Startin' the year off right!

There were two birthdays this week, in my little corner of the universe--my mom's and my father-in-law's (whom I call Fred...though his name is William--but that's a different story). This means I had to drag myself out of my cookie-induced stupor (which was complicated by a cocoa coma and egg nog fog). "Why a cookie stupor?", you ask. Well, I get to credit it to my mother-in-law, Judie. When she and Fred were visiting us just after Christmas...she taught me how to make Spritz cookies. We had a blast!

We made a LOT of Spritz cookies. Like 18 dozen. They are cute and fun...and they are tasty. They go down easy...a little too easy--thus, the cookie stupor from which I suffered so. The white ones are SUPPOSED to be camels. Personally, I think they look like unshorn sheep or maybe clouds...or popcorn. I guess my Spritz skills could use refining.

OH! I almost forgot...I learned something VERY interesting about those little silver candy ball cookie decorating thingies...you know what I'm talking about, silver dragees. They look like shiny little BBs and will break your teeth if you're not careful. DID YOU KNOW....the FDA does NOT consider these to be edible??? Are they serious? What are we supposed to do? Put them all over our baked goods then pick 'em off before we eat??

On the bottle it clearly states "For decorative purposes ONLY...not edible." So, I looked it up online. Whatya know. They contain REAL silver, and early on in the 20th century, they USED to contain trace amounts of MERCURY (lovely)...this is what earned them the "non-edible" status. They have since revamped the recipe and they are supposedly safe to eat now (they still contain silver)...BUT, the state of California has banned the sales of these...and even though they are "safe"...and the FDA STILL makes the manufacturers put "non-edible" on the labels. Maybe they really are BBs.

Ok, enough about cookies and toxic decorations...on to the birthday cards.

I found a new cartoonist that just cracks me up. I love his goofy characters and tongue-in-cheek, wry sense of humor. His name is Ron Leishman. If you click on his name, it will take you to his website. I suggest you peruse his "New Toons" section--but be prepared to spend a great deal of time perusing...there are over 200 pages of images (236 to be exact, but who's counting). ALSO...he has a "Toon-A-Day" site that offers FREE images to download!!! You heard it! And, it's FREE to join! The images are in color...but that's easy enough to remedy. Just use your paint bucket fill tool in Photoshop and color the colored parts white--voila...you have a black-outlined image without color.

He is seriously funny.

The first card I made was for my father-in-law (Fred). Fred is an AVID gardener, so this image was PERFECT for his card (besides, it LOOKS like Fred). I did tweak the image a bit...I removed the contents of the wheelbarrow and dropped in presents instead--so it was more birthday-y.

I made the entire card white...except the image. It made for a STRIKING card that really highlighted the image.

Ingredients:
Image - Ron Leishman
Birthday stamp - Stampabilities
Prismacolor Colored pencils
embossing folders - Provo Craft
grass edge punch - EK Success for Martha Stewart
rick-rack
cardstock


My next card was for my dear mom. She's gone absolutely cuckoo for Marjolein Bastin birdhouses. Her entire bathroom is totally Marjolein'd out. It looks fabulous, but I kid her a lot about it being "for the birds". This image reminded me of my mom--she's a very handy-lady type of woman. She's ALWAYS hammering something. And thus, her birthday card was born...er, hatched. I even decorated the envelope to match. Remind me next time not to use reddish brown as the "outline shadow" for the image...it makes her look like she's radioactive or something. Oh well, live and learn.

Here is what's inside:

Ingredients:
Image- Ron Leishman
woodgrain texture plate - Fiskars
Prismacolor Colored Pencils
mini brads - Creative Impressions
Distress Ink - Ranger