A year of sweet treats

My grandma's birthday is just a couple of days before Christmas, so it can be tricky to come up with ideas for birthday and Christmas presents at the same time. (And we always try to make sure the birthday present, including the wrapping paper, is not Christmas-y.) This year my mom and sister decided to give Grandma a "membership" in our own treat-of-the-month club, so each month in 2014 one of us will bake her a sweet treat -- cookies, bars, cupcakes, etc. To present the gift, my sister typed up a certificate, and I created this card to hold the certificate:

Supplies (all Stampin' Up! unless otherwise noted):
Stamps: Grandma's Kitchen, Guilty Pleasures (both Raisin Boat)
Cardstock: Cherry Cobbler, Whisper White
Ink: Jet Black StazOn, Cherry Cobbler, Baked Brown Sugar, Blushing BRide, Chocolate Chip, Smoky Slate, Creamy Caramel
Accessories: Decorative Dots embossing folder, Blender Pen, Glue Dots, corner rounder, Dimensionals

Pretty yummy-looking, if I do say so myself. I stamped the images with Jet Black StazOn ink on Whisper White cardstock and then used a Blender Pen and ink pads to color them. (You can't really tell in the photo, but the inside of the piece of cake is a very pale pink.) I cut out the images and adhered them to an embossed Cherry Cobbler card base. (The Decorative Dots embossing folder will be available during Stampin' Up!'s 2014 Sale-A-Bration promo.)

The sentiment was a little trickier to create. I had two different options -- "Sweet" and "Treat yourself" -- but neither was exactly what I wanted. So I made some modifications and came up with my own sentiment. I started by stamping "Sweet" on a strip of white cardstock. Then I inked  up and stamped just "Treat." To make it plural, I used a marker to ink just the "s" in "yourself" and stamped it at the end of "Treat." (Thank goodness for clear stamps!) I trimmed the left side of the strip into a V and adhered it to the card, slipping the right edge behind the cookie jar image.

My Grandma still does some baking (her strudel is one of my favorite Christmas treats), but food always tastes better when someone else does the work, right? I think I'm going to have to dig out my recipe for caramel graham fudge brownies. Yum! Thanks for stopping by!