On Saturday we went to a brunch to celebrate a friend's 21st birthday. She has a gorgeous one-year old boy, so it was a lovely morning with loads of kids around! We bought her an inspirational desktop calendar as a gift. It was so inspirational, the cover inspired the card I made for her...

Punches have come a long way from simple circles and squares. New manufacturing technologies make it possible to produce punches with detailed, intricate designs and more options than just a single image. The triple layer punches are a perfect example. These punches let you create three different punch images with one punch - it's like getting three punches for the price of one!

Here's something for Christmas...

This petal card was made for my brother-in-law's birthday using Well Worn DSP, which is great for masculine cards (see page 129 of the catalogue)...

This a petal card and it only seems fitting that I used the Paisley Petals stamp set and matching DSP to create a Petal Card...

The Pennant Parade stamp set (page 37 of the catalogue) and matching punch (page 153) are such a versatile pair as the simple shapes are easily used for a variety of cards. There was the baby card I made a while ago, and then Bev and I taught a telescopic Christmas Card at the Hamilton Christmas Extravaganza using the Pennant Parade stamp set as Christmas Trees...

On Sunday we held the Hamilton Christmas Extravaganza, show-casing some of the fabulous new products from the Idea Book & Catalogue. At this Extravaganza we had five pairs of demonstrators who taught a project, moving from table to table so that, at the end of the day, everyone of the 70ish stampers who attended took home five lovely creations using a variety of techniques.

I had a couple of birthdays to make cards for this month, so I played with the Designer Frames Embossing Folders (see page 157 of the Idea Book & Catalogue). Inspired by a card created by Kerry Bunting, this is one of the cards I made...