strawberry juice

I took my kids strawberry picking the other day. It was a beautiful HOT day and we went with a friend of ours. The kids went a little crazy...we had about 10 lbs of strawberries after only 10 minutes! It's okay, there are several bags of frozen strawberries in my freezer now which is what I like to use for smoothies in the morning...mmm. Farm-fresh strawberries are so much better than store-bought, they taste so much better! My daughter was covered in strawberry juice. She was squeezing those little berries a little to hard as she was picking them, ha ha.



I love this photo I took of my friend Jen picking strawberries with her new baby strapped to her front! So cute. This is a mamma who does it all!

tomato time

One of my favorite things about summer is planting tomatoes in May/June and eating them in August! This year I planted three kinds of tomatoes... Roma, Early Girl, and a type of grape tomatoes. Last year my tomatoes turned out SO good. We had a really hot summer though...I'm a little worried about my tomatoes this year because summer is off to a late (rainy) start. I just checked them and I do see some flowers so I'm hoping they turn out! So this is my hot tomato card. This is a popular image in the new July Monthly Mix stamp set...I've seen a lot of tomato cards from our design team already and it's perfectly paired with Cosmo Cricket's Garden Variety patterned paper! A match made in heaven really... or the garden. :)

design team challenge

It's design team challenge day at Lizzie Anne! This challenge was a fun one.

This is my card.



And this photo was the inspiration for my card.



What inspired me most about the photo above was the color combination, the stripes, and the flower. So those are the three elements I pulled into my card!

Stamps used: Hello Friend

Visit the Lizzie Anne blog today to see how our Design Team girls answered the challenge... it's really interesting to see how the photo inspired everyone in a different way. I noticed that three of us chose the Hello Friend stamp set for our cards...I guess I was not the only one inspired by that flower!

simply sweet

I'm excited to share my samples with you today! We just revealed the July Monthly Mix set -- Simply Sweet. I am so in love with this stamp set...I truly think it's one of the best sets we've ever designed. It has a lot of great vacationy and summery images.





The vintage/collage look is really hot right now, and I had so much fun making this card. Wondering where we got the vintage-looking postage stamps for this image? Let me tell you! My father-in-law was a collector. He left for us boxes of old letters and stamps, some of them over 50 years old. I went through the box and chose a few of my favorites, scanned and manipulated them in Illustrator, and this was the result -- a very unique and original stamp of "stamps!" I love this image. I think it would be fun on a vacation scrapbook page too.


The other stamp I love is the eiffel tower. The sentiment "eiffel for you" is a play on the phrase "I fell for you." So you can make it a romantic card if you like. This is actually an idea I had for a Paper Crafts card I had published about two years ago. I had just typed out the "eiffel for you" sentiment back then and always wanted it in rubber. That's one of the great things about being a rubber stamp company. If I want it, I can "make it so." ;) Note: The world is a book sentiment on the card is from our Vintage Verses set.






The card above features our peacock. I'm not sure I've ever seen a peacock stamp before I saw this one! Joslyn designed this image for us and the first thing I said when I saw it was, "Wow, what a great idea!" I bet we start seeing peacocks now... we'll set the trend! ;) I used two Copic colors and my blender pen on this birdie and I think he is just beautiful. Note: The "triple thanks" sentiment is from our June Mix set -- Life is Good.


Visit the Lizzie Anne Blog today to see more fabulous Monthly Mix creations, from both our Design Team and customers!

a little something

This is the card I made for my son's school teacher to go with her gift (a set of Lizzie Anne stamps of course ;) It's based on this sketch challenge. And there is a sneak-peek stamp image on there from our July Monthly Mix set (I'll let you guess which one!) We are revealing the July set on Tuesday and I have some great samples to share-- very excited because they are cards I made on my retreat last month and they are some of my favorites!

This card makes me want a cupcake bad... may have to go to my favorite cupcake store this week. :)

Cupcake stamp from the August 2009 Mix - Hey Sunshine
Strawberry patterned paper - My Minds Eye / Quite Contrary

pixel remodel

I was up way too late last night... I think I went to bed around 2:00am, I'm not sure. I went through half a bar of Trader Joes dark chocolate... (the Pound Plus bar, not the regular size. I'm sure I'll gain a pound plus.) What was I doing? Two things..

1) I am launching a new design business with my longtime friend Rebecca. Rebecca and I used to work at an advertising agency together about ten years ago (in fact Rebecca interviewed me!) and we've been friends ever since. We both do freelance work and we've been saying forever that we should combine forces and do a design biz together. Well, we just did! We are called www.pixelremodel.com. Go check it out! I was trying to get our website up last night because the second thing I was working on (coming next) was about to launch. BTW here is our pixel remodel website homepage...



2) The second thing I was doing last night was redesigning my cousins blog. We plan on offering blog design so I thought it would be good practice. And wow, I sure learned a lot about Blogger (mostly about what a pain it can be!) It took me about 10 hours to get her blog up. But I definitely learned alot and it won't take me nearly as long next time I do it. She has a very popular / funny mommy blog. I had to laugh when she sent me the illustrations she wanted to use... they are very "her" (they look like her too.) It was a fun project! Her blog is called Hiding from the Kids if you want to see what I did for her.

I need a nap. :)

yankee doodle dandy

I'm just in love with the new "Little People" stamp we are releasing today... Yankee Doodle! I've always had a thing for patriotic design and decor. I love to decorate my kid's bikes for the parade on the Fourth of July, I always have a flag outside my house, and I always buy my whole family the USA t-shirts from Old Navy to wear. So naturally I'm drawn to this little guy.

This card features Yankee Doodle and also the other single we're releasing today--a flag made from the words from "America the Beautiful." This image is called Grand ol' Flag and grand it is. The tiny stars paper is from the Stars and Stripes digital kit I designed...naturally a favorite since I love patriotic design. We have a promotion going on this week... buy Yankee Doodle and Grand ol' Flag and get the Stars and Stripes digital paper pack free. Details on the LAD Blog!

I'm looking forward to June and the start of summer. My sister and her family are arriving this weekend for "Duvall Days" which is a big summer festival in the town of Duvall where we both lived for quite awhile... we have a lot of friends there. I think one of my favorite things about summer is all the festivals. And the fireman's pancake breakfast. :)