I just found out that the post office has been returning packages people sent me. The PO was reacting to a 2 year old "mail forwarding" hold that was no longer valid. :( I think I emailed everyone I've traded with about it, but if you sent me one and had it returned, please let me know. I've fixed the problem with the post office. Also, I'm willing to send people 'Reisetomate aus Siebenburgen' seeds for an SASE at this point. If you're interested, let me know! Eliza

Lia- I am sure Barb probably cut that tiny mat since she does a lot of framing for their gallery. It would be harder to cut such a small mat cause there is no room to hide your mistakes and it is so hard to work with such a small piece of scrap board. I just hated cutting mats in art school, but we had to mat most of our projects before turning them in. I never did get the hang of a bevel cutter so I just cut squared mats. Cutting a mat: Mark your frame opening on the back side in pencil. Then take a nice sharp needle and poke a hole in each corner from the back to the front. Flip the mat over & cut on the front side using the pinholes to show you where to start & end your cuts. The pinholes also "clear out" your corners so you do not have a tuft of uncut fibers from trying to line 2 right angle cuts up to each other. Have a fresh blade in the knife and use a metal straightedge. Put your item on a scrap of smooth matboard or a good cutting surface. Put the tip of the knife in the hole, line up the straightedge so it presses against the knife and touches the next hole, and cut firmly with the blade at a straight 90 degree angle. If you need to run a second cut to get thru the board, hold the straightedge firmly & be careful not to let the cut stray away from your first cut. If you need 3 cuts to get all the way thru then you probably need a fresh blade. Gram- shrink first, then added some embossing powder, unless the powder is clear. If it is clear, you can glue down the stamp, then put the clear EP over the stamp which will seal it. Looks to me like she either used a template or decorative scissors to create the nice edges. I know just what you all mean...it is very hard to find fresh ideas for men's cards!

Hello Swappers - I made all of the I-Spy exchanges and sent out all of the swap packages on Saturday. At least 1000 squares were exchanged. There were swappers from all around the country, and from Australia and Canada too. There were lots of prints that I've never seen before, an amazing variety overall. Very few duplicates among the group, though you may receive two different design cuts from the same fabric. Many of the swappers posted an optional preference. They ranged from the very general to very specific, for example from animals to birds to chickens. Some were color based: neon brights, black-backgrounds, blues. Others, like girly, no licensed characters or cartoons, cute, and boy stuff tended to rule out things that didn't fit the swapper's taste. I was able to fit most of the requests, based on the squares sent in. It was fun to send all available chickens to one swapper, and to be sure that no pink flowery lacy images were sent to the swapper looking for boy stuff. Everyone did get a range that leaned toward their preference when possible. Because many of us were taking squares from our stash that we did not particularly like, there were quite a few duds in the bunch. I expected that, and encouraged people to send those in to hopefully get something that they liked better. Some of these fabrics I've seen come around in a swap more than once... so I took them out of circulation once and for all. I eliminated almost 50 yukko squares, and donated replacements into the swap from my own stash. Whether too thin, obviously poly, badly cropped, or just ugly, many of these squares are not even worthy of donation to a Linus quilt. I may post some good/better/best examples later in another post. I hope that everyone enjoys their refreshed stash of I-Spy fabrics.

Stoney, this just came in my email. You can soak dominoes in clorax for 24 hours..helps to let the ink stamp an impression better. Dominoes can be tea stained by bringing water to a boil reduce heat add tea bags(different staining by using diff. teas 4 or 5 bags with burner on low simmer for 30 minutes or longer. Lately I have just been using Stazon inks heat setting and use permanent markers (sharpies) heat setting and glaze with 3d crystal lacquer or diamond glaze. With this last I just wipe the domino.Also if you are using inks on the domino just plane out of the box and don't care for the stamping job before you heat set just wipe it off with Stazon cleaner and start over. This came from the lady I emailed for you earlier, who got it from someone who does this all the time. Hope it helps! Tami