Hi, my name, unsurprisingly, is Carolyn and I'm a newbie here. I am 66 and live with husband and four cats not far from Carlisle near the Scottish border, although I'm a Londoner by birth. I love messing about on my computer and confess to enjoying computer games, daft at my age but what the heck, I also love photography, cooking, reading and gardening when I feel suitable energetic.

I don't have much of a talent for art unfortunately, but I have made cards in the past using my own photos, nothing particularly ambitious, though. However, a couple of months ago I met the wife of one of my husband's friends for the first time and she mentioned in passing that she enjoyed papercraft. I asked her exactly what she meant, and she showed me the beautiful cards and scrapbooks she makes - I was totally hooked . Since then we have been craft shopping together and I have spend far more than I should on papers, cardstock, stamps and embossing stuff. We are very different in our approach, though. She won't have anything to do with computers and prefers to make everything from scratch, and her stuff is really gorgeous, way out of my league, but I am inseparable from my pc and love to use it for everything I can. My first cd purchase was Ivory Cats and I absolutely adore it, and often just put the discs in to browse the beautiful pictures. I am quite pleased with the first few Christmas cards I have made using this but the pictures are so amazing you couldn't fail. Not everyone likes cats though, so I have splashed out on  Pamela West Vol. 2 and can't wait for it to arrive.

I am so pleased to have found this forum - it feels such a happy place to be and I hope to be spending many hours here, lapping up all the advice and feeling I am among friends.

Carolyn