Color is such a subjective thing.  What makes one person’s heart soar leaves another person squarely in the dust.  I don’t know about you, but Baja Breeze makes my heart soar and I am thrilled beyond words that it is returning to the Stampin’ Up! color palette in July.  I have carefully guarded my stash of Baja Breeze cardstock and grudgingly doled out bits and pieces of my Baja Breeze Designer Series Papers over the past year, but no more!  I can’t wait to see what the Design Geniuses at Stampin’ Up! have in store for us in the new 2010-2011 Idea Book and Catalog.  In the meantime, I offer you this:

• Awash with Flowers Stamp Set, Very Vintage Stampin’ Around Wheel
• Whisper White, Real Red, Wild Wasabi and So Saffron card stock
• Baja Breeze Designer Series Paper (retired – don’t remember the name)
• Wild Wasabi and So Saffron Classic ink pads
• Baja Breeze, Wild Wasabi, and Real Red Classic ink refills
• Aquapainter, Wheel Guide and White Taffeta ribbon
• Circa Notebook from Levenger Catalog

Don’t you love this color combination?  Wild Wasabi has been retired two years and Baja Breeze for only one year.  I’ll be using these colors together again and again!  And I love the options for two-step stamping and/or watercoloring with the new Awash With Flowers stamp set – don’t forget that it’s a 2010-2011 Sneak Peak and will be available only through April 30 (that’s Friday!!)  Go to my Online Store and place your order now, or you’ll be waiting until July 1 and wishing you’d placed your order now.

Someday I will take a watercolor class, but in the meantime I play around and make messes.  I love to work with color saturation and layering different colors, and even when it doesn’t turn out as I planned I find the process enjoyable.  I’ll warn you, though,  when you watercolor with Real Red ink refills, it can look positively magenta!  That was a bit startling, to say the least.

Have you heard of Circa notebooks?  I am addicted to this system.  Infinitely customizable in a variety of sizes, I love the specially punched papers, covers and rings.  They are available through the Levenger Catalog (stores in Boston, Chicago, and I think Florida) and the concept is absolutely brilliant.  Circa provides a very pedestrian cover for the notebooks, but because of the way the system works you can easily remove their dull-as-dirt cover and create one of your own – and that’s what I’ve done here.  This is a Junior sized notebook, and the cover is 5 1/2″ x 8″.   It’s my To-Do list notebook, and it keeps me on track  on the days when I want to follow an agenda.  Some days – like this weekend – I jettisoned the To-Do list in favor of the spirit of  What-Do-I-Want-To-Do-Now?  Needless to say, it was a lovely weekend.