Hello

Well here I am finally. The last month has been very hectic and stressful - my husband has been ill but now that he has undergone a procedure to correct his heart rythmn things are looking up for us.

Although I have not been posting, my friend Judy and I have been busy making cards to be sent to our troops in Afghanistan. We have made over 100 simple cards, trying to cover all occasions. The completed cards will find their way to the troops so that they have access to cards to send to their loved ones back home.

This afternoon Judy and I had our own little workshop - we try to get together every Monday to stamp, chat and just catch up with each other.

Today we made three cards.

The first one involves no stamping - we used our Cuttlebug Birds & Swirls Embossing folder. We had waited so long for it to come off backorder and finally received them last week. We also used one of the folders from the Cuttlebug Fancy Corners set. For this project we used all nonSU products although we did discuss that we could use Whisper White and Sage Shadow CS. In place of dewdrops we could use green rhinestone brads. We also thought it would make a lovely christmas card using Whisper White and Real Red CS.

Tammy at The Scrapbox here in Ottawa designed this card.

The next card we made was CASE'd from this one we saw on Chic n Scratch chicnscratch.typepad.com/stampinacademy/2008/02/card-of-the-w-3.html

We used the same image and same colours but we changed the background stamp, sentiment, size and ribbon. We also added little 'goggly' eyes. We used the Owl from Just Celebrate and Boho Backgrounds Stamp Sets, river rock, chocolate chip and whisper white CS. River Rock, chocolate chip and Timber Brown Staz On inks. River Rock double stitched ribbon.

And finally we made this card using the Fresh Cuts Flowers stamp set. We decided to do a spotlight technique and love the results. We used basic black, real red and whisper white CS. Basic Black ink. Real Red and Always Artichoke markers. Styled silver hodgepodge (retired from Occsions Mini). The ribbon is non SU. We used the big stamp from the Fresh Cuts set on Whisper White and then stamped it again on a scrap. We punched the flower image with the 1 1/4 circles punch, coloured the petals with real red and the leaves with always artichoke. We mounted that on a 1 3/8 circle punched from basic black. Used dimensionals to attach it to the card.

Well that is my update for now. I just placed by order for a box of the new SU catalogue and I am anxiously waiting for the stamp sets and new In Colours I was able to preorder from the new catalogue. The news is that all NEW sets will be die cut.

Thanks for looking.

Marjorie