A wonderful surprise!

I had a really wonderful surprise waiting for me when I arrived home today... If you've been following my blog, you'll know that I had joined a swap with Stampin' Up! demonstrators from across Canada and was anxiously awaiting the arrival of my cards a couple of weeks ago but they were lost in the mail and never turned up. Well, my fellow Stampin' Up! demonstrators are very kind and generous... I arrived home to find four envelopes in my mailbox, each with hand-stamped cards and a brag book page that were sent to cheer me up from the missing swap cards! I felt so spoiled! Thank you to Alison Solven (my wonderful upline), Lori-Ann Bartels, Lisa Kind and Kim Lee for your thoughtfulness!

Alison sent four cards - here are two of them... The first one is made with the Leaves a la Carte Jumbo Wheel and the Carte Postale stamp set from the Winter Mini Catalogue. It's a really sharp looking card... I had been resisting ordering this stamp set, but it's going to be more difficult now that I've seen this card!

The next card from Alison is made with the Happy Harmony Sell-A-Bration set. You might not see the detail along the left side in the small picture - click on it to see it bigger. She's stamped the Print Pattern background stamp in Real Red ink then added white dots to the tip of each of the diamonds with her white gel pen. This is a really nice card.

Here's a card that uses the kissing technique - the Big Blossom stamped was "kissed" with the Canvas background stamp. This card was made by Kim... Notice how she made a little shaker box with a stamp from the Circle of Friendship stamp set. It's filled with Micro Beads.

Lisa made this card with the Very Punny stamp set. The little dots down the side were stamped with a stamp from the Fun Filled set - what a clever stamp to use with this cow stamp! The greeting is from the It's Your Birthday set. Such a cute card!

And, this fun card was made by Lori-Ann using the Bodacious Bouquet and Happy Everything stamp sets. I bought the Bodacious Bouquet stamp set when it first came out last summer but I've never used it (can you imagine?) because I just couldn't get inspired with a card idea. Lori-Ann has solved that for me! I really like how she used a punched out flower in the centre of her stamped flower to create some depth and add colour.

I am just thrilled to have these new cards to add to my collection and to share with you. Thank you to Lori-Ann, Lisa, Kim and Alison for these cards and for giving me such a nice surprise!

Happy stampin'!

Bev.

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