old olive and peach

I chose this color combination because of this card I saw on Meridith's blog...I've never used those two colors together before and I love how it turned out!

Card recipe:
Stamps: By the Sea and Shore Thoughts
peach, olive, cream, and white cardstock
Peach stitch ribbon (Making Memories)
SU Old Olive ink

I'm taking my aunt on a fun day in Seattle! We're going to Pikes Place and the Olympic Sculpture Garden and shopping, whoo hoo!

sketch challenge cards??

My aunt and I have been doing cardmaking and we did the LAD sketch challenge for this week! I realized that we kind of ended up turning the layout around the wrong way so I'm not sure it exactly fits the challenge, but it's close enough eh? ;) We have the horizontal and vertical strip crossing at least. Ha ha! (I'm sure Meridith is rolling her eyes at me right now...) Well we've had a good time cardmaking and that's what matters, right? :)

Here's my card...I wanted to do something summery and I thought ice cream in some yummy sorbet colors would be lovely. I added a little glitter to the ice cream. And I also did something new...I scored the two edges of the paper that my ice cream is stamped on with my Scor-Pal to give it a little embossed look. The ice cream stamp is from our High Hellos set and the sentiment is from Say it in Script. A cute little birthday card for someone with a summer birthday.



This is my aunt's card. She loves the sentiments in our Say it in Script set so much that almost every card she's made so far has one of these sentiments on it!



I was so happy with one card I made that I'm going to make it a Project of the Month on our website for June. You'll see it soon...it will be called "Swimming Mermaid."

Happy Friday!

a lovely weekend...

I hope you all had a wonderful Memorial Day weekend! Ours turned out lovely...the "weather people" (who are those people anyways?) predicted rain all weekend...and not only did it not rain but we got some sun. We went to my sister's house for a BBQ on Memorial Day and the sun came through the clouds right as the party was beginning. It was perfect. I've posted a few picts from the party below.

I was browsing through all my blogging photos from the past year and realized I'm coming up on a years worth of blogging! I can't believe it! The card above caught my eye...I first posted that card along with some other America-inspired cards on this post. It really fit my mood this weekend. And it really has me in the mood to make summery cards...

...which is convenient because my favorite aunt is coming into town tomorrow and we plan on doing lots of cardmaking together, yeah!!! I had mentioned my aunt was coming in April and ended up getting sick so she rescheduled. I just talked with her on the phone and she asked me if I have any cool new cardmaking and stamping tools for her to play with. Oh, I might have a few. ;) Hmmm...new set of Copics, new Scor-Pal, new printed papers, new Nestabilities dies, and of course new Lizzie Anne stamp sets...yeah that should keep her busy. Ha ha! I'm going to introduce her to our weekly Sketch Challenges. I think that the "sketch challenge" is a new thing for her. I think she will like doing them, it's always fun to have someone else come up with the layout and see what you can do with it. Our challenge this week will be her first...I'll post both her card and my card for the challenge later this week!

Photos from the BBQ: The kids table...


Daddy and baby...


My sister, brother-in-law, and friend John displaying their bellies. Now, which one is the pregnant one? :) (Sister is due in August.)

one more

Some of you have been asking if we visited The Ink Pad stamp store in Greenwich Village and yes we did! Here is a photo of us in front of the store. My friends Mom who was also with us has a newly discovered stamping addiction (don't we all know about that one) and wanted to really stock up while she was in the US so we gladly helped her with that. ;) She saw some heat-embossed samples in the store and wanted to learn how to do that....we got her hooked up with the gun and the embossing powders and the embossing ink pad, but that is one of those techniques that is really hard to explain without demonstrating. So if you know a good tutorial out there on the Internet about heat-embossing please share and I'll send it along.

You will not see any new samples from me for a bit as I am currently finishing up my Summer Release stamps (which will be released mid-July.) I have an itching to make some more Father's Day and beach cards, but priorities, eh? :) I have to share a little something about our design process. When we first started our company, one of the things I wondered about is how we would keep coming up with new ideas. It's funny because that hasn't been a problem at all, in fact, we usually have so many ideas that we don't remember them all if we don't write them down RIGHT AWAY (I've mentioned my idea/sketchbooks) and we usually have to "save" sets we really want to do for future releases. Ha! I've just found that the more we do this, the easier it gets. The other thing I'm glad we've done is we decided from the very beginning not to limit ourselves by only having one style. There are definitely sets we do that look very "Lizzie Anne" but we have quite a bit of variety. It just makes it all the more fun!

bye bye big apple

A few final shots of New York...
A photo of me, Meridith, and Ulrika in Greenwich Village. LOVED the "Village." If I lived in NYC, that's where I'd want to live. I'm sure I couldn't afford it but a girl can dream, right? :) (Isn't that where "Central Perk" was on Friends?)

A shot of the city from the top of the Empire State Building. We stood in line for 1.5 hours to get this shot....

This is me in front of a very popular CUPCAKE bakery in Greenwich Village called the Magnolia Bakery!!! YEAH! We heard about this place in a bookstore we were visiting (people in NYC are SO nice to visitors...we got all kinds of tips and help and advice.) There was a very long line of people waiting for cupcakes. My Swedish friend really didn't understand why we were waiting in line for a peice of cake with sugar on top. I told her I don't know why people eat pizza with bananas and olives with the pits still in them (TRUE story, this is what she eats in Sweden.) ha ha ha! I guess cupcakes are an American thing....

This is me and my coconut cupcake...

This is me getting all artsy fartsy with my camera outside a shop. We were waiting for Ulrika to try on a few dresses (she was going crazy with her exchange rate) and we were sitting on this beautiful little street by a beautiful courthouse...

...this is the courthouse.

Last but not least, this is a bell that was dedicated to the people who lost their lives on September 11th. It's sitting in the famous little church across from Ground Zero. Apparently they ring it on September 11th every year, and they also rang it during the London bombings. It was a very humbling experience and a great tribute to all the volunteers who had helped during that tragedy. We almost missed it...we happened to wander over to the church and realized how important that site was!

It was lovely seeing my dear friend Ulrika and I absolutely loved New York. Back in Seattle now! Going to enjoy my last day of sun before the rain comes back, sigh. ;)

new york new york

Greetings from New York...I can't believe I'm here. And I can't believe how much we've already done, wow...you can get a lot more sightseeing in when you're not dragging two kids around and stopping every 30 minutes for potty breaks. ha ha. Yesterday we went and took the Staten Island Ferry so we could get a good view of the Statue of Liberty. We would have loved to have been able to go up inside the statue but learned you have to reserve a special pass for that way in advance...woops. It was okay though, it was sunny morning and the ferry was a lot of fun. Then we walked around down by Wall Street and saw the Trump building and the Stock Exchange (maybe we'll be on the ticker someday as LAD?? Ha ha!) and of course we went to Ground Zero which was very humbling. We took the subway (we've been taking the subway everywhere!) we went to Central Park and walked around since it was such nice weather. Which was a great idea because today it rained like cats and dogs and we are soaked to the bone. It was a great day to go to the MoMA museum though! Holy cow, we were in heaven. We saw some art students there and we were all thinking how lucky they were to have the opportunity to see this amazing art firsthand...all we had was our Art books! The photos above are the three of us in front of the famous Andy Warhol soup cans display. And then there's that famous painting I'm standing in front of..... :)



Tomorrow we're going to go check out the "Village" and also go to The Inkpad...can't resist a good stamp store while we're here!

playing

I was playing with my Nestabilities dies and made this cute little gift card with our Celebration Frames and Floral Frenzy sets, isn't it cute? I used to buy those tiny little gift cards all the time. Now I make them and they are much cuter, I have to say. ;)

Speaking of playing...guess where Meridith and I are going on Wednesday? We are going to New York City!!! Whooo hoooo!!!! We are meeting a very good friend there who we went to design school with, Ulrika. Ulrika lives with her hubby and kids in Sweden (she is originally from Sweden but went to college in the states) and we chose New York as a "halfway point" to meet. Plus Ulrika and I have never been and Meridith has only been once a long time ago, so we thought it would be a great place to play! I can't wait, I've been wanting to go to New York FOREVER. It's been in my top 5 places to go for a long time.

We'll check in from New York and post a photo or two...we're bringing the laptop and our digital cameras of course! Ulrika's mother is also a huge stamper so I'll be lugging a bunch of stamps with me to hand off to her. Technically we could do stamping there if we wanted to! I think we'll be doing a lot of shopping though, ha ha. (Ulrika is especially interested in the shopping as her dollar is much stronger than ours...)

If you've been to New York and have any favorite places you recommend us go, let us know! Top of my list are the MOMA museum and a Broadway show.

I so owe my husband. This is the second time this year I've left him alone with the kids (the other time being the Winter CHA show.) Oh well. ha ha ha! Happy Mother's Day to me!!! :)

for mom #2

This is the card I made for my mother-in-law. I had featured it in the newsletter....I love how easy this one was! I had just bought the Samantha paper pack from Crate Paper (how could I not buy paper called Samantha when I have a Samantha? There was no way it couldn't be mine) and I noticed this adorable frame in the paper cut-out pack. I thought it would be perfect for a photo card! So I just stamped the flowers from our Le Jardin set right on the frame, put a photo of Sammy behind there, and it was done! What Grandma doesn't love photos of their grandkids? :)

I hope all you mommys and grandmommys have a fabulous Mother's Day this weekend. I've already told my boys that I want breakfast in bed....pancakes with boysenberry syrup. I've even bought the syrup and placed it strategically next to the Oreos in the pantry so there is no possible way they could forget. ha ha.

for mom

This is a Mother's Day card I made for my Mom. One of the things I love about this card is I used a lot of odds-and-ends....some left-over letters from MM Garden Party chipboard alphabet, that jewel in the middle of the flower, my last MM stick pin, felt scallop trim, and that lovely patterned paper that I've had forever. I stamped a flower from Le Jardin on a die-cut circle and just pulled all the elements together. I really like how it turned out...it looks like an elegant shabby-chic type card.

I am really appreciating my parents this week. In fact I've just scheduled a trip to go see them in June...my Dad has been whining about not seeing the grandkids enough (even though they were here just two weeks ago. ha ha!) My husband just got back from packing up his Dad's stuff (thank HEAVEN, it feels like he's been gone forever) and going through everything has been tough. We have boxes of "things" to go through, ugh. I found the photo collage I had sent him for Christmas...my husband said it was sitting right by his recliner where he spent a good part of his last few months. I hope it helped to make him happy while he was going through chemo. This has all been a huge reminder to me to take advantage of the time you have with the people who are important in your life while you still have time! Go give your Mom (or Dad!) a hug. Even if it's a cyber-hug. :)

happy national scrapbooking day

I hope all you scrapbookers out there have some fun things planned for today!

We wanted to join in on the fun, so for today only when you make *any* purchase on our website (no minimum!) you will receive a free gift! Just enter the following code in the Additional Info or Comments area (not the coupon code area) on checkout:

NATSCRAPDAY08

I'm off to my LSS...they're having a big celebration today. Happy Scrapping!

happy birthday baby

It's my baby's birthday today! Yippee! We're going to Chuck-E-Cheese. Not that she'll care what we're doing but my son and my sisters kids will like it, ha ha. And of course I've made cupcakes to take along...mmmmmm. Love a good reason to make cupcakes. I love the "B" stamp in our Happy Birthday set...in this case it stands for both Birthday and Baby. I tried a distressed look on this and I even went out and bought those little tiny jewels for the corners because I knew the card needed them. I used my Nestabilities square and scallop square dies too!


As promised, here is a group photo of my scrapbooking friends at our retreat on Whidbey island last weekend. I'm on the far right in bare feet. If I can get away with not wearing shoes, I will. I never have shoes on during the summer. :)

One more thing. Tomorrow is National Scrapbooking Day and we're going to do a little somethin' for this. There will be a code on my blog that you can use for a free gift with any purchase tomorrow! So tune in...