Look Closely

After a long hiatus on blogger, I'm back with LOTS of projects and photos! I've been "catching up" -- ha ha, like that's possible -- and I'm currently scrapping 2011 photos. However, after cleaning up my photo folders on my computer, I discovered hundreds of missing photos from the second half of 2010, so I guess I'm not as far along as I thought!Here's my most recent page. It's a single page, with one photo, which I usually try to avoid. I'm a double page kind of scrapper, and I love photos, but in this case I think the story was told best with just the one pic.Here's Teagan at 3, with a bee caught in the house. If you "look closely", you can actually see the bee in flight. Pretty cool!





Supplies:Paper: K&Company BW CelesteDie
cuts:
Title and file folders: Cricut, Graphically Speaking
Bee: Cricut, Art Nouveau
Embossing Folder: Tim Holtz, Honeycomb
Ink: Ingvild Bolme Chalk Fluid Edger, Old RoadThanks for visiting!

Cricut Cake Princess castle cake!

My younger daughter is turning four, and loves princesses and Disney, so for her cake this year I wanted to make something special. It's her first "big girl" party with her own friends coming, so she was pretty excited! I used my Cricut Cake machine: a great purchase, but I have some pretty important tips for new users. Hope they help, since it's much different than cutting paper!

First, here's the finished cake. It is a vanilla flavoured cake with buttercream filling and icing. It's pretty smooth on the outside, and might look like fondant covered, but the only fondant is the pink/purple castle and words.



It's a tall cake, about 6" high.




My big helper (behind) and the birthday girl (in front)



The wire wiggly thingies were added on location. Looked really cute and finishing, but they don't travel well and can move around too much. Blowing out the candles:




The inside (which was yummy, even if the colours are horrifically neon!)



So, here are my tips and recipes that I've found are most successful:

General cake decorating tips:

Start early!

The cake won't go stale, and the cake itself needs time to "settle" if you're making a stacked cake! If you need it for Saturday I follow this schedule:
Wednesday: Bake cake, allow to cool. Level, fill and crumb coat. Set aside (in fridge if filling is perishable).
Thursday: Make fondant. Wrap up tightly and set aside. Apply top layer of buttercream to sides and top. Smooth well.
Friday: Decorate with fondant. Cover with plastic wrap, and you're ready for tomorrow!

Level your cake

Please, I beg you: Level it with a big long serrated bread knife. Cut off the dome on top and have a nice snack, or feed it to the kids!
If you don't level each layer, you may not notice it on the bottom layers, but the top ones will be clearly domed and it's next to impossible to fix it with filling:

Use gel food colouring, not the grocery store liquid stuff

Believe me, it's worth it. Don't use much: this whole cake was tinted with under 1 teaspoon of total colour! The cakes used 1/4 tsp of each Violet or Rose Wilton gel colour, and the fondant about the same. I use a knife tip and just dip it out. You don't need much (except for black or red, but that's a different blog post :-) It's available many places, including Walmart and Michaels.

Smooth your buttercream

I use an off-center spreading palette, and dip it in hot water. This prevent too much sticking, and melts it just a little to get a nice finish. Clean off and dip often!

Marshmallow Fondant:

Here's the recipe I use. This made enough fondant to do this cake with about 1/5 of it leftover.


A small amount of Crisco shortening(not margarine nor butter)
8 oz marshmallows
15 oz icing sugar (powdered sugar)
1 to 2 tablespoons water

Rub a glass bowl with the shortening to coat. Add marshmallows and water. Melt in microwave, heating for 30 seconds, then stirring, and repeat until they are melted.

Rub a mixing bowl or the bowl of a bread machine bowl with more shortening. Dump in melted marshmallows and add icing sugar. Mix with a bread hook or paddle. Allow to kneed, at least 5 minutes. You're looking for a ball of fondant that has everything included, no dry bits, but not sticking to the sides of the bowl. If it's sticky, add a small amount of icing sugar, a tablespoon at a time. If there's dry material still, add water, drop by drop. This is the trickiest part: You want the fondant to be leaving the sides of the bowl, just past the sticky point, but not in any way dry. It takes practice. Start early!

Smear a piece of plastic wrap with shortening, and wrap up the fondant tightly. Wrap in another piece of plastic wrap, then put in a baggie. Set aside for at least a day.

To tint: Wearing clean plastic gloves, wse gel colors and add a little bit of color (1/4 tsp at most) to a small ball of gel. Kneed until evenly distributed. Return the tinted ball to the remainder, then kneed until completely added and coloured. Gel colors tend to develop over time, so the colour might enhance over the next day. You don't need too much color for this step!

MMF Tips:

Start early!

Use a dough hook or your bread machine, lid left open so it doesn't heat

Weigh your measurements

Baking is tricky and measuring by cups is highly inaccurate. It's best to scale your measurements if possible. My kitchen scale was fairly inexpensive, and is my most used baking tool!

Cricut Cake Tips:

Did I mention this one already?

Start early!

Cricut cake is tricky at first, until you get the feel of your machine and how to cut best. I live in a VERY dry environment, so I think this helps me with fondant, but make sure you have lots and lots of time to work with your cake.

Roll out you fondant thinly and evenly

I can just start to make out the circle lines on my mat with my fondant. That's my best thickness for fondant. Thinner and it's too hard to hold it's shape when taking off the mat, thicker and it takes multiple passes to cut.

Freeze it!

After rolling out, I freeze my mat with fondant on it, for about 20 minutes. I've left it for up to 5 hours, and it was fine as well.

Use multiple mats

I had three mats going with this design, so I could be cutting while the other two were freezing.

Test your design on paper, if you can

I have a cricut expression as well, so I precut my intended designs on it with paper first, then tried to up against my cake to ensure a good fit. It makes tweaking measurements a little easier and faster.

Getting stuff off the mat and onto the cake

First, "weed" the cut. This means to take off all the excess fondant from the design, including inside the piece. Save this fondant, you can reroll and reuse. Don't try to lift the piece with a knife or spatulla, you could bend it. Instead, flip the mat over onto a piece of wax paper. Bend the mat upwards, and use the tip of a knife or thin metal spatula to start the fondant peeling off on the wax paper. The fondant should be touching the wax paper as you continue to bend the mat backwards. You can give it some help with the spatula, but it should start to peel off all on it's own. You'll be left with the fondant perfectly shaped, but upside down on the wax paper (that's good!). Brush the back of it lightly with plain water, then attach it to the cake. Peel off the wax paper, and you're done!

Buttercream Recipe:

3.6 oz shortening
4 oz margarine
2 tablespoons milk or cream
16 oz icing sugar (powdered sugar)

Cream together shortening and margaring in a large mixing bowl. Add sugar slowly until all incorporated. Add milk, then beat thoroughly until light and fluffy.
If too stiff, add milk drop by drop until easier to use; if too thin/soft, add sugar by the tablespoon. Environmental conditions will impact the siffness/softness of your buttercream, so adjust to suit your kitchen. Keep icing covered with plastic wrap so it doesn't dry out when not in use.

Okay, that's all my tips and recipes for today. Hope that help you get more use out of your cake. It's so worth learning how to use it!!

Cupcake!

This week's challenge at My Sheri Crafts is a recipe, something I've never done before. Use:
1 Button
2 Designer Papers
3 Flowers

So, I made a LO to commemorate my littlest DD's first experience with cupcakes! She was, and continues to be, a little girl who doesn't enjoy unusual textures on her hands, so she kept her hands well out of the way and devoured this chocolate yummy by sticking out her tongue and leaning forward. What a great idea, I think I might try it next year on my birthday! Not sure how many people would want to share my cake after I did it, though!






Supplies:
1 brown button
2 papers: K&Co Tim Coffey Tuscan Sunflowers
3 flowers: by prima
trim ribbon: K&Co BW Flora & Fauna Vellum Adhesive borders
cuts: frame is from Paper Lace by Cricut; title font: Adore
tags: unknown brand, sprayed with Glimmer Mist Sunflower

Donating our Hair -- not SB related (yet!)

My DDs and I got our hair cut and are donating to Locks of Love, an organization that makes custom wigs for children. I wanted to share my pics with you! I can't wait to scrap these!
Befores:
Hannah (aged 8)


me:


Teagan (aged 3 1/2)


Afters:
11.5 inches:


11 inches:


(Mine was 20 inches)


"THE HAIR!"


Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions about this worthy organization! While we do not personally have a family member or friend who is in need, there are many children who are, and I am so proud that my girls would do this. They do this in honour of my mother who died of cancer when Hannah was 2 and before Teagan was born.

ps. Happy Mother's Day :-)

Snow Much Drama!

This is from DD#2's first encounter with snow:





Supplies:
Paper: Me & My Big Ideas "Sugarplum"
Cricut Cuts: Wall Decor and More, Gypsy Wanderings, Gypsy Font and Cuttin' Up
Cricut markers
White Snowflake brads

My Sheri Crafts -- Get Well Soon!

How appropriate! My littlest helper, "Wiggles", is almost three and on Friday night became quite ill. She vomited all over her daddy and again on me. Poor little one. As I write this, she's asleep on the floor, lying on a towel, beside me. She doesn't want to move, just stay close by.

Funny enough, our challenge on My Sheri Crafts this week is "Get Well Soon" and I made this card:





I like the cuts, from Just Because cricut cartridge, but I LOVE the ribbon detail. It was inspired by the paper weaving our kids do in school, but is a nice touch I think!

Make sure you enter your card (or other craft) in My Sheri Crafts blog this week!

Have a great weekend, and safe Halloween!

Baby you can Drive my Car!

Oh Baby! Was this one ever fun to do! I scraplifted this design from summer 2010 Scrapbooking and Beyond, but my pic is from 2008 when Wiggles was 9 months old (wow, what a healthy sized baby! LOL) I rarely fussy-cut photos, but this one begged for this treatment!



Paper: NRN Designs and solid cardstock
Title: "Baby" from Gypsy Wanderings (cricut), "car" from Nursery Rhymes, "you can drive my" are stickers
Tree: Zooballo; Sun: Gypsy Wanderings accented with Straw distress Stickles