LIM50 - Fly Away

ATTENTION! Did you take a moment to leave me a comment on this post?  In celebration of my 4 year anniversary as a blogger, I'm going to be giving away a nice gift card to one lucky person. I'll be drawing a name on January 31.  Couldn't YOU use a gift card for craft goodies??


Chrissie and Mandi at Less is More have challenged us to create a one layer card with the subject of birds. I think for some, this will be quite simple...but for me...WOW!  I have very few bird stamps!  I've been digging through my stamps for two days, and I couldn't find much to work with!  I finally remembered that I have some birds in my Silhouette program and thought maybe I could print those on a card and work from that.  After I totally messed up the 9th card, I almost called it quits!  I don't think I've had that many goof ups yet!  


I have two printers - an ink jet and a laser printer.  Never use the ink jet printer to print and image and then try to ink it....ask me how I know!  I tried coloring the images with my versamark pen and heat embossing, I tried to ink without embossing...nothing worked! The ink on the images just smears...and if that didn't happen, I managed to get my inky fingers on the white areas of the card! GAAH!!!


I finally tried printing the birds with my laser printer and I was able to get the card done.  This is the first card I tried.  I love the concept, but the bird's wings are smeared and it really looks icky!

I printed the birds with the ink jet printer and heat embossed them (not very well it seems).  Then I masked off a section on the card and used a circle to mask off the moon.  I inked with several shades of distress ink, then removed the moon mask and added just a touch of inking to the moon.  The last step was to add the trees stamped in Memento black.  If it wasn't for the smeared birds...I kinda like the card.  You'd think after 9 tries I would have gotten it right! LOL!

This one is a touch better, although I kind of over-inked the setting sun...but I do love the colors!  The sentiment is from PTI. Birds were printed from my Silhouette program files.

And finally...one of my very few bird stamps...my chickens and roosters!  I believe these are from the Clear Arts Stamps.  I stamped the birds in Memento ink, then colored them with Copics.  The "ground" was made by tapping a brown pen repeatedly across the bottom.  The sentiment was computer generated (after coloring the birds).  What a risk taker I am! I could have totally messed that up and had to redo it!!  Thought I'd send this to a guy friend of ours who has been in the hospital for a few days. It's kinda masculine, don't ya think?

I managed to finish a layout this weekend too.  

Photos of my grandson, Jacob at Christmas. For this layout I used Bella Blvd's Christmas Wishes collection. I used the MS loopy punch on two edges. The rick rack strip is one of the strips on the patterned paper. The cookie monster was an image I found online. I printed him on card stock, cut him out, and adhered him with pop dots. The cookies he's eating are some that I cut out from another photo that I made of just the cookies when I took these photos of Jacob. The embellies "nom...nom...nom..." were computer generated and matted with blue card stock, then adhered with pop dots. The "cookies" part of the title work was cut with the Cameo, colored with Copics, and highlighted with a white signo pen. The "me want" part of the title was cut with Papertrey Ink alpha dies. Journaling was computer generated and cut into strips and added to the bottom of the layout and reads: 

Every year we make cookies and candies for Christmas. This year (2011) Jacob watched everything we did and was always waiting for the first batch to come out of the oven. His eyes lit up with every batch! Our new favorite cookie recipe this year was Chewy Molasses Spice Cookies. 

There wasn't room on the front of the layout, so I added the recipe to the back of the layout, so that whoever ends up with these albums will have the recipe. Here it is in case you'd like to have it, too. These cookies are absolutely delicious!


Chewy Molasses Spice Cookies 


Makes 36 cookies 


2 cups all-purpose flour (spooned and leveled) 
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda 
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon 
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg 
1/2 teaspoon salt 
1 1/2 cups sugar 
3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened 
1 large egg 
1/4 cup molasses 
Directions 

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt. In a shallow bowl, place 1/2 cup sugar; set aside. 

With an electric mixer, beat butter and remaining cup of sugar until combined. Beat in egg and then molasses until combined. Reduce speed to low; gradually mix in dry ingredients, just until a dough forms. 

Pinch off and roll dough into balls, each equal to 1 tablespoon. Roll balls in reserved sugar to coat. 

Whew! I was long winded today! If you made it all the way through...Thank You!  Don't forget to leave a comment on this post so you can be entered in the drawing for a gift card!  Thanks for stopping by!! Your comments are always appreciated!! Until next time....

Hugs!