimes capturing glittery accents can be difficult in a photograph. It's a great technique though and very easy to do!

I'll be playing with this set some more this week...this set is on the way to a lot of you even as we speak so let the samples begin!

Stamps used: Celebration Frames and So Swirly
Ink: Versamark, SU Chocolate Chip, Pumpkin Pie, and Purely Pomegranite
Cardstock: Bazzill

Parting comment...sending {hugs} to theCardLadies, who lost their home, business, and pets in a tragic house fire. We hope that you are back on your feet soon and are so sorry for your loss.

What's Goin' On This Week?

Well, let me tell you what's goin on!

First of all, *the last of the World Card Making Day orders will be shipped out tomorrow!* So if you've been wondering if/when your order is going to ship, you'll see it soon! We were not quite as speedy getting orders out last week as we usually are because, well, we've never had that many orders in one day before. Whew! But I told ya I'd have them out in a week. Well technically it will be a week and one day, but Sundays/non-shipping days don't count...otherwise they'd be out today! :)

Also to mention...if you haven't seen this already...you can check the status of your order on our website. If you go to Products, at the top of the left-hand nav you'll see a link that says Order Status. Click that, enter in your order number and email address, and your order will come up along with the shipping status! We know you aren't all receiving shipping notifications so we added this functionality to our shopping cart as an easy way for you to check order/shipping info.

Second, tomorrow is the day our forum goes live on Splitcoaststampers.com!
Here are a few highlights of the things we have planned for our forum...

1) Q and A: Ask Lizzie and Anne
--a place you can ask us all your Lizzie Anne Designs questions. In fact, they don't even have to be LAD questions...ask whatever you like! Okay well almost anything...keep it clean kids. :) he he.

2) Monthly Gallery Winners
--Every month, we're going to pick out a sample featuring our stamps from the Gallery and award that person with a free stamp set! Make sure you use key words with your gallery uploads so we can find your samples...LAD or Lizzie Anne Designs. We'll announce the winner in our forum at the end of each month!

3) The Design Team Dish -- Now It's Your Turn!
--If you are subscribed to our newsletter, you've read the Design Team Dish. We ask our DT ladies a new question every month and post their answers in our newsletter. We will now be posting the questions again to our forum about a week after the newsletter goes out and let you weigh in your answers! It's going to be a whole lotta fun! You could even include a photo with your reply if you have one...

Oh---and if you missed the super cool photo of Meridith and I in college dressed up for Halloween, you'll find that in the Dish post too. ;) It's not to be missed if you want a good laugh.

The Lizzie Pages

Here they are, the Lizzie pages! The flourish I used is from our In the Background set, and I spelled out Lizzie in our Chloe alphabet. I also used the bracket from our Olivia alphabet for my name plates...

Looking at that photo of my Grandma makes me really miss her...she would have been so excited about my stamps. She was always excited about anything her grandkids were doing. My cousin Emily and I were very close in age, and we both played the violin growing up (a talent I'm sorry to say I haven't kept up.) We both took Suzuki violin lessons and we were actually pretty good...we'd play at weddings and all kinds of events. My grandma was so proud of that. I remember the day before she passed so suddenly, she had called me up and asked if I would play at her "Delta Sorority Meeting." ha ha. (She was the president of her sorority when she was in college at the U of U, isn't that cute? When I started going to the U too, she asked me if I would like her to "get me in" to her sorority. Unfortunately it was expensive and I was broke. But it was very cute.)

I was a freshman in college and not really into playing my violin much, and I really thought about telling her I was too busy, but I didn't. She was so hopeful and I knew how proud of me she was. So I said, "sure Grandma, when would you like me to come." She was so excited. I was so glad that this was the answer I had given her because it's the last phone call I remember having with her and it's a good memory to have. My cousin and I still went and played our violins at her little meeting in remembrance of her.

This will be a good scrapbook page for Samantha to find one day...

Long Line of Lizzies

I come from a long line of Lizzies.

The first Lizzie was the sister of my great-grandmother (maternal) and her first name *was* Elizabeth...people called her Lizzie. She died at a very young age, she was in her 20's. My great-grandmother had my grandma in 1919 and gave her the middle name Elizabeth in memory of her sister. So her name was Helen Elizabeth (the b/w photo above, wasn't she pretty?). She passed away when I was in college but I was lucky enough to know her for a very long time growing up.

My grandma had my mother (second photo in the green sweater) in the 50's and gave my mom the middle name Elizabeth. Joan Elizabeth.

My mother had me in the 70's and passed the middle name on to me. (I'm in the gray next to my mom.) Tricia Elizabeth.

And now my daughter is named Samantha Elizabeth.

So there are now five generations of Lizzies. Isn't that cool?

Another interesting tidbit...so far, we have ALL been artists. The first Lizzie was known for her needlework...she knew how to make some type of lace by hand that is apparently a lost art now, and my aunt has some of this lace framed and hanging in her home. My grandma was an amazing watercolor painter. She was always doing little art projects with me when I was growing up. My mother is also an artist and earned a degree in Drawing and Painting. Obviously the art-genes were passed along because I ended up in the Art Department too!

So, this means that Samantha not only has to have a daughter, she needs to be an artist.

No pressure Sammy. No pressure. :)

This would make a great scrapbooking page, eh? I'm workin on it....

The Announcement Has Been Made....

The Splitcoast Member Company Program has been announced on the Splitcoastampers.com website, and we're pleased to announce that we are going to be charter members! Meridith and I will be posting more about what we have planned for our forum on our blogs and on our website soon...so stay tuned! Our forum will be launching on the 15th. In the meantime, go and read about the program on the Splitcoast website here....

Lizzie Anne + Doodlebug = fun!

Whew, did you all enjoy World Card Making Day yesterday? Wasn't that a blast?! Did you go to the Paper Crafts website and enter all the contests? he he. I was on that website a good part of the day, I can tell you that. Who won the Lizzie Anne stamps from Paper Crafts? We were the 10:00am prize!

We had a great time celebrating the day...in fact, it was our highest-traffic day to date so thank you all for your support and for making the day so much fun! You liked our new set... we can see that! We've got a lot of orders to fill next week, whew! I promise you all your orders *will* be shipped out within a weeks time! When will we have another sale like that you may ask. Well, let me tell you....most likely World Card Making Day, 2008. ha ha! :) That was a very special sale we had and we most likely will save that one for very special occasions. You can bet we'll be participating in WCMD every year!

Speaking of our new set...if you were on our WCMD events page yesterday you saw this little beauty of a card featuring the new Celebrations Frames set paired with Doodlebug printed paper...one of my absolute favorite companies. The green brads are Doodlebug too. I have to admit, I'm on a bit of a Doodlebug kick lately. I just think their products are so fun and happy...they go well with Lizzie Anne! I also used some little red stick-on jewels that I found for the corners of the holly frame. Super cute!

Stamps: Celebration Frames
Paper: Doodlebug
Little red jewel-thingies: Bohemia

Attention Newsletter Subscribers...

If you are trying to use a certain code that was included in our last newsletter with Pay Pal Express and having any troubles at all, please email us with your order number (if you have one) and the code! We are finding that the code only works with direct credit card sales. Sorry about that! We've found the glitch and this will be fixed next time around :)

Cards for Cancer Update -- Themes

Some of you have been asking if the cards for the contest need to be any specific theme. Any theme is welcome for the contest, but I did ask Marcia and Lauren specifically what themes would be best for donation to Cards for Cancer. Here are their answers...

Holiday, hope, courage, strength, peace, etc. are good themes. They can leave the inside blank. I have several stamps I use for the inside including the "Cancer is so limited" verse that I usually put in the inside. I can make most anything work or fit.
-Marcia

Florals, every-day type cards, thinking-of-you type cards, etc. No sympathy please.
-Lauren

Thanks everyone!

Cards for Cancer!

Happy World Card Making Day everyone! We hope you can take some time today to enjoy and celebrate our favorite hobby!

We've got some special things going on for WCMD on our website today, and one of them is our Card Contest! The reason we are having a card contest is we hope to collect and donate your cards to Cards for Cancer. One of our Design Team Members, Lauren Meader, suggested that we donate the cards from our contest to this very worthy cause, and we loved this idea! I received a very special letter from Marcia at Cards for Cancer, and I've posted that email below. You will see that she is very appreciative of your efforts and excited about our contest!!!

So...send us your entries! Here is the scoop on the contest:

1) The only requirements are that Lizzie Anne stamps be used. Any other products may be used.
2) You may enter as many times as you like.
3) Cards must be mailed to us and received by October 28th to be eligible!

Here's what you'll get:

1) The winner of the contest will receive a $50 gift certificate, our new WCMD set, and have their card featured in our November newsletter!
2) UPDATE! Due to the great amount of interest our contest is receiving, we've upped the amount of runner-up prizes from two to TEN! That's right, ten of you will also receive our new WCMD set!!!!
3) ALL the cards we receive will be donated to Cards for Cancer. So everyone is a winner!

We can't wait to see your entries!

Letter from Marcia at Cards for Cancer....
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thank you so very much. Right now all the cards that I make and receive are going to Oncologists, Hospitals and Hospice organizations. Thanks to Lauren, I also am also receiving individual requests from all over the country. Right now I am finishing up requests from a woman in Texas for her father, and a woman in Wisconsin for her sister.

I am honored that you have chosen to be a part of this outreach. I am a three year survivor of breast cancer so October (Think Pink) is a special month for me. I celebrate my birth on the 5th and am so grateful that I am alive still alive to see my four children grow. My oldest daughter is a sophomore in college, daughter number two is a senior in high school, my stepson is a junior in high school and my "baby" is in sixth grade.

Please let everyone at Lizzie Anne know how blessed I am to have such wonderful people like you in my life. Please let me know if I can do anything for you. I am in awe of your generosity!

Spooky House

Have you seen all our October Projects of the Month? Aren't they fun?

I've been dying to decorate one of those awesome Doodlebug chipboard houses you see everywhere, and so I chose that as my project. I decorated it up Lizzie Anne style of course! It was so much fun to make! I used our Spooked! and In the Background sets.

A few tips....

1) I didn't realize this until I was halfway through the project, but Doodlebug provides a paper template of all the paper pieces you will need so you don't have try and "size" your cardstock to fit the house! (Duh ;) Use that template and you'll cut your project time in half.

2) Use STRONG adhesive. I mean strong! The house recommends a hot glue gun, but I actually used my Terrifically Tacky Tape. It works great!

3) I decorated the roof, windows, and chimney with DCWV glitter cardstock and let me tell you, this is the most glittery coated cardstock you've ever seen in your life. ha ha! It's perfect for the roof because its so thick. However, there is so much glitter caked on this cardstock that it's very difficult to get anything to stick *on top* of the cardstock, for instance the chimney which you're supposed to glue on. So, if you use the glitter cardstock (and I highly recommend it) just make sure you cut a hole out of the roof cardstock piece for that chimney to fit inside...and that way you can glue the chimney to the chipboard house and not the glitter cardstock. Make sense?

We've added the Doodlebug houses, glitter cardstock, Staz On white inkpad and the Tacky Tape to our shopping cart if you want to get all the supplies to make the Spooky House!

Thank You for the Thank You!

This card arrived for me in the mail from my good friend Jessica as a Thank You for a baby shower gift I gave to her.

You know, it always feels good to get a Thank You card in the mail. And I have to tell you, it's even more fun when the card features your own stamps! HA HA! :) Isn't this card adorable? Jessica used our So Swirly and Daisy Dots sets. She has been an avid Lizzie Anne Designs supporter right from the beginning...in fact, I'm pretty sure she placed one of our first-ever orders. Thank you Jessica! I keep telling this girl she needs to start a stamping blog, she does amazing cards. Maybe after the baby arrives? :)