Our Belgium friends completed their whirl-wind trip to the United States again, and they did not disappoint!  Love the chocolates and scrapbooking goodies they brought!  We can only hope that my husband and I did them justice with the goodies we've been acquiring for them the past several months.  They enjoy chocolates as much as we do, so had to make sure they received American chocolates that they can't get over there, which means they received some of my husband's handmade chocolates.  They are also Mariner fans.  One of the items they received was an old Mariner keychain that belonged to my husband's mother.  We are not baseball fans, so he decided to give it to them.  They will keep this special keepsake in a special place when they get back to Belgium (they actually arrived home a couple days ago).  They have a number of other interests, so there was a large bag and a box full of goodies to sort through and find places for in their luggage for the return trip home.

Now, on to photos of goodies they delivered:

Look at the pretty white lace.  So many styles to choose from for my greeting cards.

More ribbon!  Not shown are some holiday ribbon, including white felt Snowmen ribbon.

Ribbon and bows.  I won't have to make bows!  Notice the cute blue and pink Baby ribbon in lower right.

Washi tape.  I'm learning how to use this stuff.  There are some really great designs out there.  My favorite in this photo is the black and white 6-pack.

Who doesn't love flowers?  The three packages on the right are silk (fabric) flowers.  The rest are paper flowers you put together; each package comes with coordinating butterflies to assemble.

And then there's bling!

3-D stickers, rub-ons and all kinds of goodies....

So pretty shaped paper packs.

Hologram paper packs at the top, then 6 books and 3 smaller packs of 3-D creations.  I've done these before.  Here in the United States, our 3-D items are punch-outs.  These, I have to cut every...single...little...piece.  Very time consuming, but the end product is so cute!  The three items on the left are paper packs with foil and glitter papers.

It took me about two hours to find "homes" for all these goodies in my craft room!  (Good thing I've been working on cleaning it up lately.)

I did manage to get one card made today:

This 6½ X 5 inch Butterfly card took an hour to create. The Butterfly is embossed on yellow vellum (looks green as background paper is green -- did not look as nice on black paper).  This is a new technique Keith and I recently learned.  It is embossing, but not the dry embossing we are used to.  This Butterfly is created by using a stylus on vellum and "poking" the matching holes on a plastic/flexible template underneath the vellum.  It is quite a bit more time-consuming than my regular embossing, but the results are very nice!  Our Belgium friends gave us a couple of these types of kits last year at Christmas, but I had no idea how to use them. Now, I have no excuse!

The base Floral paper is from Life's Journey (K&Company).  The Butterfly is embossed on yellow vellum and attached to basic dark green card stock.  The Hasty Lace Butterfly template is from SAR (Some Assembly Required out of Canada). This company is new to us, so it was quite fun to learn this embossing technique.  The Lace is from Belgium.  The Eggshell and Lime paper Roses (My Moments), and Lemon Dahlia satin buds (docrafts Papermania out of UK) complete the card.

Til next time, you all have a wonderful three-day Holiday weekend (if you live in the US).