Auntie Birthday

A nice quick birthday card I made for my partners Aunties birthday. 

The stamp came from a papercraft magazine (I can't remember which one) as did the background paper. The magazine was £4.99 and the stamps (after looking around shopping) are actually worth £12 so personally I think it was a BARGAIN! =) I love a bargain!

Mum's Tiered Birthday Cake

I decided to try and do a tiered birthday cake for my Mum this year rather than a normal single layered. I thought a tiered would be best as my mum (apparently) was the only one who likes carrot cake so I did a 4 inch on for her, my sister and I are on a diet so I did a 6 inch low fat ginger cake for us and everyone else eats chocolate so I did an 8 inch chocolate cake. I have decided I need more than one day to do a tiered cake as I only finished the cake 10 minutes before my mum actually turned up. Nothing like cutting it close!!!
I used my new Square Cake Pan from Lakeland and I have to say I LOVE it sooooooo much. I was recommended this cake pan by @nixabix on her blog Nom! The Indulgent Baking Blog and I am so grateful to her for it. I am thinking of getting more dividers those.
There isn't really much more to say so here is the pictures.

Just a quick note. I did the Happy Birthday on the Cricut Cake =) I do love that machine. It is a lovely BEAUTIFUL machine!!! I'll get a picture and post it one day =)

Bro-in-law Cake

My future bro-in-laws birthday rolled round in January and as I had done a cake for his sisters birthday, it was only fair that I did him one.

I did a plain sponge cake decorate with fondant icing. He loves pandas so I made 2 pandas for the top. I also added a model made to look like him leaning on pillows with an xbox at his feet. As he is a huge Harry Potter fan his cake wouldn't be complete without a small gesture towards HP so I created a wizards hat and placed this at his feet.

The Happy Birthday and border were cut out using the Cricut Cake Mini.

The cake was greatly appreciated and seemed to go down well although, to me, it wasn't the best as it was very narrow. It didn't seem to raise much. I think I need to get a new pot of baking powder as I've had it for quite a while and the potency (apparently) can deteriorate.

Grandma Birthday Cake

I received a phone call from my mum about a week before my Grandmas birthday saying she had bought herself a Giant Cupcake Mould and decided she wanted to make one for my Grandmas birthday. We made a lovely chocolate sponge which we filled the centre with chopped fresh pineapple. I thought it was a lovely idea but have decided for future cakes the pineapple needs to be a bit smaller and more of it.

The topping was plain buttercream with fondant icing decorations cut out using the Cricut Cake Mini.

The cake went down well so all was good. =)

Eeyore b'day cake

I was asked by a friend to make a cake for her mum for her birthday. She asked me if I could do a Victoria Sponge with a bit of decoration.

Was simple when she told me that she loved Eeyore. To make the Eeyore I used fondant icing and followed instructions for a 'bear'  and just changed it slightly to make the Eeyore. Both her and her mum loved it so I was very happy.

Dad-in-law and Bro-in-law

So my Future brother-in-law (FBIL) and future dad-in-law (FDIL) both have their birthdays in January so I had 2 cards to make in 1 month. Not such a hard task any more. That is when your printer wants to work!

Now for my FBIL I have done the same card as I did for my Harry Potter mad friend only, he loves Harry Potter more than her. He is an avid collector of all the replica wands and has bought a lot of them. Last I heard he had bought another 4 for his birthday! Due to this it only seems right to do the same card. Needless to say he loved it and prob won't ever throw it away (Yay me)

Now for my FDIL it was just as simple. His fav race car of all time is the John Player Special. I have to admit it is a BEAUTIFUL car. All I did for this find a nice picture of the JPS, printed it out, cut around it, stuck it to gold mirri card, cut around that and stuck it on using foam pads. Then I just folded an a4 black card in half stuck it on and stuck some 'Happy Birthday' peel offs on and some gold card candy in the corners.
A simple yet effective card!

Undesirable No.1

On thing to mention about this girl. She crazy, funny, evil and LOVES Harry Potter so what better Birthday Card to do her than the Undesirable No.1 poster from the 6th film with her name and her picture.

This was pretty simple to do as Warner Brothers have a website where you can download a copy of the poster with your friends details on it.

All I had to do was print it out and stick it together however, I used a different picture and raised the poster like a frame.

She thought it was brilliant but now I need to up my game with her next one lolz.

Dax bday cake

This post is a long time coming. It was my friends birthday in November so I decided to make her a cake as she does particularly enjoy them.
It was a simple Almond sponge cake as I was informed that she LOVES almond. All the decorations are made by me out of fondant icing.
She is a HUGE star trek fan so made a model of her in a star trek skant. She also love sewing (she made me and my friends uniforms) so I had her leaning against ribbon spools and sitting next to buttons.

I used Wilton 'Make any message' letterpress set to do the Happy Birthday then used a No. 2 Wilton writing nozzle to ice with royal icing.

She absolutely loved the cake so don't mind too much that I almost destroyed the decorations when they wouldn't stand up lolz

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!

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.

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 =)

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! =)

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 =)

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.