cannon beach

If you guessed I was going to the beach on my last post, or "By the Sea", you were right! In fact, if you are reading this post, I'm at the beach right now. Cannon Beach, Oregon is one of my very favorite places...it's the most gorgeous beach. It's not usually hot like California beaches, but I'm not really a lay-out-in-the-sun kind of gal anyways. I've got fair English skin and I'll burn in about 5 minutes. What I love about Oregon coast beaches is how BEAUTIFUL they are. I will post photos when I get back.

If you saw the mermaid on my card and guessed I was going to Starbucks, you get points for that too. I'm sure a tall Cafe Vanilla Frappucino will be a part of my weekend. (ha ha.)

Both this card and the Mermaid card I posted on Thursday are images from our By the Sea stamp set.

guess where I'm going this weekend?

I have a little end-of-summer trip planned for this weekend with my family. It pains me to even utter the words "end-of-summer." Maybe we'll get lucky and have a warm September...it's been known to happen.

Anyways, any guesses where I'm going? (And yes, the card is a clue!) We are going to one of my FAVORITE places. I'm excited!

lizzie's got a new look

If you haven't guessed what I was eluding to in my last post, we have been redesigning our website and I've been busy working on it! We've evolved as a company a lot over the past two years and something we really wanted to do was have our website more closely match our product packaging and catalog. We think this fits the bill, and it's easier to use now too! We now have an Inspiration category where you can find links to the Sketchbook, POTM's, and Design Team info. And our Sketchbook has now been broken down by stamp set name so it's easy to find samples for your specific set/stamp. Inside our shopping cart, we have bigger thumbnails and now they click to an even bigger window. We're excited...we hope you like the changes! Our newsletter will be getting a face-lift too so you will see this on Sept. 1st!

red + green = christmas

I was playing withe the papers in my Cosmo Cricket Little Girls paper pack and saw this lovely paper with red and green hues. This isn't Christmas paper, but why couldn't it be used for that? The little red berries on the paper remind me of holly berries! So I paired it up with our Holiday Lane set and I love it. I used three Copic colors on my card to match the paper...a sea green, red, and a tan color. I just love coloring in these little houses, they are so much fun.

I'm working on a special website project for LAD right now, you will see the results of it soon. ;)

a new use for stamps

I've found a new use for stamps. Making faux paintings for your daughters doll house! Ha ha ha! Madeline's little painting there is the Eiffel Tower and frame from our Ooh La La! set. (The house actually came with a painting of the Eiffel Tower but my homemade painting is much cuter.)

How cute is this Madeline dollhouse? I found it at a consignment store yesterday and bought it for my daughter...we've been playing with it all morning. Okay who am I kidding, I bought it for myself, my daughter is 15 months old. What can I say? I find that I am drawn to things I loved as a child lately...doll houses, Barbie, school supplies and the big box of Crayola Crayons! I wish I was buying myself school supplies.

Of course, my daughters favorite toys are my cell phone, my keyboard and mouse, the X-box controller, and anything that starts with a lowercase "i". She must take after my husband.

(okay I love things that start with a lowercase "i" too. ;)

little lady

I'm having a lot of fun with this little lady from our Garden Isle set. She's just too cute. I'm kind of into the soft, faded, floral look lately and I wanted this card to look a little washed out. I used some girlie Cosmo Cricket patterned paper and stamped the circle flower from the set in the corner. I hadn't used that flower stamp yet and I dig it!
This looks like a card you'd find in an old stationery desk at a B&B in some secluded, tropical destination...don't you think? (Didn't that sound poetic? ha ha.)

I am seriously considering taking Cathy Z's new online scrapbooking class that starts in October. She's one of my favorite scrapbook designers and I need a kick-in-the-pants to get some scrapbooking done. I used to be a huge scrapbooker---I love it---but I admit that cardmaking has always been my first choice and I find myself wanting to stamp more than anything. Meanwhile my husband has been asking me when I'm going to scrapbook photos of our daughter because I already have 3 full books for my son (all made pre-stamp company. And one kid. I had a little more time back then. ;). She'll be mad at me if she doesn't have her own books too. And my son looks at his books all the time. Better get scrappin.

Le Jardin Bridal Shower

This is a bridal shower card I made using Gettin' Hitched (umbrella) and Le Jardin (floral background.) It's a monochromatic card...it's really just a white card with shades of lavender. Very elegant.

It's going to be a lovely weekend here in Seattle....and I have a lot of lovely plans! I get to go out on a date with my hubby tonight (my mother is still in town to help my sister with her baby so I have a babysitter too! ha ha!) and then I'm getting together with my girlfriends on Saturday night for a girls-only BBQ and poker. We may even make a card or two. ;)

I love August. It's the best time of the year here in the Northwest and I savor every day of it. Enjoy your weekend!

baby zoe

Baby Zoe is here! My sister was induced yesterday...that baby just wasn't comin' out on her own. Zoe is 8lbs 14oz and has adorable chubby cheeks! Mom/my sis is doing well too...she thinks she'll be teaching yoga again next week. (We'll see about that.)

Well, this could be the last baby for awhile in my family unless my brother decides to get married and have kids one of these days. By the way, my brother Tyler is handsome, single, 29, and is in his last year of medical school. Anyone want to marry a cute doctor?! Here's his pict.

Oh boy, I'm in trouble now...ha ha! Good thing my brother doesn't read my blog. Well at least I don't think he does. If he does I'm sure I'll be hearing from him soon. ;)



Speaking of weddings, I've been making wedding cards this week. I found some very elegant silkscreened black paper by Hambo at the craft store and it inspired me to create the card above. I love black with soft, pastel colors such as pink, cream, or peach for wedding cards. The cake is from Gettin' Hitched. I made it two-toned by first coloring in the entire cake with a soft pink Copic marker, and then I used a slightly darker shade marker (but still soft) and colored in the top half of each cake section. I tied a simple knot in my ribbon. "Tying the knot" if you will. ;)

button, button

Here is my card for this LAD Sketch Challenge. I deviated from the sketch a bit...I wanted more room in the bottom rectangle for my flowers. And I've been button-crazy this week so I wanted not one button but two.

Supplies:
Fun to be Floral and Simpy Sentiments
SU Soft Sky cardstock and ribbon
SU Real Red and Black ink
Cream cardstock
Red and blue buttons

I like the simplicity of this card and I'm proud of myself for keeping it simple. I love the Clean and Simple (CAS) look but I'm not sure that I'd call myself a CAS card designer. It's challenging to be simple sometimes. (ha!) This often is what goes through my head when I'm cardmaking...

---------------------------
Tricia: This card needs something.

Voice of Reason: No it doesn't, it looks great the way it is.

Tricia: No it's missing something. Like another flower or a button.

Voice of Reason: Why do you think it needs something? It looks FINE.

Tricia: I just want to try putting one more button on there.

Voice of Reason: Don't do it. You'll regret it.

Tricia: I won't regret it, I can always take the button off if I don't like it.

Voice of Reason: PUT. THE BUTTON. DOWN.

Tricia: Okay I put the button on. You know what, I'm not sure this card needed it. But now I can't take it off or the glue dot will rip off some of my paper.

Voice of Reason: I'm going to bed now. We'll try again in the morning.
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Ever had that conversation before? :)

By the way, still no baby! Yikes!

french floral mirror

This is the home decor project I was talking about...it's a mirror for my daughters bedroom. I love how it turned out! Let me tell you the story behind this mirror though. I had troubles with it at first because I tried to stamp on the bare wood at first...I was going to try for a natural look. Well my ink bled all over the place and then I had to paint it white but it took several coats to cover the mess I had made, ha ha! I was using regular dye-based ink and I think if I had used an ink made for wood like StazOn I would have been fine. That's okay though because I LOVE how it looks now, and white fits my daughters bedroom better anyways, all her furniture is white.

So here's how to make the mirror. I used an IKEA mirror...if you have an IKEA near you these mirrors are only $2! If not you can use any mirror with a wooden frame. I wanted a distressed look so I first painted it with white acrylic paint (several times as I mentioned above...you can just use one coat. ha.) and then I took sandpaper and distressed it a bit...I wore down the edges really well. Then I stamped images from our Le Jardin set with black ink...I ended up using opaque black ink from Colorbox, and I colored in the flowers with a green and blush colored Copic marker! It worked really well! After the images were dry, I sanded on top of my images again to give them the soft distressed look I was looking for. I added a ribbon behind the mirror and it looks just adorable on my babies wall. (Her room colors are white, pink, and green.)

These make great gifts too... they are really easy to do. In fact my sister had a birthday party for my 8-year-old niece and her friends, and she had them all decorate these mirrors for a craft project. They loved it!

Supplies:
Le Jardin stamp set
Wood IKEA mirror
Black craft ink
White Acrylic Paint
Light markers (I used Copic)
Sandpaper
Ribbon

My sister has still not had her baby. After I posted about her I got a lot of emails and phone calls from people who were really concerned about this, which is really sweet! She's been avoiding her email because she says she has about 40 emails from people asking if she had her baby yet. She went to the doctor yesterday and they did all kinds of stress tests and both she and the baby are fine so they see no reason to try and medically induce her. She wasn't happy to hear that (which is funny, I think she was actually hoping they would find something wrong, ha ha!) A side note, this is my yoga instructor/personal trainer sister who just 4 weeks ago ran in a marathon. She's extremely healthy. And she's always had her babies late. The doctor did say that if she didn't have her baby by this weekend they'd induce her on Monday merely for the fact that this baby is going to be HUGE. And she wants a natural birth. Ouch. OUCH! I can't even think about it...

I'll keep you updated. I'm sure I'll have little baby photos to post on my blog soon!

come out!

I'm posting this baby card as a good omen for my poor sister who is extremely pregnant with a baby girl and now overdue and miserable. I made the mistake of saying "just be patient..." she sharply reminded me that I've had two c-sections and have no idea what it feels like to be 42 weeks pregnant. Good point. She took Castor oil yesterday to try and speed up the labor --something she swore she would not do so you can see the desperation here--but no luck. I think that baby is quite comfortable right where she is. Come on baby, your cousin Sammy wants to meet you!

This card was made with our Born to be Wild set...the animals in that set make great baby animals. I turned the giraffe into a toy by adding a slice of a Popsicle stick and some buttons for him to stand on. And some twine to pull the toy with! The sentiment was stamped with the congratulations sentiment from our Just Words II set. And I hung it from the ribbon with a little jump-ring...this is something I picked up from our Design Team gal Joslyn. She's always using those adorable jump-rings and I finally asked her where she got them...the jewelry dept. at the craft store! The embossing was done with a square Spellbinders Nestabilities die and the embossing mat.

I haven't forgotten about my promised home decor project...it's, um, turning out to be more challenging than I thought, ha ha. I'll explain why later!