I {heart} baking

This is what I’ve been up to for the last couple of days. My grandpuppy, Sugar, turned 1 year old (in people years) yesterday, and my daughter invited some of Sugar’s doggie friends over today to celebrate. Of course, I had to bake some treats for the doggies, so I whipped up a batch of these yummies. All kinds of good stuff in there – banana, apple sauce, carrots, whole wheat flour, spelt flour and oats. Honestly, there’s nothing in there that I wouldn’t eat. But I didn’t try them. The dogs loved them, though.I packaged them up like this:
 

And we must have some goodies for the people, right? What could be better than some pupcakes? Got the idea from the Martha Stewart website. Very time consuming, but sooo cute! And very yummy. The ears and eyes are made of chocolate, and the noses are Raisinettes.

And because this past Monday was my son-in-law’s birthday, I baked a little something just for him – a Beer Batter Bread with Gruyere and Rosemary. It smelled divine when I baked it this morning, and I’m sure it will taste just as good. I got the recipe from the Bake at 350 blog, here. Super simple. Here it is in all its glory:

I just love the way my house smells when I bake. I do NOT like the way my kitchen looks afterward. I need somebody to stand next to me and clean up as I go. Any volunteers?

Papertrey April Blog Hop Challenge

This month, the PTI Blog Hop Challenge is to make a masculine card. It just so happens that today is my son-in-law’s birthday (Happy Birthday, Roy!), and the card I made for him uses PTI’s Enjoy the Ride stamp set and die. Unfortunately I did not get it into the mail, so I’ll have to hand-deliver it to my daughter later today.

You may recognize the car from the nifty tutorial I did HERE about how to accurately die-cut images with solid dies (like PTI’s) – after they are stamped. If you have the same trouble I do with lining up the stamp with the die cut, this tutorial is for you!

I used BG Max & Whiskers paper for this card, since I was going for a dog theme here, and the colors were nice and masculine. The doggy in the car is my grandpuppy, Sugar, wishing her daddy a happy birthday. That stamp is from a little BG clear stamp set. I stamped her first on the white circle, then adhered the car (with the window trimmed out with a craft knife) on top of her. The sky and road are masked and airbrushed with Copic markers.

Enjoy the hop!

Tutorial: Die-cutting stamped images

Anyone who has used Nestabilities or other open-format dies to cut their stamped images knows that it’s pretty easy to align the die around the image. But what about the solid dies that are available now? I don’t know about you, but even with clear stamps, I have a hard time stamping the image correctly on the die-cut shape – it’s always just a little wonky, even if I’m standing right above it to line it up.

So I came up with an easy way to stamp first, then cut perfectly – every time. Now, I don’t know if anyone else has come up with this idea already, but it’s new to me, so I wanted to share it with you. Here we go…

First, take a piece of cardstock and die-cut the shape. You are creating a mask. I’ve used PTI’s Enjoy the Ride die (and stamp) for this.

Now stamp your image.

Start creating your die-cutting “sandwich”. I’m using my Big Shot. Lay the stamped image (face up) on your cutting mat and align the mask over the image exactly the way you want it. You can use a little tape to hold it down if you want. (I could have aligned this a little better…) 

Now take your die (cutting side down) and place it into the mask – you’ll feel when it’s sitting properly in there. Take a little tape and hold it down to make sure it doesn’t shift.

Cover it with your top plate and run it through your die-cutting machine. That’s it -- a perfectly aligned image!

And you can keep your mask to use over and over again. I like to cut one in a light color and one in a dark color, depending on what I’m stamping on. And I store them right behind the dies in my binder so they’re always there when I need them. I store my dies – all of them – in a photo album binder loaded with different size pocket pages. Each pocket has either a square of black cardstock with some magnetic strips attached, or a square of of magnetic sheeting (I think they sell them as vent covers). In the back of the album, I have a couple of sheets of 8x11 magnetic sheeting, hole punched for the binder, for my border dies. Here’s a pic of one page:
 

Hope this has been useful and takes some stress out of your crafting time!

IHP April DT Challenge: Exclusively Yours

This month the i {heart} papers design team is spotlighting some of the stamp sets that are available exclusively through i {heart} papers. I decided to use one of my favorite Chicken Girl Design sets, Birthday Wishes.

Now as we all know, nothing says “party” quite like a pink elephant. So I paired the image with some pretty pink papers from the Little Girl Collection Kit by Echo Park. The balloon is paper-pieced and popped up on a foam dimensional. I used this week’s inspiring Sweet Sunday Sketch Challenge #113 for my layout.

Supplies from i {heart} papers:
Stamps: Birthday Wishes (Chicken Girl Design)
Ink: Memento black, Copic markers R81, R83, YG02, C2
Paper: Little Girl Collection Kit (Echo Park), Copic Blending Cardstock
Other: Adhesive Dimensional Dots (Zva), Nestabilities – small circles

Do you have any of the exclusive IHP sets from Mint Motif, The Petal Press, or Chicken Girl Design? Would you like to share your work with us? Post it to the gallery at PaperCraft Planet or Splitcoast Stampers and use the tag ihp0411 so we can find it.

Now go check out what the rest of the IHP Design Team has this month:

Kate
Deb
Gretchen
Kendra
Loretta
Lori
Lynn
Megan
Tracy

Happy stamping!