Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!! It will be in a couple of hours anyway. We were supposed to go to church tonight to ring in the New Year, but it was canceled due to a snow storm. I was going to work on putting away Christmas decorations, but Mike told me to go play in my office instead. :o) So, here I am with unexpected time on my hands and thought I'd use it by updating the blogs a bit and maybe planning out some projects for the new year.

This is a cake I did a couple of months ago. It was a blast to do. Although, I modeled the plumber several days in advance and had his back-side staring me in the face every time I went in the kitchen. :o) Looking at the pictures, I realize I still need to work on my modeling skills. There's a lot of wobbly lines and stuff, but I do see an improvement in the covering of the cakes in general. They don't look quite as bumpy as before. I also got a lot of practice using luster dusts on this one. The pipes and metal items are all gray fondant covered in a silver luster dust. That was hard to do without getting it all over. In fact, I think I'm still seeing a slight shimmer to my work table. ;o)

This gentlemen was retiring from plumbing and is a Vikings fan so I had to work purple in there somewhere.

I love Angel's idea for the dirty hand print on the towel. 

I made cupcakes to go along with the main cake. The tools are molded chocolate.

Well, that's it for tonight. I wish I could say I will do better at blogging consistently in 2012, but there is so much going on in life, and frankly, this blog takes a back seat to the more important things. I will do my best to set aside time to blog, but I'm not guaranteeing anything. Till next time, I honestly pray that you will feel God's love and blessings in 2012.

Michelle's Birthday Cake

Blogging consistently is really not my thing. Maybe I need to set aside a certain time each week to update the blogs. Anyway, here are some pictures of Michelle's birthday cake from September. I had a fun time making this cake. I think the caterpillars were my favorite.

I'm going to keep this short and sweet. I have a basket of mending that has been waiting patiently (or not so patiently) for the holidays to get over so I could tackle it. Guess now is the time. I'll do my best to post the plumber cake tomorrow.

Till next time...God's love and blessings!

Sewing Basket Cake

I thought I'd pop in here real quick and show some pictures of a cake I did a while ago. This was for a lady who likes to sew, so a sewing basket was the natural choice to make. So many fun things to make for this cake. There was a pincushion (with pins), needle and thread, scissors, buttons, thimbles, lace, fabric and a measuring tape.

The sides were covered in a chocolate buttercream basket weave and all the decorations were either gumpaste of fondant. This was a fun cake to do and I managed not to break the scissors. :o)

Till next time...God's love and blessings!

Gifts for my Sister

Today I thought I'd post something that wasn't a cake. Yes, believe it or not, I do other things besides make cakes. Although, recently, the cakes seem to have taken over. Anyway, a while back I made some gifts for my sister just because she is the greatest sister ever. She is much more of a jewelry person than I am so I decided to try making her some earrings.

 I stamped an image onto some shrink plastic (remember shrinky dinks?!), colored them, cut them out and shrunk them down. Then I used some beads and wire to turn them into earrings.

I have done some shrink plastic before, but I found that the ink wore off after a while, so I found that it is best to cover the image with Stampin' Up's Crystal Effects or another type of clear drying glaze. Before these dried, I sprinkled glitter all over them. Everything looks better when it's sparkly. :o)

If you look close you can see the sparkles. 

I used watercolor pencils to color these in before shrinking them.

I also wanted to make her a keychain, and I knew exactly which stamp to use. This image is from SU's "The Nicest Things" stamp set and I bought it knowing I would make something for my sister with it.

Sorry for the poor quality photos. My camera couldn't decide on what it wanted to focus on. I hope my sis has enjoyed her new jewelry. I think I may have to make some more for me and possibly some Christmas gifts.

Till next time...happy crafting and God's love and blessings!

Bridal shower and Beach cakes

It seems like all my crafting lately has been in edible form. Here are a couple more of the cakes I did this last summer.

This first one was for a bridal shower. The groom proposed to the bride at a horse ranch, and the wedding was to be this fall. I used these ideas along with the wedding invitations to design the cake. The pictures were taken the night before delivery. The next day, I first had issues with the cake when I realized there was a crack in the fondant on the back of the top tier. :o( Then, two minutes before we were to load them into the van, it started pouring. I don't mean just pouring, I mean "the sky's open and everything is dropping right here and right now" kind of pouring! Angel held a large umbrella and I held a tier directly under it, but it was still drenched when we reached the car. I had her bring paper towels with the next tier so I could pat dry the cake as best I could. I'm not sure who was "crying" more, me or the cake. The black outline of the design began to bleed down the sides, the whole thing looked shiny. Oh well, not much I could do but keep patting and praying. Thankfully the sky cleared by the time we reached our destination and I was able to get most of the bleeding black off the cake. The women at the shower said it was wonderful and they liked the shiny appearance. It really looked like I had emptied a spray can of lacquer on the cake. Well, I am always reminding myself that this is not heart surgery, no one is going to die if the cake isn't perfect. :o)

Here's another cake I did that same weekend. This one was a bucket of sand with seashells and flowers for our church fellowship. It was actually a small cake along with a lot of matching cupcakes. I forgot to take my camera with me, but since we all ate the cupcakes and never cut the main cake, I was able to take a couple of pictures of it when we got home. It gave me troubles too. :o( Because of the design of the cake, I was afraid the fondant would slide down so I kept the cake in the refrigerator until we left for church to keep the fondant stiff. I'm not sure if refrigerating it is what caused this, but by the time we got home, there was a HUGE bubble on the side of the cake. I'm not sure I will try refrigerating a cake again. I'll have to do some more research on that.

I was trying to get a picture without the bubble showing.

Is that not the funniest thing?

I think I will close here. I have several more cakes to post, but that will wait till next time.

Till then...
God's love and blessings!

Golf Cake

Here's the golf cake I promised last time. This gentlemen runs a golf course nearby so the theme had to be golf of course. This is what the cake was originally going to look like.

Unfortunately, a week or so before the party, we had a big storm come through  that took down a lot of trees in the area. Apparently the golf course workers had a lot of clean up to do afterwards, so we decided to memorialize the situation in cake.

I made the golf cart from rice crispy treats after seeing a similar one online. That was by far the trickiest part of the cake, but it was definitely fun to do.

I guess I will close this here. Last week was crazy with cakes, so I have plenty more to post, but I'm enjoying some down time right now and think I may go snuggle with my little one.

Till next time...
God's love and blessings!

Learning something new

So I'm finally getting around to posting the Dr. Seuss cake photos. I have to say that I really enjoyed doing this cake, and I learned a lot as well. As with most of my cakes, the ideas didn't come just from me. I spend time in prayer before I do a cake. I pray for those I'm making it for and pray that it will be a blessing to them. I ask for ideas and then I ask for help in implementing those ideas. :o) I then spend some time on the internet searching out pictures of cakes others have done and try to find ones similar to what I have in mind. I found quite a few for this one and I pulled bits and pieces from several to come up with this.

I covered the cakes with buttercream and used rolled fondant for the decorations. I traced everything with black icing to mimic the look of Dr. Seuss illustrations.

The layers of cake for the hat were alternating strawberry and vanilla so they would get the striped look when it was cut.

I think this little guy was my favorite part. His bowl is made from a Coca Cola ornament shaped bottle with the top cut off. I molded him and the water from fondant and let it harden for a few days. Next time I may use gumpaste just because it's easier to work with when molding.

Covering the hat was the hardest part. I actually used two layers of fondant. The first one was plain white and I simply wrapped it around the cake to help hold all the layers together. Then I wrapped alternating red and white fondant over that to give the striped look. One thing I should have done was sharpen the end of a dowel and run it straight down through the hat and the two bottom tiers. It would have made transporting the cake a whole lot easier.

Well, I hear thunder, which means my power will go out in a minute, so I better close this here. Next time I will post the golf cake I finished a couple of weeks ago.

Till next time...
God's love and blessings

I'm back!

I've been pretty busy around here with all the usual stuff of being a wife, mom and home school teacher, so I haven't been very good at keeping this blog up to date. I have had several requests lately for a place for people to see my crafts, and especially my cakes, so I decided to try and get on here more often and post updates.

I will start with cakes, lots and lots of cakes! The last 2 weeks I finished 12 cakes, most of which were for graduations. This first one was the first time I've tried working with chocolate clay. It was a lot easier than I thought and came out quite well.

Any Portal fans out there will recognize this cake. The sign next to the cake was drawn with food "chalk" on rice paper to represent a scene from the game.

These next three pictures were from a set of cakes done to honor 4 young men. Each of the single "books" represented one young man and his particular interests, and the center stack of "books" was to represent their schooling in general. Sorry for the poor lighting. I took the picture on site.

I made the metronome, mouse, and camera from Rice Krispie Treats. The calculator, pencil, film, and clapper (I have no idea what that is really called) out of marshmallow fondant. The notecard is made from edible rice paper.

I learned a lot from these cakes. I don't think I will ever try to cover a cake as large as the history book with fondant again. I learned that it's a good idea to crush the Rice Krispies a bit before making the treats so the surface is not so bumpy to cover. I also played with some new flavors of cake and fillings. YUM!

These next ones are for another Open House. I did three sheet cakes with this design and one with the dune buggy. The caps on the sheet cakes were made from Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and Ghirardelli squares, and the diplomas are fondant.

The dune buggy was also made from Rice Krispie Treats covered in fondant. It was made to look like the dune buggy the graduate and his father built together.

I'm glad that these are all finished and pray that they were a blessing to the recipients. I get to do a Dr. Seuss cake this week, and I have a baby shower and a wedding cake to do at the end of the month so I'm sure I will be posting more cake pictures later.

Till then...God's love and blessings!

PS. If you click on a picture, you can see the details much better.