are you ready for a celebration?

It's coming soon, our Anniversary Celebration is about to begin on July 1st! We're kicking it off with our July newsletter and the design team has something special planned, so if you're not subscribed to our newsletter make sure to do so! We'll also have a special Anniversary Celebration page on our website that is going to list the schedule of events, including the sneak peek schedule for our summer stamp release, whoo hoo! I can't wait!!!

In other news, a big welcome to a new design team member, Bethany Paull! I first discovered Bethany's talent when she uploaded to our Sketchbook-- and one of her creations ended up being our May gallery winner. We're excited to have Bethany on our team!

baby cakes

I have a lot going on this week. My sister's baby shower is Thursday night and I needed a quick but really cute card to go with this adorable cupcake baby outfit I bought. I was looking through my CARDS July magazine and saw Lauren's baby onesie card and thought this was the perfect idea...only I needed to incorporate a cupcake into mine to match the outfit. This is what I came up with. I put some glitter on my cupcake swirl too because the cupcakes on the outfit are sparkly! By the way Lauren has a tutorial for this card on her blog here. It's really easy! I did mine a little different, I wanted a bigger scoop neck with a bow so I used a nestabilities circle die to give it a little embossed look up there. And then of course I used our cupcake single! The sentiment "baby cakes" was printed.

Other things going on this week is I'm getting a lot of things ready for our newsletter that is going out on the first and our anniversary celebration, *and* on Friday I am going to Salt Lake with the kiddos so they can visit grandma and grandpa. My son is so excited...he has literally been counting down the days (he just reminded me we only have four days left!) I'll have my trusty laptop in SLC so of course I'll be checking in from there, and of course I'll be having a little visit with Meridith as well. We are thinking of going to Zion National Park.

topiary birthday card

This topiary in our High Hello's set is one of my favorite images, I can't stop using it. That's really all I have to say about this card, I just love it! I'm reserving it for a certain friend's birthday that is coming up in July (you know who you are!)

Have a great weekend!

Supplies:
Stamps: “High Hellos”
Ink: Ranger Adirondack in Oregano
Patterned Paper: Basic Grey “Harvested”
Cardstock: PapertreyInk Spring Moss, SU Soft Sky, White
Ribbon: SU Soft Sky double-stitched grosgrain ribbon
Other: Copper eyelets, Copic Markers, Corner Rounder Punch

they're heeeerrreee...

...no reason to hide behind your couch, it's not a poltergeist. It's Spellbinders Nestabilities! I told you I was going to get them in, yay!

Guess what else? We've just implemented flat $5.00 shipping in the U.S.! So that means you can load up your shopping cart with as much stuff as you like and the shipping won't change, it will be $5.00 no matter what. Yippee!

We've been working on our Anniversary plan for July and I'm getting so excited...can't wait for it to start! We're kicking it off with our July newsletter and you'll also see information about it in our forum here and on our blogs and our DT members blogs (you may have seen our little anniversary graphic on their blogs already...that will link somewhere starting July 1st.) It's almost here...only 10 days to go!

And then of course our Summer sneak peeks start mid-July. I guess at that point you could say, "They're baaaacckkkk...." with more stamps!

Ha ha ha okay sorry for the lame jokes. I'm in a happy mood (the sun came back out!)

it cometh, and it goeth...

...that would be the sun I'm referring to. I was so excited to get a perfect, warm sunny day Monday. This is a photo of me and the kiddos in the hammock in my back yard.

And then today it was cold and cloudy again. UGH. My friend said it's like being pregnant and past your due date...it's supposed to be here and it's not and it's just irritating! Or a sneak peek and now we have to wait (in stamping world talk.) ;)

I'm not usually one to complain about weather, it's just that it's been so COLD this year. Oh well, I'll just pretend that it's summer here in Seattle and start making summery cards anyways. I was reminded when I was in New York last month that it's wedding season...we saw a very cute couple all dressed up in their wedding attire being photographed in Central Park. This is a card I made with our wedding set, Gettin' Hitched. I paired it with a flower from Fun to be Floral.



Hope you're enjoying the sun if you have it! :)

have you seen...

...the new Splitcoast Stampers Gallery? Doesn't it look great?!

Daven at SCS asked me to help them with this project a few months ago and I was thrilled to do so, I hope you like it! It was very kind of the SCS folks to credit me for help with redesign...we love those guys. It will be much easier for people to find your uploaded projects by keyword now. Use the keyword LAD or Lizzie Anne Designs for your uploads and they will pull right up...Meridith and I *love* to look in the SCS gallery for cards featuring our stamps. We love to see what you're doing with them, it's so fun! You can pull up cards featuring our stamps by going to this page in the SCS gallery and clicking on our name down in the list of companies.

Speaking of, we have a new LAD gallery winner. Go check it out!

a few things...

1) This card is for this weeks Sketch Challenge. The flower silhouette stamp in the background is actually one designed by our dear Design Team gal Jeanne for Rubbernecker! The sentiment is from our In the Meadow Set.
2) I really have enjoyed reading all the comments from my blog birthday post...I've spent quite a bit of time blog hopping all the blogs you suggested...wow! One that was mentioned a lot was The Pioneer Woman blog..I look at her blog all the time too! I learned how to take better photos from reading that blog.
3) We have a new Design Team member! A big welcome to Taylor Usry. I've been linking to Taylor's blog for quite some time, I really like her clean style. It's very "Lizzie Anne."
4) Did you know that July is our 2nd Anniversary? Yep, it sure is! We've been planning some fun things...you'll start hearing more about it soon. Our celebration will also coordinate with our big summer stamp release. I can't wait! (Notice the cute little graphic over there on the left...eventually that will link to a special page.)
5) ALL PUNCHES NOW 50% OFF! That's right, we've decided to clear out our punches because we are going to start carrying Spellbinders Nestabilities instead. I've become quite the fan of the Nestabilities (me and just about everyone else, I know.) And you know what else? They are easier to ship than punches. Ha ha! It's true though. I still love my Marvy Punches, don't get me wrong. But we've been wanting to offer a flat rate shipping in the US for some time and it's been difficult to do so because of the weight of those punches. So we're clearing them out!


Have a lovely weekend!

teacher end-of-year gift card

Today is my little boy's last day of preschool. EVER! I can't believe he's going to kindergarten in the Fall. Time flies! This is a teacher thank you card I made for him to give to his teachers (I made two.) The slot holds a Starbucks gift card. Starbucks gift cards are always appreciated up here in Seattle since we're all going broke with our fancy latte addiction, ha ha! I thought the space theme would be cute coming from a 5-year-old to his teacher. They were pretty easy to make. I stuck a few Dew Drops over the windows on the rocket and put a little glitter on our space boy, who is attached to the front of the gift card.

My son signed the inside and was very excited to give these to his teachers today! Something he said when I showed them to him was, "Mom, these are great but there is only one problem. I don't want to be an astronaut when I grow up anymore, I want to be a policeman."

Oh well, can't please everyone. ;)

Stamps used: Out of This World and Pupcat alphabet
Other: Dew Drops, Clear glitter Pen, Versamark (for the stars) red, blue, and white cardstock and ink, circle punch to make the half-circle on the pocket, gift card.

and the winner is...

Shelly! My son chose a number between 1-49, and he chose 20! I made sure he knew how to count that high. To my surprise he can count to 100! Geez I never knew...I guess I need to make his preschool teachers a nice end of the year gift, ha ha!

Shelly, use that "say hello" link over there on the left and let me know what set you want and your mailing address!

So do you all have your Father's Day card and gifts ready? Some of you may have remembered the gifts I made for our Spring Release on this post. I'm going to give the plaid-box gift to my Dad full of chocolate-covered nuts. I have to ship it today! And the shoe-shine kit goes to my hubby. He picked it out so it only seems fair he get it!

happy birthday blog! (want some candy?)

It's my blogs birthday today...Letters from Lizzie is turning one! They grow up fast, don't they? :) I can't believe I've been bloggin' for an entire year. And I've had over 42,000 hits to my blog, not too shabby! I remember the day I created my blog. I had just listed my Design Team's blogs in a blogroll. All of a sudden I started to notice my counter...it looked like people were already visiting me?? I couldn't believe it, my blog was only 5 minutes old and I already had visitors! ha ha! I panicked a little...I wasn't ready! I figured out it was because Lindsey saw that I had linked to her somehow so she added me to her blogroll right away, and there you go. Doesn't take long! It was then I realized the power of the blog. It's a little like sneaking into your sisters room and reading her diary. Simply irresistible.

This was my first ever blog entry. My first comments were from Daven at Splitcoast and Lauren Meader!

So in honor of the day, I must have a little blog candy of course! I would like to give one of you, my valiant readers, a birthday present. Tell me what your blog is or what your favorite blog is (keep it clean people, ha ha!) and I'll choose one random person to receive a Lizzie Anne Designs stamp set of their choice! That's right, you get to pick this time. You have three days to enter...through end of day Wednesday! I'll announce a winner on Thursday morning!

Thank you all for reading my blog and sending the bloggin' love my way. I remember thinking what a silly word that was...BLOOOOGGG. Now it's part of my every day vocabulary...can you imagine a world without the blog? It would be like a world without the iPod. :) I think it's here to stay!

Happy Birthday little blog.

Card recipe:
Stamps: Cupcake and Sketched Sentiments
Patterned Paper: Basic Grey Cupcake (gotta love those sprinkles!)
Various scraps of ribbon I had laying on my desk
My new set of Copic markers. mmmmm.

shoes and a sale!

...not to be confused with a "shoe sale." We do not actually sell shoes. ha ha ha!

What I'm talking about are these two things...

1) Design Team Gal Katie just did some really cute samples with our "A Man's Sole" set. I thought they were so cute I told her to post them right away and I'd give them a call-out. Take a look at them here. It's also her 100th post!

2) We are having a punch and accessories sale! Almost all our punches and accessories are 25% off. There is another, ahem, tool/product I want to bring on soon (*wink*) and so I need to make some room.

I have a little something special planned for my blog on Monday, June 9th. It's a special day. (Any guesses why?)

See you soon...

operation baby thank you

Code Name: Operation Baby Thank You
My Mission: To create an example of a baby card for my prego sister to mass-produce and have on hand when receiving baby gifts.
Quantity: 30+
Requested Difficulty Level (on a scale from 1-10, 10 being most difficult): 1
Stamps: Born to be Wild, Simply Sentiments, and In the Background

Mission notes:
It all started one rainy Seattle day. My sister, who is expecting a baby girl this August, came to me with a mission. A cardmaking mission. Knowing she had chosen the best woman for the job (of course), I gladly accepted.

My mission was to create a baby card that she could then replicate and mass-produce. The colors should be soft and girly, the theme baby and thank you. She had a special request of me, and I quote, "I don't want to spend as much time making these as YOU do."

Check.


This is the card I came up with. Simple. Yet very baby girl. I stamped the baby stars background stamp from In the Background in a soft peach hue on top of a lighter peach card. I stamped the solid giraffe from Born to be Wild in peach and a darker pink. I then brought out my secret weapon....my circle Nestabilities dies. A simple yet sure way to leave a great impression (pun intended.) I punched out my little baby giraffe image with a circle die and then framed it with a pink circle scallop die-cut. Now for the finishing touches...the ribbon and the sentiment. I chose the baby sentiment from Simply Sentiments knowing that she could stamp a Thank You inside the card. The white star pin to match the stars in the background was the final touch.

I presented my card to my sister and awaited her response.

"I like it" she said..."Giraffes have always been one of my favorite baby animals. And the colors are perfect."

"However, I question the use of this Nestability die. As elegant and refined as it looks to die cut the circles, I believe it will raise the level of difficulty from the required 1 to a 2-3 as it will take much more of my time to do this for 30 cards. I'm a busy pregnant woman and I have a yoga class to teach."

I conceded that it would add a degree of difficulty to die cut the circles (*totally* worth it but WHATEVER sis!) and so we replaced the dies with a Marvy Giga scallop circle and Mega circle punch. This was an acceptable alternative.

This is my sister creating/mass-producing her baby thank you cards. She chose a different type of ribbon than the one I had but it was also acceptable. That is my 4-year old nephew in the background using my Tim Holtz scissors to destroy one of the baby giraffe images. Typical...will most likely grow up to be a spy.

Mission completion! (as they say on Little Einsteins.)

sketch challenge -- far east

I'm really diggin Joslyn's sketch challenge this week...it's a layout I'm pretty sure I've never tried before! Here's mine! I used our Far East set...I thought the lotus flower would fit perfectly down in the "square" area for the sketch. The word "Peace" is from Just Words.

I think a good way to add a more elegant touch to a card is to round the corners with a corner rounder punch. I felt like something was missing on this card until I rounded the corners at the very end...it was just the right touch. I need to remember to try that more often!

swimming mermaid

Well, our June newsletter and our June Projects of the Month have been published! The first day of the month is always a big day for us because we have so many things to update to the website. And my heart skips a beat every time I send out the newsletter to all you stampers out there...I say a little prayer that I didn't misspell anything too important or make a really embarrassing mistake. If you see a mistake, well...do what I do and try to ignore it. ha ha! It's so much fun doing the Lizzie Anne newsletter each month and our Design Team gets really excited about it too...they like participating in the Design Team Dish and we know you like reading it! If you have any questions you'd like them to answer in a newsletter let us know...these gals really know what they're doing. Next month is going to be fun because July is our Anniversary, so we're having our Design Team do something a little special on newsletter day (July 1st.) You'll have to wait and see what it is! *wink wink*

So, on to our new Projects of the Month and the swimming mermaid card. We have a lovely Father's Day card designed by Jeanne this month (her vivid use of color always amazes me) and then Meridith and I each threw in a favorite Father's Card that we've blogged recently with directions. We also have a "print directions" link now so its easy to do this...let me know if you like this option and I'll do it for past POTM pages. The mermaid card was a card I made just this weekend and my son loved it so much I thought I should share it. The mermaid is attached loosely to the front of the card with a white brad down by her tail so you can take your finger and make her "swim." I showed this to my son and it was so cute, he kept asking if he could see the Mermaid card and make the mermaid swim. "Please mom can I play with the mermaid card!" I knew I had a hit. There's something about an interactive card that everyone likes.

Speaking of our newsletter, did you see the photo of Lauren's hubby and son for her T-Shirt project of the month? I bet she didn't know I was going to use that one. ;) What a cute pair of men she has.

Enjoy our new projects and our newsletter and enjoy the coming of summer..it's about time! I love June.