101 Crafts to Make #67 - Cake Decorated With Regular Icing - Birthday Cake!

I am back on the 101 Crafts to Make to do list.

Today's post is about my attempt at making a multi-layer cake decorated with regular icing NOT fondant.

Since my dad's birthday was this month and I was going to be out of camp I decided to make a cake for him. 

Thankfully he is not too judgmental when thinks don't look their prettiest. :)

I wanted to make a triple decker cake, square/rectangularish in shape.

This was my first attempt at such a cake and I am confident that I learned a few things which will make my next cake look a heck of a lot better.

I baked two 9X13 inch cakes and two 9X9 inch cakes using a white cake recipe. Yes that is right - I made all of the cake from scratch.

The first batch of icing I made myself too, but I purchased some extra icing as well as a tube of blue gel and a tube of yellow icing. The yellow icing was less than spectacular. The tube did not come with a tip and the icing was really firm. It was very difficult to maneuver - I would not buy it again.

The white icing did not cover as well as I would have liked it to. You can see some dark areas where the cake shows through. Perhaps if I had a bit more time I could have left the icing sit overnight and then done a second layer to cover more evenly. Perhaps using a coloured icing would have alleviated this problem as well.

I cut out a bunch of stars and glued them to skewers which gave the cake a festive look. They really contributed to it not looking like a flop! They were also a really easy and fun way to spice up the look without spending a lot of extra time and money. 

Overall the cake turned out nice. I think that cake decorating is definitely a skill and takes a lot of time to master. Hopefully my next cake will be even better than this one!

PS. It tastes super phenomenal - the most important part about a cake. 

Ciao, 

I ♥ Your Blog Award!

I am quite excited to announce that I was awarded the " I ♥ Your Blog Award" by Violetta of Violet Elephant. I am super happy as this was my first blog award ever! She actually posted about me on her blog quite a while ago but since I haven't been around in a long time I didn't actually realize that it had happened. My bad!

The rules are pretty simple: I need to post the award on my blog, link back to the person who gave it to me (check out her blog folks) and pass the award on to 15 other people. Please please follow the rules when adding the "I ♥ Your Blog Award!" button to your blog and pass on the love.

And now for the blogs that I ♥ :

(these are not necessarily in any particular order except that my Mum is #1)

1~ Expression Express by Tracy Krauss

2~ ScrapArt by Pris

3~Gabrielle's Konga Baeren

4~The Sewing Dork

5~Sew Ono

6~Style Hurricane

7~Love Maegan

8~MissChievous

9~Effortless Anthropologie

10~Get Your Craft On

11~Somewhat Simple

12~Modish

13~Made

14~Lex at My Mama Made It

15~Happy Together

Spread the love people and have a look at the wonderful blogs listed above!

Ciao,

Crochet Tie Organizer

Hello all!

So today I am showing you how I took a horrible ugly wire hanger and turned it into a super functional tie organizer for the closet.

You see - I have a problem (as I am sure you can tell from the post about my closet) I love clothing. I also have a lot of it. So it stands to reason that I have many many things which need to fit into a small space (yes I have been reorganizing and trying to declutter my space). I decided that since Aren didn't really have a place to store his ties, and I didn't have a place either, why not store them together?

The result was this crocheted tie organizer.

Plain Ugly Wire Hanger

The Magic - Black wool and a crochet hook.

I began at the bottom and crocheted my way around the entire hanger.

Once I had finished crocheting all the way around the hanger I needed to make loops in which the ties could hang. I divided the hanger up very roughly in my mind and decided that 12 loops across would be perfect. Using a chain stitch I made the crocheted the loops, connecting them to the hanger once each was finished.

Voila! A finished organizer to help me utilize the space in my closet better.

If Aren or I ever get any more ties (which inevitably we will) I will need to make another organizer as this one is now full! Fun and easy to make and it sure freed up some space in my dresser drawer.

Hope you all enjoyed this project!

Ciao,

Pudding From Scratch

Isn't it amazing how different things are nowadays? Small things like instant chocolate pudding. I have a cookbook that I purchased at a thrift store or garage sale (I don't remember where) with a recipe for chocolate pudding. I am sure that most people my age grew up going to the grocery store and buying (or not buying depending on your parents) JELL-O chocolate pudding. It isn't inconceivable that pudding can be made from scratch at home but it sure would be a stretch for a lot of people. I wonder how many mothers in this day and age would send their children to school with pudding if they had to make it from scratch?

Naturally I made some pudding of my own to see how difficult it really is. Surprisingly easy AND delicious. It has no weird "homemade-y" taste and is just as good if not better than store bought. Not that we ever really bought pudding anyways....

Aren certainly enjoyed it.

If you have any fun suggestions for normally store bought things that I could try to make at home let me know! I always like a good challenge.

Ciao,

101 Crafts to Make = Sewn Coasters #70

I have been away for far too long and for that I apologize! Things have been super busy this holiday season - I got a promotion and had the inlaws down for Christmas. Busy Busy!
I thought I would start out my year on the blog with one of my 101 Crafts to Make - since there are still so many to go before the year is up.... enjoy!
Project #70 on my list of Crafts to Make are Sewn Coasters.

I made these coasters using a fun missoni-esque fabric that I picked up a few years ago. They are three layers - batting sandwiched between two layers of fabric. Sewn together, turned inside out and then topstitched all the way around. Pretty cute if I do say so myself!!

Ciao for now!

101 Crafts to Make = Sewing Machine Cover #86

It has been a long time since I posted one of my 101 Crafts to Make. I haven't been slacking off in the crafting department, just in the posting department.

Here is the Sewing Machine Cover that I made for my Singer. I used to have the plastic cover that it came with but somehow lost it over the years. Needless to say this one is 10x more stylin than the plastic one ever was!

I had this cute fabric lying around and finally knew what to use it for. You will need to measure your machine (height, width and length) and then add for seam allowances. The top edge is on the fold and the sides I serged together.

Divide the width of your machine + 1 inch in two. My machine was 4 inches in width so 4 + 1 / 2 = 2.5.

Now cut out a square from the corner using that measurement, mine was 2.5 by 2.5.

Repeat this for the other corner. Now you will need to sew these edges together.

Fold the fabric in half so the side seam matches with the fold line. Sew across. Now you can topstitch the side seams down (of you want). I serged the bottom edge of my cover and then hemmed it up neatly.

The Finished Sewing Machine Cover!

I love the way this turned out and it was super super easy to make!

Hallowe'en 2010 - Starcraft Nova Costume

Hey everyone!

Last time out I was consumed with making my Hallowe'en costume from scratch. I hope you will enjoy these pictures! WARNING: This will be a long post as there are a lot of pictures. : )

I found out that I would be out for Hallowe'en only two weeks before the date, so I didn't have a lot of time to construct my costume. I decided that I wanted to go as Nova (Ghost) from Starcraft (a computer game).Tthe costume ended up being a lot more work than I thought it was going to be.

First I have a whole bunch of photos of the finished costume. I borrowed Brendon's Air Soft gun for the pictures but didn't take it out with us as it looks too much like a real gun.

In this one you can see a lot of the lights that we incorporated into it.

Aren told me I wasn't supposed to smile because people with guns don't smile. I'm not very good at looking serious for pictures.

Now on to the construction phase of the costume:

What a huge mess!!

This is my original sketch for the bodice armour. I decided afterwards that having the shoulder pads point downwards was going to be much too restrictive.

These are front and back flat sketches for the one piece. All of the style lines are included, although modifications were made in the final garment.

I drafted a pattern for the bodysuit and initially I was going to make it all out of PVC. Well that turned out to be a horrible idea as it pulled and bunched all over the place. Luckily I had some bamboo stretch fabric at home that I could use. I drafted the pattern and made two different prototypes before I finally made the suit itself. All of the piping is black PVC, tricky to sew!

I constructed the body armour with PVC, tape, glue, papermache and LOTS of time. It took me forever to get it properly formed.

Nova's suit lights up so of course I had to have LED's and EL wire in it. The store only had 6 blue LED's though so I am hoping to work on the costume more and add more lighting to it.

Yes folks, ALL of the piping was hand made by moi.

Piping and sewing part of the bodice.

Piped in the middle and piped around the outside. PVC is sticky when it sews so I had to buy a roller foot.

Inside of the outfit.

Outside of the outfit.

The foam served as pattern pieces for the PVC as well as gave the bodice extra shape. There were battery packs hidden inside here and the backpack as well.

While We Were Out:

Me with Master Chief. You can see the lights better in the dark.

Aren and I. He didn't have as much time as I did to make his costume but he was a Nintendo controller and SUPER proud of it. He made the whole thing on Saturday before we went out. He said he is going to do some more work on it and make sides and stuff too. It was super sweet either way!

Did I mention he was Super proud of being a Nintendo controller? This is us with two of our friends.

I hope you enjoyed these pictures of our costumes.

As I said earlier, I plan on putting more lights on mine and reworking some elements. I had no idea it would be quite as much work as it turned out to be and would have liked a bit more time on some parts.

Until next time,