Sometimes I like to keep things simple...

This is one of my favorite cards, and it took me all of about 10 minutes to do. I just love the simple elegance of this one. Enough said!

Stamps: LAD Glad Tidings
Patterned Paper: Basic Grey (Figgy Pudding)
Cardstock, Ink, and Ribbon: Stampin Up Wild Wasabi
Silver brads

Snowflakes...

Here's my card for Meridith's LAD Sketch Challenge this week. I've been wanting to play with snowflakes. This uses our big Snowflake Single and also our Snow Flurry Single (you can't see it that well in this pict but they are versamarked on my blue cardstock.) Then I also used the Good Cheer Single. I think blues and reds can work really well together for holiday cards. I dug that silver snowflake brad out of my "stuff"...I think it's Making Memories, and I dipped it into my Glue Pad and then added some glitter. Then I used a blue rhinestone brad that I bought recently from SEI.

You may not hear from me much this week...I am jamming on the last of our stamp designs for our Winter Release!

Thanksgiving Napkin Rings...

I'm ready to go today (almost!) My apple pie is made, my yams are boiling and will be frying in butter and brown sugar soon, and last night I made these adorable napkin-ring holders to decorate our table with! They were super easy, I even had my five-year-old son help. Here are the supplies I used...

Stamps: LAD Celebration Frames, Celebrations, and In the Background (I stamped the loops holding the front peice with the little stars in the background set)
Ink: SU Pumpkin Pie and Close to Cocoa
Punches: Marvy super square and mega scallop square
Ribbon: SU Pumpkin Pie
Blender marker (I dipped it into my ink pads to color in the images)
Sakura clear glitter pen...cause you can always use a little glitter
White and brown cardstock

You just make the top peice, attach it to a 1" carstock loop, and then pull your napkin through the loop! That's it!

We're joining in on the after-Thanksgiving Day shopping fun Friday and Saturday with FREE SHIPPING on all orders over $35 in the US! Just use the coupon code TURKEY at checkout!

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

Can you almost taste the turkey?

I'm getting so excited for Thanksgiving, are you? Thanksgiving is the *only* day of the year where I get to eat my grandma's candied yams. I wait for those candied yams every year! Let me share with you this recipe...it's easy:

1) Boil and then peel yams...yams should still be a little firm
2) Melt butter and brown sugar into a big frying pan.
3) Slice up the yams and then fry them in the melted butter/sugar
4) Sprinkle on a little cinnamon
5) Add more butter
6) Add more brown sugar
7) Add more butter and brown sugar
8) When the yams are soft and gushy and are more butter and sugar than vegetable, they are ready to serve.

Yes, this recipe would most likely not be found in my Weight Watchers cookbook. Which is why I only eat it once a year, I have no guilt about what I eat on Thanksgiving. Bring it on! :)

Card supplies:
Stamps: Celebrations, Celebration Sayings, and Celebration Frames
Patterned paper: Basic Grey
Ink: SU Chocolate Chip, Close to Cocoa, and Pumpkin Pie
Extra: Scallop square punch, copper swirl clip, and paper piercer

Next Stamp Release...and sets retiring!

So a lot of you have been asking us....when is the next stamp release going to be??? We'll, we've picked a date! Our Winter release stamps will go on sale on January 7th. We will be starting a sneak peek Wednesday, January 2. We will be revealing 2 Singles and 2 Little Bits™ sets each day until the 6th. Then, that night we will have our very first release party on our SCS forum...the night before the big release! During the party, we will be revealing new cards and projects made with the new stamps. It's going to be so much fun! We have 10 new Little Bits sets and 10 Singles we are releasing! I've already been playing with a few of them and oh my goodness, you will not be dissapointed. It's hard to keep it under my hat so long!

We plan on releasing 4 times a year...Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall. We were trying to release product to coorespond with wholesale shows like Memory Trends--which was in Sept.,and Winter CHA--which is in Feb., but as you can see...that leaves a trememdous gap between launch times and we've decided it would be better to release on our own schedule as the show dates are always changing. (We will still try to launch close to the CHA shows.)

Speaking of our new sets, we will be retiring some of our older sets in our 2008 catalog, which we are working on right now. So, the following sets are now on sale on our website...

Sets retiring:
Joy to the World
Scrappin Stamps and Scrappin Stamps II
Celebrations II
Girl Power
Oh Baby
Vacation Time
Designer Dots

Get em' while they last!

Swirly Flowers

I was so excited when I saw this paper by Sandy Lion at CK Seattle because it looks just like our new little Swirly Flower that is in the Celebration Frames set! Look how well they work together! This is a cute little birthday card (I need to stock up on birthday cards cause I'm out.) I also used our Sketched Sentiments set for the sentiments.

Supplies:
Stamps: Celebration Frames and Sketched Sentiments
Printed paper: Sandy Lion Disney Line (Winnie the Pooh)
Cardstock: Bazzill Smoothie Boysenberry Delight
Ribbon: SU Pumpkin Pie
Ink: Brilliance Lavendar and SU Buckaroo Blue
Copper 3/8" eyelets

By the way, I figured something out last night that might benefit some of you. If you are signed up for my blog feed and haven't been recieving Letters from Lizzie emails, try adding feedblitz@mail.feedblitz.com to your "safe senders" list in your email program, and I bet that fixes it! I stopped getting any Feedblitz blog emails about two weeks ago and couldn't figure it out until I just added Feedblitz to my safe senders list last night! (In Outlook, the Safe Senders button is at the top of the emails in the menu, btw.) I guess my ISP decided that Feedblitz emails were spam and started blocking them. Anyways, just thought that might help someone!

Happy Birthday Sis

This is a birthday card for my sister and our Weekly Challenge design. I'm not sure how I feel about it to be honest...I wanted it to be a bright card, but is it a little too bright maybe? I do love the cake in the center. I had to go off the sketch a bit and put the sentiment on the side to compliment the paperclip on the other side which was holding a gift certificate inside the card. My sister is a yoga instructor, and she has her little toes up in the air for all to see every day...so I got her a gift certificate for a pedicure!

Set used: Happy Birthday

We are the featured Member Company over on Splitcoaststampers.com today...read about it here...

Also we just announced when our Winter stamp release is going to be in our SCS forum, so you might want to go check it out!

Three Trees

I am in a Christmas card kind of mood right now. I've been watching the results of the Holiday card poll on my blog (scroll down and look in the left-hand column if you haven't seen it) and so far it looks like most of you start making your cards in November. I think that makes sense...that's when the Holiday buzz really starts happening, doesn't it? I try to ignore the Christmas decorations in the stores that show up before Halloween (good grief! --Charlie Brown!) but starting November 1st, I'm all over it. Bring on the Holidays!

This card was made with our Holiday Cheer set! I'm pretty happy with this one...I'll be duplicating a few. The printed paper is from Scrapworks and I just love how it goes with the trees. I chose red polka-dot ribbon to match the tree in the stamp and the paper...turned out nice! I might try a few different versions of this card...it might be cute to draw the little tree stands underneath the trees to match the trees in the paper. Basic Grey has a really cute funky-tree paper that I want to try this stamp with too. And I used my Crop-A-Dile again on this one to set the eyelets...love it!

Speaking of Holiday Cards...have you seen the Paper Crafts Holiday Cards magazine yet? I'm excited because I have two cards published in that mag! One features the Glad Tidings set and one features the Merry and Bright set. I'm not going to post these card samples to my blog because I'm not sure what the rules are surrounding that...so you'll have to buy the mag to see them! :) Cute story behind this-- Paper Crafts emailed me the day before my c-section was scheduled and told me that my cards were accepted so mail them off soon. I said, "uh, I better send those off today because I'm having a baby tomorrow!" ha ha! So I did send them off *that day* in fear I wouldn't have time later, and guess what? The Paper Crafts staff sent me a copy of their Baby Creations magazine with a congrats card for my baby! Wasn't that sweet of them?!

Card Supplies:
Stamps: LAD Holiday Cheer
Paper: Scrapworks Merry and Bright and SU Wild Wasabi and Sky Blue
Ink: SU Sky Blue, Old Olive, Burgandy, and Real Red (yes I mixed two reds)
Ribbon: Daisy D's

It's a Birthday kind of day...

I wanted to do Joslyn's LAD Sketch Challenge this week and here I am in the eleventh hour posting my card! :) This sketch was screaming for the High Hello's set. I used the balloon and the "hope your birthday really measures up" sentiment. I also used some polka-dot paper from my new Basic Grey Figgy Pudding paper pack...know what I love about that paper pack? It has papers in the pack that are not all Christmas. This is a good example right here...I love this polka-dot paper! I also got to use my new Crop-A-Dile. I bought the Crop-A-Dile because my husband hates it when I'm pounding on eyelets late at night when everyone is in bed, ha ha. So this sets them silently, and it works great! It was a good purchase.

Today my sister and I had a birthday party for our two boys who have birthdays very close together...my son Ethan turned five on November 5th, and Carson turns four on the 17th. They are best buddies...a love/hate relationship as it often is with cousins that spend a lot of time together...but in general they love to be together and so we threw a combined party for them this year! We went to one of those crazy jump house places and there were a million kids running around, but they sure had a good time. My friend Rebecca, who is amazing with the camera, took this photo of Grandma (Phillips mom) with my two kiddos at the party, and I think it turned out so sweet I had to share. It's definately scrapbook-worthy.

Keep those cling stamps a-clingin....

I've been so busy the past few days...CK Seattle kind of knocked out our weekend so there were lots of things to do (and orders to fill) at the beginning of this week! I'm all caught up and back on track now. If you were one of our Card Contest Winners, your winnings will be mailed out in the next day or two!

The #1 question were asked at CK Seattle was how best to keep your cling stamps sticking to the block, and if they will keep sticking. The answer to the second part of that question is YES, they *will* keep sticking to the block! The key is to make sure your stamp and your block are clean. That being said, 99% of the time it's the BLOCK that is dirty, not your stamp. You wouldn't believe how dirty those acrylic blocks can get what with all the ink and fingerprints and adhesive and whatever else is on your craft table...I just spent some time the other day picking glue dots off my blocks that got stuck on there somehow, ha ha.

So here is my advice for how best to clean your blocks...give them a good WINDEX job! Windex your blocks clean and those cling stamps will stick again like glue...they won't be going anywhere. I think this was mentioned on Craft Critique too...it's true. It works!!! And if you think it might be a good idea to wash the back of your cling stamps too...I'd just use water or maybe a little stamp cleaner (the waterbased kind, no alcohol.) But really, it's usually the block that needs the bath!

I'm hoping to be able to do some samples soon...I have scrap/cardmaking night coming up with my girlfriends on Friday so for sure I'll get to play then...I can't wait! I need to get creative. Especially since I dropped a bunch of money on new paper, ribbon, and embellishments at CK Seattle last weekend. ;)

CK Seattle

We just finished exhibiting at CK Seattle this weekend! This is a photo of me and Meridith in our booth. Wow that was one busy show. We had four girls working in our booth at all times and thank heaven we did because we had non-stop traffic. It was really fun! My favorite part of the show was when I was down on the floor-- looking underneath our make-and-take table for more glue dots or something---when low and behold this very tall, blond woman with glasses looks down at me to ask a question. Guess who it was? Ali Edwards! I said, "Hello Ali!" And she laughed (I was still kneeling on the floor during this) and then I got up and helped her very briefly...we were so busy at the time I can't really remember what else was said but I did talk about blogs with her, and Marvy punches I think. Anyways, that was really fun! I've always loved Ali's stuff. She and Cathy Z are my favorite scrapbook designers. Zena was working in our booth and she met Lisa Bearnson...*and* she got her photo taken with her! She'll be blogging that soon...

The other thing that was really fun is we had several SCS member ladies come to our booth and introduce themselves! We have so many "cyber-friends" out there on Splitcoast...it's so cool when we actually get to meet in person! We always knew we were talking to a Splitcoast person because we'd all introduce ourselves by our SCS profile names, not our "real" names. Ha ha! Boy we live in such a cyber-world now...

Last but not least, it's my baby boy's birthday today. Well, he's no baby anymore. He's turning five. I can't believe that it was five years ago today that I had my first baby. He's been such a joy. He informed me that tomorrow is Puppies birthday (his favorite stuffed animal and best friend) and that Puppy will be turning three. So I guess we'll be celebrating tomorrow too! :)

Ho Ho Ho card and more...

There is a lot going on this week. First of all, our November Projects of the Month are now on our website! The card above is one of the projects I designed featuring our Simply Singles Santa, and also our Holiday Cheer and Shapes and Stitches sets. This is the first time I've ever used Fun Flock...and it *is* fun! I love that stuff. I knew that Santa hat was calling for flock. Here's a tip...do the red flock first, and then the white. It's okay to get a little white flock on the red flock, but red flock on the white flock will make it look pink. All the instructions for this card can be found on the Projects of the Month page!

Also, our October Card Contest winners have been announced! Make sure to go see the winning entries. A big thanks to everyone who entered and helped donate cards to Cards for Cancer.

And last but certainly not least, Meridith and I are going to be exhibiting at CK Seattle this weekend and needless to say, we're a bit busy. I may not get back on the blog for a few days. But make sure to head on over to our Splitcoast forum where we're posting the new Design Team Dish question and where the contest winners will be weighing in!