Pixel project

I was contacted by The Pixel Project: Paint it Purple. I was asked to make some cupcakes to place in their gallery for Awareness of Violence Against Women. I just decided the best recipe would be my normal cupcake recipe with purple colourant added into half the mixture.

These were fun to make and decorate, although they still have gone up on the Pixel Project website (which I'm slightly miffed about as I did they some time ago!)

I also got to use my new cupcake stand to photograph them =)

Brother Birthday Card

My brothers birthday was beginning November. Male cards are very hard to do so I was happy when I managed to find a car the was gold with the engine on display!

This is a Kanban foiled topper which I always think look very classy! I've matted and layered it with black card and gold mirri card. The topper is on wobbles so it gave the card a bit of movement.

Fairy Castle

My fiancée's sister turned 13 in August. 3 weeks after her birthday we finally got around visiting her. I had made her brother a cake for his birthday so I thought, I need to do one for her as well. She LOVES disney so I thought I would do her a princess castle cake.

It was done using Ann Pickards technique (Fantasy Castle Project). I only came across a few problems and I know how to fix them (This fantastic little thing called pastillage)

The cake was a chocolate cake with chocolate butter icing. It was RATHER yummy! =) She loved the idea of the castle which was a bonus as well!

2 Cakes 1 Week

So this was a very busy week. I had a thank you cake and a birthday cake to make in one week not to mention working! This was very challenging but great fun!

Firstly is the thank you cake. Not often you see a thank you cake but one of my friends was making uniforms for our entire crew (Fortitude) within 10 weeks. It was stressing her out and we were all so thankful for her doing them. She is FANTASTIC at making anything and she loves my cakes so it was .... fate.

She love coffee and walnut cake and I was surprised to find that one of my baked and delicious magazines (issue 5) had a coffee and walnut cake recipe. I was so happy I got down to making it straight away. The crumb coating and centre of the cake is coffee buttercream which smelt LOVELY.

As for the decoration, my friend is a HUGE star trek fan. Her husband is a Klingon and she is a Trill (surprisingly she also looks like Jadzia Dax) so it was only fitting that on the cake I did the klingon symbol and  trill spots. She absolutely LOVED it and said it tasted amazing (as I don't like coffee I didn't actually try it).

The second cake was for one of my best friends birthday. It (unfortunately) didn't turn out looking like I wanted to. This girl is amazing and has the most amazing .... assets so I just HAD to do a boob cake to celebrate the amazingness of hers.

The cake was just a lemon sponge it was BEAUTIFUL and the centre and topping was lemon butter icing (it's a good job everyone likes butter icing!) The base was iced with fondant coloured with pink sugarflair paste (possibly wilton food colouring can't remember hehe). On the top was supposed to be a nipple tassel made with fondant. It was very pretty and everyone really enjoyed tucking into it.

 My friends little boy saw both these cakes and (while I was unveiling and taking photos) he got very upset that no one was serving or cutting the cakes. Bless him!

Simple Anniversary

So it's taken me a while to post a few things. Just haven't really been up for or haven't had the time!

September was my parents anniversary and I had COMPLETELY forgotten about it (doi!) so I needed to make on and quick! This care was so simple to make it was made within a lunch break! 

The background on the card was stamped using Martha Stewart's Around the Edge stamp kit. I love this kit. It is so simple to use although it's not particularly cheap to buy!

The embellishments were just some embellishments that I picked up from Hobbycraft in the sale last year. I think they cost me around 20p and were a good find and only wish I had picked up more. They were raised off the service to give the card a bit of dimension.

2nd Birthdays

So I was invited to my nephews 2nd birthday party which he was sharing with his little "girlfriend" who was also 2. Now they are both amazing kids and love them both 'cause they are so gorgeous so I had to make them some extra special cards.

My nephew is currently OBSESSED with diggers everything thing is digger digger digger, so naturally I had to do a digger card and who better that Scoop from Bob the Builder. This card was simple. I printed a black and white picture of Scoop from the internet onto super soft paper from My Craft Studio (perfect if you want a nice looking picture!). I then coloured it in using whispers pens. As lovely as these pens are, I would have preferred to use Promarkers as they don't smudge into the other inks. (Slight problem with black smudging with yellow although this made Scoop look mucky which worked!). I then mounted this on some home made 'wobble' springs (To make your own watch this video). The sentiment was done using a speech bubble from google images and the My Craft Studio program to insert the writing perfectly into it. The writing was the same colour as Scoop however my printer is not fantastic at printing colours.

According to my sister he loved the card so much that he pulled scoop off of it and carried it around the house with him =) Always an amazing feeling when you get told something like that! =)

Now Isabelle was a little more difficult to do as I'm not really sure what she is into so I went for a nice safe girly pink princess. I used a nice simple Jolly Nation (used to be Paper Nation) decoupage of a nice pink princess. I just cut it out and layered it up. It was very simple but very pink. The peel offs were see through so they showed the colour of the card through them however, I kinda wish I hadn't used them but had just used plain silver ones but hayho hindsight is a wonderfull thing. Lolz.

As far as I know she like it as I never actually saw her open it.

Graduation Invite

So my graduation was 2 weeks ago which was brilliant!!!!
(A small picture to celebrate)

Before the event I had bought my grandparents tickets for the graduation and thought I should make it a proper invite so made an invitation for them.

I thought it turned out pretty well. I used the everyday paper dolls cartridge in a 'Cricut' machine to create the graduation doll. The border has been created using Martha Stewart's corner and border stamps. They are amazing and really suggest to any crafter to buy a set! The ink used is a brilliance ink pad although I can't remember the colour of it other than red hehe.

Orange Drizzle Loaf

I decided to make my sister a birthday cake. I was going to make a Lemon Drizzle Loaf but found this recipe and thought she would enjoy it more! This tasted like a jaffa cake! I got the recipe off BBCs Good Food website so thought i'd share it with you all.

Ingredients

Cake

140g Butter, softened

200g Caster sugar

3 Large eggs

6 tbsp Milk

200g Self-raising flour

1 1/2 tsp Baking powder

Finely grated zest of 1 large orange

Sauce

3 tbsp orange juice

50g caster sugar

50g dark chocolate

Method

1. Heat oven to 180/160 fan/gas 4. Butter and line a loaf tin. Mix together the all the cake ingredients and beat together until light and fluffy.
2. Spoon mixture into tin and bake for 30-40 mins until golden brown and firm to touch.
3. Meanwhile, heat the orange juice and melt the sugar together. Once cake is cooked, pierce top with skewer several times and pour orange mixture over the top.
4. Leave in tin to cool then remove and place on cooling rack to cool completely.
5. Once cooled, melt chocolate in microwave and drizzle over top of cake. Leave to set.
6. Cut and enjoy =)

Mars Bar Rice Crispie CakesMars

These are possibly THE MOST delicious snack IN THE WORLD. And they are so simple to make!!!! I love them as do my family and my partner! And now I am going to share the recipe with you!

Ingredients

3oz Butter

3 Mars Bars

3oz Rice Crispies

200g Milk Choc

Method

1. Melt the butter and mars bars in the microwave (this will still be slightly lumpy as the centre of the mars bars doesn't melt particularly well)
2. Mix in the rice crispies
3. Place in a rectangular dish and place in fridge to cool
4. Meanwhile, melt the chocolate in the microwave.
5. Once cooled pour the melted chocolate over the rice crispies.
6. Place back in the fridge and cool till chocolate is hard
7. Cut and enjoy!!!!

Choccie Brownies

There is only one word for these. AMAZING!!!!

I only have one person to that for these and that is Nicola Lombardi (Nom! The Baking Blog). I used the recipe she placed on her blog and they came out perfectly.

They were wonderfully chewy, just how I like my brownies, and have lasted longer than most things I've made before!

Even my picky partner likes them and that's saying something!!!!!!!!!

Sister's Birthday Paper

It is my sisters birthday on Tuesday. So I had to make her a girly birthday card. She likes girly thing =) I chose a nice simple card using a kit I bought from QVC called Lipstick Divas. I love this kit as its so simple to use and the effects are amazing =) 

Sent using BlackBerry® from Orange

Grandad-in-laws birthday

It was the grandad-in-laws birthday not long before the mum-in-laws so was asked to make a card for him. Now I find making cards for men is difficult. For Grandads I find it even harder. Luckily I was inspired the when I went to bed about how I could make a card for him.

He used to work for Cadburys many years ago and has always loved Cadbury chocolate so I thought it was only fitting to make a Cadbury card however, finding a kit or any toppers that are Cadbury is near impossible so I had to a little hunting and pure computer crafting.

I went to trusty Google images and search for Old Cadbury Chocolate. I came up with a few images but no many so I thought I'd venture to the Cadbury site and low and behold they have a section devoted to old chocolate. I saved many of the images that I found on they page and opened up a program called My Craft Studio. Now, this program is fantastic for making cards to send online to people if say you've forgotten it was their birthday or you don't have a normal postal address or they live abroad. It is also fantastic for creating your own backgrounds and toppers.

I loaded all the images onto an A5 sized background and arranged them so there was no white background visable and so you could see every chocolate bar. I then printed this on Super Smooth paper (fantastic for a lovely finish to a card).

For the topper I went back to Google images and found an old Cadbury advert. I them mounted this on some matt silver background and raised it off centre. The tag was a old dairy milk that I copied the colour from and hit the dairy milk writing and placed Happy Birthday Grandad in the colour or the original writing. This was a cool little effect and the card was loved by all and I was told was very fitting for him.

Mum-in-law's Birthday

First of August was my "mum-in-laws" (not really just easier) birthday. I normally do her something along the lines of Disney or Winnie the Pooh however, I think getting a card like that every year (no matter how different) can get a bit boring so I opted for Peter Rabbit instead.

For all the toppers and background papers I used a Crafters Companion CD. (Beatrix Potter CD) It's so simple to use all you do is choose the design you want print the out and stick them together. I swear by them and think they are an essential piece in any crafters box! . My green cardstock came from the Works when they used to do their fit as much card into a folder as you can for £2.99. I got some lovely cardstock doing that but now they've stopped it and I'm running out =(. The gold mirricard came from create and craft. (Gold and Silver Mirricard) This is essential for any crafter as you do use a lot of it in crafting! The gems I just found (you can find them in any craft shop) and the ribbon can from a Kanban set but I can't remember which!

Mums Birthday Card

It was my mummy's birthday this month so I decided make a nice simple card for her. I've used a QVC kit called Kanban Reflections (I think I will have to double check it). All the pieces were in the kit so made it nice and easy to put together and (as with all Kanban kits) came with an idea sheet to make that little bit easier.

A simple girly card but I feel very effective!

Mummy's Birthday Cake

After making my Grandad a Winnie the Pooh cake for his birthday, my Mother wanted one for her birthday but made with fondant icing rather than butter icing. This was surprisingly easier than I thought it was going to be and turned out pretty well. I even managed to get the correct colours.

I actually took stage by stage photos as I was rather please with how 'spongey' the sponge looked. I have never had one come out so well!

This was just made with my general sponge recipe that I use for Wilton tins and Giant Cupcakes. I was given the recipe by a good friend who LOVES baking and it has never steered me wrong!!

To get the shape of Pooh Bears separate pieces I pressed the separate colours into the different part of the tins.

The yellowy-orange for Pooh Bear was made using Wilton food colourings. A bit of Wilton icing colour Orange and a little bit of Wilton icing colour Lemon Yellow. They worked really well and came out with the perfect colour for Pooh Bear.

The yellow of the hunny was just Wilton icing colour Lemon Yellow and the centre of the foot was just Wilton icing colour Orange.

Pooh Bears top was coloured with Wilton icing colour Red Red. It came out in the icing quite pale and thought the colour was going to be wrong for him but it turned out REALLY well!!! I am tempted to buy Wilton icing colour Christmas Red and try that another time!

The hunny pot was a ready to use icing called Regal Ice Chocolate flavoured. I have found it difficult before to make brown and couldn't get any Wilton icing colour to make my own so bought so ready. Made life a little easier =)

I placed plain white fondant icing around the outside of the base of the cake so it was all covered.
The black outline was just a bit of icing coloured with Silver Spoon black icing colour. This was quite fiddly to  do but worked really well.

The writing on the hunny pot was a bit of 'normal' icing as I call it. Just a bit of icing sugar, water and black food colouring. I made it quite thick so I could pipe it through a piping bag!

Mum absolutely loves it and thinks it tastes amazing. I'm so pleased that it worked out better than my Grandads' cake and even managed to get a 'Well done. It tastes really nice' off my brother! =)

Not sure what my next project will be but I can see it being a test for my Dads' birthday cake! =)

Raspberry Victoria sponge

I can't remember who told me but I was told my Grandad liked raspberry Victoria sponge so I decided to make one for him. I also decided to put some raspberries on top just to make it a little bit special.

Look Freddy, Cupcakes!!!

I was watching TV and saw the Morrisons advert with Freddy Flintoff. This made me want to make cupcakes. They're just a simple fairy cake recipe with coloured buttercream icing and sprinkles.

I had fun making them and my other half had fun eating them!

Fathers Day

As we all know fathers day has just passed! I had to make 2 cards for this. One for my daddy and one for my partners daddy!

The one on the left was for my Daddy. It uses a war time set from QVC and Card Candy. The background card was from one of these 'fit as many sheets of cards in a folder as you can for £4' type thing in the works. Unfortunately the works no longer do this which is a shame as they had some LOVELY cardstock!
The one on the right was for my partners Daddy. It is a simple card using diecut images from Kanban Formula 1 sheet. The silver card stock is from Create and Craft and the black card stock was a cheap pack from hobbycraft! Again I have used card candy to finish it off.

Pooh Bear Cake

I asked my mother if she would like me to make a cake for my Grandads birthday. Silly question really. She's asked me to do a Winnie the Pooh Wilton cake. These are very time consuming but look amazing! My Grandad absolutely loved it!

I have decided that when it comes the the base icing I am only going to cover the sides as you lose the pattern and it makes it very difficult to ice! I did have a slight problem with the blue icing and black icing being too runny as well as the yellow and blue icing having a funny taste due to the amount of colourant that went into it to create the correct colour. His face went a little distorted as the icing was a bit runny but hay ho I'll get it eventually =)

Me to You Fondant Cakes

After the success of my Me to You cupcake I was asked to make cakes for a birthday bbq. I decided (as I had 3 cakes to make in one day) to make simple fondant decorated cakes as they are simple to replicate. The hardest part of the cake was the Me to You faces.

The bear on top of the white cake was from the Giant Cupcake which she likes so much she doesn't want to eat! All I did to mix it up a bit was reverse the colours (saved colouring more icing hehe)

Birthday Puppy Card

My grandads' birthday was beginning of this month so I threw together a card using Embossing folders, puppy stamp, spellbinders nestabilities die & peel offs.

Firstly, I got a backing paper from male Forever Friends paper set. I ran this through my cuttlebug in a Cuttlebug 'Bubbles' die. This was then stick to a plain piece of card stock.
Secondly, I stuck a 'Happy Birthday' peel off to a small strip of card this was also run through a Cuttlebug 'Bubbles' embossing folder.
To incorporate the sentiment into the rest of the card, I selected a small piece of card from the same card stock and ran it through the same embossing folder. I then used the oval Nestabilities largest to cut out and emboss the shape.
For the image, I stamped a puppy using Brilliance ink pads and coloured it in pencils to give the golden lab effect. This was then cut and embossed using the smaller nestabilitie oval.

Butterfly Birthday Card

Made a birthday card for a friend for her birthday. She loves pink, black and butterflies so I combined all these into a card for her!

It's a simple card to make using Black cardstock, pink cardstock, peel offs, card candy and guilding flakes. All together the effect has worked really well!

Me to You Cake!

My friend loves Me to You bears so I made a giant cupcake for her birthday with a me to you fondant bear on top.

The cake is a simple Victoria Sponge recipe. The base of the cupcake is covered by fondant icing coloured with pink food colouring. The writing is simple butter icing. The top of the cupcake is decorated with butter icing coloured with pink food colouring. The butterflies on the top as the same fondant as the base.

I am relatively impressed how the inside of this cake turned out as my previous cupcakes have never had that great an inside I feel.

I did make the bear myself! I personally think this isn't bad for a first attempt! =)

21st Card

Made a quick 21st birthday card for one of ma bessies for her bday tomorrow! Nice and simple using a set from QVC called Lipstick Divas and again Card Candy

She liked it and I think its very girly!!

Get Well Card

Had to make a quick get well card for my Grandad. I used a Daisy and Dandelion set which are fantastic for both beginners and experienced. They're made by Kanban and in my personal opinion, one of the best things to happen to crafting just because they are so so cute!

I have also used Card Candy from QVC. A must have for any crafter as it just adds that extra little bit to the card!

Turtle Cake

I have a boyfriend with the mental age of a 5 year old who wanted a turtle cake for his 23rd birthday. Well here it is.

I have to admit I'm pretty impressed with this cake myself as it was the first cake I ever made used a shaped Wilton tin! The cake recipe, again, wasn't fantastic but was enjoyed by all. I'm hoping once I have a better recipe for my giant cupcake I can also use it in the shaped Wilton tins! =)

First Birthday Cupcake

My first attempt at a giant cupcake. The icing isn't fantastic but I will get there! Need to practice a bit more.

It was for my partners brother for his 19th birthday. The recipe used for the cupcake wasn't that fantastic but they seemed to enjoy it so all is well that ends well!
I will hopefully be learning to 1) make better giant cupcakes and 2) ice a bit better! I'm hoping to start using fondant icing and do more extravagant cakes once I have finished at uni as I will have more time to learn =)

All Time Favourite

My partners family have fallen in love with my Victoria sponge Cake. Now everytime I see them they ask where their cake is haha. It's a simple recipe but it is so tasty!