Lifting from myself

Well it is has come to this. I am lifting ideas from myself. I wanted this card to be special. However, I was having some serious lack of imagination. The card is to go to a very special person and I wanted to do something really groovy. Deep sigh. I like the card, don't get me wrong. But I have done this design several times before. A couple of things have changed, but it is still the same basic design. I suppose the way I need to look at this is that if it is a decent design and it works nothing wrong with using it again.
The majority of the stamps are from two companies that I just love to pieces - Eat Cake Graphics and Purple Onion Designs. I don't know if you have noticed, but I tend to use stamps from these companies on most all of my work. I did alot of masking on this card and it is colored with pencils. I had to draw in the little bird and the tree. The area for the sentiment was to small to use stamps so I just printed the sentiment. I also had to pare down the little hat. The stamp is actually much bigger.
Well I have a couple of cards that I want to work on today and I am hoping that I can come up with a new design. I was pondering the other day about why I don't seem to be able to come up with new ideas. I let all of my magazine subscriptions expire except for one - Rubber Stamp Madness. (Speaking of which, in the next issue, I have a little Christmas piece in it). I use to get lots of magazines and I am wondering if not having something to look to spark ideas is part of the problem. I would see something I liked, which would give me thoughts about how to change it or use part of it or something. Since I am home alone this weekend, maybe what I will do is pull out some of the magazines that I kept and start looking thru them to see if sparks will start flying. Wish me luck.