Inky Paws

This week’s featured company - Lizzie Anne Designs!!!

If I had to describe (I guess I do….hehe) the Lizzie Anne Designs line of stamps I would have to say a wonderful mixed bag of cuteness, some great solid images and some drop dead gorgeous florals and line art images.

Lizzie Anne Design images are deeply etched red rubber that is pre-mounted on EZMount Thin cling for use on clear blocks.

Lizzie Anne stamps are sold in two ways:

Little Bits™
Deeply-etched, unmounted rubber cling stamp sets packaged in a jewel case for easy storage.
Simply Singles™

Single unmounted cling stamps.

A little about Tricia and Meridith from their About Me page:

Two Graphic Designers. Two cardmaking, stamping, and scrapbooking enthusiasts. Two long-time friends. Tricia Elizabeth (Lizzie) Ulberg and Meridith Anne Ethington are the owners of Lizzie Anne Designs. As long-time cardmakers and scrapbookers, we are excited about the opportunity to utilize our art backgrounds, business backgrounds, and knowledge of the stamping/scrapbooking industry to design products for the hobby we love dearly. We believe that stamping and scrapbooking products should inspire creativity in all who use them!

A little note from me:

Tricia and Meridith are two of the sweetest and most professional ladies that I have met in this industry (and they are both very cute!). I’ve had the great pleasure of working with Lizzie Anne Design products for over a year as a Design Team member. My opinions on the quality of their stamps and excellent customer service was formed back when I was just a happy customer.

Here are a couple Lizzie Anne Designs samples:

This card features the set Far East. I started out by stamping the branches across the patterned paper (Basic Grey Blush) in Versamark ink. The flowers were stamped on a scrap piece of white cardstock. I then heat embossed both with Gold embossing powder and a heat tool. I added dots of Gold Liquid Pearls randomly on the branches. I used a paintbrush and reinkers (Ranger Distress Aged Mahogany and Lipstick Red) to color the flowers, then cut them out. After stitching the patterned paper layer onto the cream layer I attached the cut out flowers with foam tape. The phrase panel was cut with Rectangle and Scallop Rectangle Nestabilities (Spellbinders).

I used one of my favorite sets, Le Jardin for this card. The flower was stamped onto white cardstock and colored with Copic markers and then cut out. The circle and Scallop rectangle panels were cut and then embossed with Nestabilities dies. Before removing them from the dies I sponged the paper using the dies as a mask. The background pattern was made by stamping the leaf from the set randomly in black ink. I put a dot of White Opal Liquid Pearls in the center of the flower.

Here a fun little bonus! I have two Simply Singles to give away! I will be choosing two random winners (each will get a single and some pretty ribbons!) from everyone who leaves a comment telling me what your favorite Lizzie Anne Design set is. I will be choosing a winner at Noon CT on Tuesday Sept. 2nd.

Blog Candy winners have been chosen!!! 

Woo hoo Nancy & Kim!!!

Here are the Simply Singles that will be given away!

I’m going to start something new called Company Spotlight. Each week I will feature a company and tell you a little bit about them. There are so many great stamp companies!

This week I’ll be featuring Impression Obsession.

Impression Obsession sells clear stamps, unmounted rubber stamps (on cling or permanent foam cushion) and wood mounted. The quality is wonderful. They offer a huge variety of image styles, everything from cute to trendy.

Here is some info from the Impression Obsession’s website “About us” page:

Hi! I know people are curious sometimes about who the people are behind the anonymous-looking website. Impression Obsession was formed in March 1998 by Mitra Friant and Charmaine Jackson, two high school teachers who thought it would be fun to run a stamp business part-time after school. We published our first stamp catalog with 92 images in August, 1998 and we were off and running.

We had a lot of success with that first catalog and continued adding images (and customers) until the company became too busy to be a part-time job. In September, 1999, I (Mitra) quit teaching and started working at the stamp business full-time. Charmaine, meanwhile, had a baby and decided to continue teaching so she got out of the stamp business.

2008 will mark 10 years in business…I can’t believe it! IO has come a long way since then. We now have over 2000 images in production at any given time and have expanded into offering clear stamps and more recently cling stamps (stamps with gray cushion that temporarily sticks to acrylic blocks). We are proud to offer Alesa Baker Designs, Heart Art Studios and Melissa Gordon’s stamps and just this year have added Leigh Hannan’s distinctive designs to our line.

I make Christmas cards all year long so I’m not in such a crunch at the end of the year. I usually don’t make multiples of any card, though I do sometimes make similar cards. Here are two cards using images from Impression Obsession.

The first card was made using the clear set CL144 - Leigh Hannan Snowflakes. I used watercolor paper and stamped the snowflake background in Baja Breeze ink. I spritzed it with water after stamping and let the snowflakes bleed. After the background was dry I stamped more snowflakes. The ornament was stamped in Archival ink and watercolored with Baja Breeze, Bravo Burgandy, Old Olive and More Mustard ink. I added some Amuse Twinkle stickers. The circle and Scallop Circle were cut with Nestabilties dies from Spellbinders.

This card was made using the G2235 Poinsettia Swirl. This is a rubber stamp (I chose unmounted rubber on cling). I stamped the image in black ink on Buttercream (Prism Papers) cardstock. I outlined the swirls and colored the leaves & flowers with Copic markers. I stamped the flowers again on another piece of Buttercream paper, colored and then cut them out and layered them onto the flowers on the panel. I added small dots of gold Ranger Liquid Pearls (Gold on the flowers and White Opal on the swirls). Two half pearls were adhered to the larger dots above the flowers.

Please let me know what you think of this new feature!

Have a great day!!!