Wine bottle Fondant cake!

I told you there was more cake coming!

It was my father in laws 85th. So, when my husband asked if I could make a cake 4 days before the dinner I got right on thinking about it. I decided because he was born and raised in Northern Italy and to this day, still bottles his own wine, I'd have to do the wine crate cake. I love fondant and the fact that you can make it look like wood, glass.. anything!

Yes, it can look like wood, as I demonstrate in this photo.. this is the cake base. I almost hated to put the cake on it.. it started as a two toned flat sheet of fondant that I drew the lines into and then painted with a darker brown, letting it settle in the grooves. Sort of like antiquing when your faux painting.

Next, the actual cake is made from three loaf pans cut and stacked to get the shape I wanted. Surrounded by more wood fondant and topped with white buttercream, I now have a crate.

This bottle was made with rice treat I cut in circles and stacked, adding a neck. I used silver pearl dust for the neck foil.

I cut the back of the bottle on an angle and inserted a wooden skewer from the top to keep the neck from drooping. The bottle is covered in black fondant, and then painted with a mix of white corn syrup and vodka tinted green.. the green shine catches the light and looks like real glass.. Crazy!

I made the label using an edible marker on white fondant.

The top is covered in white chocolate shavings to mimic packing.

Fondant grapes get a shine from syrup and vodka as well.. the wood base is only brushed with vodka and still shines like it's been polished.

I used a round piping tip to add faux nails in two different sizes.. the base nail is smaller than the crates.

The curly vines are fondant "snakes" wrapped around a dowel and allowed to dry for an hour.

Easy Peasy.

Sweet!

This cake was added to Lil Luna's Link party.

Princess Coaster Mini Album

Another girly album is completed, this one geared towards the Little Princess fans. I have a fondness for Disney and just love to work on Disney albums. I think I'll have to make one of these little coaster albums with a Disney boy theme, but at the moment I've started a Mickey altered journal/scrap/activity book that needs finishing too.

So many papers, so little time. :)

Again, I wanted to play with some charms I started making.. and I have been making most of my own embellishments these days as well. I had features on my Cricut that were not being used enough.. especially those end caps. Now I'm hooked on them and have been using them for page titles. 

I (finally) bought a Sizzix Big Shot for embossing paper.. this one was Tim Holtz "Alterations" 

folder, Dot-Matrix

Cricut end caps in use for titles!

Cute little Cricut flowers and an "end cap" tag..

"Who's the fairest of them all?" mirror charm.

Now that I have the charm thing down I'd love to make some pins, but I'm not shopping this month... guess I can wait till August to try that! 

One more charm...  I love that I can take some beads and tools and make these anywhere.
Even on vacation!

Sweet!

This album was added to the Inspire Me Fridays linky party at Joyful Stamper

and Clean and Scentsible Creative Spark link party.

Girlz! An itty bitty Coaster album.

So, I have all this girly paper and no girls in my house.

I decided to go ahead and use it up and get a start on some product for an Etsy store that I keep thinking I will start some day.. I always have good intentions and then I get side tracked.

I started with some papers that I thought would appeal to the tween group and tried to make it something that would appeal to the 10 - 13 year old set. I think I got it..

Now that is has a ribbon and a charm, I'll stop messing with it.

Lots of tags!

Of course, if your like me, it's never finished and I decided I should have charms on my albums, so I whipped up one of those too.. I had no idea I could do this but once I started I went crazy. I love how they all turned out.

New ideas to take me away from the laundry!

I won't bore you with all of them.. but they are fun to do! Since this photo, I've made a few more with pink, I'll add the pics on the next blog. Princess mini coaster album coming up..

and.. another cool cake! Yum. 

Album added to Inspire Me Fridays with Joyful Stamper

and Linkin' with Lil' Luna every Wednesday

Jungle Fondant Cake..

So.. I did make a couple of mini albums, but as always... cake interrupts my life.

Cakes make people happy, so I keep making them. This is a hershey's Perfectly Chocolate Cake, such a great tasting chocolate cake, so moist. Easy to stack. I filled and crumb coated with Buttercream Dream a version of buttercream that uses Dream Whip powder to cut the sweetness.. I used marshmallow fondant for a better taste, but have to say I prefer using my other fondant recipe for better handling, but taste won out this time.

This cake was ordered by my hairdresser for her little guy's 1st Birthday.  We bartered hair for cake! Woot!

She asked for monkeys and..well.. it evolved into the jungle. We couldn't stick with one idea so we used 'em all. We took things she liked from a few cakes we saw online and added some of mine and voila!

  

Sweet!

From sToRagE RoOm" to CraFt RooM!

Woot! I've been super busy the last two weeks.

First of all I've been doing some specialty props for a local theatre company. I love theatre and have worked backstage in some capacity for years on a few different stages. I've done some stage managing, set building, faux painting, specialty props, special effects, lighting operator, sound.. blah, blah. I love it!

So, I made this lovely chicken (I named her Betsy after my childhood hurricane experience because she is fast like the wind) for a production of Into The Woods. She has to remotely make her way onto the stage where "Jack" steals her from the Giant when he realizes she lays golden eggs.

From the start to the finished hen

Giant's eye glasses

I made her from paper mache and then attached her to a remote car. I gave her a hole with some netting in her bottom to keep her golden egg safe and attainable to Jack.. all in all she was fun to create. I made a few other items as well, including these giant 6 foot wide eye glasses. ----->

With all the props out of the way and my sweet better half (Gord) away for the weekend, I figure I can play in my art/scrap room 

all day Saturday, 

uninterrupted..

but, no.

Instead, I went into my "Art / Scrap Room" which is a gross storage room full of boxes... behind the furnace... that I carved a hole into and added a table. I even refer to it as "The Hole."

Ew.

Did I mention there are no windows? When I went down there, for my day of scrapping, I realized it was a huge creative problem. It's dark. It's not inspiring or pretty or even comfortable. It's ugly and I really don't like going there. So, I decided to tackle it and make it better. I know there are more than a few scrappers in the basement. Hopefully, you can snag some ideas and I'll even post some mechanical instructions in future posts. 

Thirteen hours later and a few instances of "Oh no, what have I done??" moments while moving boxes over to one end and my stuff to the other end, plus getting two big rugs under it all (see scary photos below) I have something I can live with. 

Much later all the boxes
at the end wall. Getting there..
and coffee time!

Every things in the middle, sigh.

Yikes! Where's my table?

Finally shaping up with some DIY closet components

This too, shall come..
I found this unused hutch top in my storage pile

Yay! I can no longer see the furnace.

Ok. Not perfect yet, but soooo much better. Now that it looks like it should be a room, Gord has promised to give me some wall boards.. right now it's just plastic covered insulation. Still border line yukky but it's a work in progress. :)

I can no longer see the boxes
on the end wall..
kid at his new spot :)

I also added some curtains I found packed in some of the boxes I was moving around. With some aircraft cable and turnbuckles to string them up I now have draped walls to hide the junk on the back wall and the furnace on the other end. I even gave my college kid his own desk to use, now he won't clutter mine with his homework and snacks. A little more embellishment organizing and maybe some swag lights to brighten up the space and I'm happy.   

Ok, maybe a fake window is in my future. Thats what I'd do on a stage and I can look at whatever I want to put outside of it... a mountain view, the ocean, a patio, oh my.. yes, unlimited possibilities. <grin>

Hmmm. Creepy.

I can make that!

Warning.. long post about cakes.

So, this past week I've been busy creating theatre props and my art table is covered in paper mache leaving me no space to scrap (as if I'd have time for that anyway). Once those items start to complete, which will all happen by this weekend,  I'll post some pics and details. In the meantime I have my "How I came to decorating cakes" story to share while I have my morning coffee. I started making cakes after watching an episode of Cake Boss and my sweet husband, Gord (he never knows what he is going to start) said "That's a cool cake!" Of course I come back with "I can make that!" The reply that slipped between his lips and consequently set everything into motion "Yeah, righhhhhtttt."

And so it begins..

Never having worked with fondant I scoured the internet and found this  Fondant Recipe and made this cake to try a few different things.. I even cut the flower layers on my Cricut. We didn't eat the flower so no worries about germs. Gord was amused.

Practice cake using stripes, harlequin, dots, bead trim and a Cricut flower.

My husband retired a few years ago, but found himself bored silly. He had tried some new careers but missed his very long career as a TV news anchor. Keeping the news idea in the forefront, but claiming to no longer have a face for TV,  he jumped into news / talk radio. One of the young news anchor / reporters in his station was moving on to Vancouver and we decided to have a send off party for her.. So, I made a cake with her on it, sitting by a little pink retro radio, holding her mic. Gord was impressed.

This time I tried making molding chocolate and used it for the girl and her radio

That very same week, a friend asked for a Pokemon cake... uh oh, two cakes!

Poliwhirl cut on Cricut Expression

 Working on the two cakes together...

Two weeks later it was my friends Birthday and she jokingly begged for a cake, but I was busy fretting about making a huge cake for another friend that required the Birthday girls golden retriever dog and a cat!! Yikes!

Anyhooo.. once the mess is out why not make more cake? 

I made my begging friend a small, personal cake and delivered it to her office, she loves Disneyland so I added a Hidden Mickey for her (can you see it?) Gord wanted to eat it up!

Not being able to make fondant black enough,  I gave in on this challenge and use Duff's black.

Now the biggest challenge and first cake someone is paying for. So, I can't screw up but I want to try so many things. I scoured the net and combined a couple of ideas from some different cakes to add with my own ideas and tried them all out on this baby to see what I was capable of. (I would credit the designers of the tree and snail but I can no longer find their cakes.) The tree is built using rice treat, the bark on it was a happy accident. This cake was definitely a challenge and took me 14 hours to complete. I may be able to do that in less  time now, but I'm not sure, it is very detailed. There is no Cricut used here, so they could eat everything. Gord was amazed! 

Without further ado... Cake #5 

Fondant Kitty! Idea from "Icing on the cake"

Fondant Retriever! I had to make this guy up on my own.

Fondant Snail, complete with slime trail..

This cake pictured on facebook has garnered me a lot of request, most of which I have to turn down as I'm not in the cake business. In the nine months since that first practice cake I have made a few more, but this is the cake that really pushed it over the edge and now the bar has been set. I can no longer make a simple cake. That my dear blogger friends is how I got my start using the artist medium know as fondant. 

Hugs and sweet sugar kisses,  Patricia 

Happy Mother's Day!!

Yay! I finally get a morning to myself.. of course it's only a couple of hours than I have to start working on some specialty theatre props for a local dinner theatre I occasionally work for.

I wanted to share the Mother's Day card I made for my Mother-in-law. She is a lovely, beautiful, Italian Woman who is a joy to sit and chat with. She loves her time in the garden and always has perfectly manicured flowers and veggies. So, I wanted to reflect that.

The torn piece of Polka Dot paper is by K&Company.. the ruffled flower is two sided paper (Ducks in a Row: Pat a Cake) by October Afternoon. I had a piece of wired ribbon in a scrap heap and bunched it up.  Lot's of edge inking going on..

 The butterflies were punched, glittered and layered.

I cut the tag on my Cricut using Fabulous Finds and popped it up on a couple of foam dots.

I decided at the last minute (ok, 20 minutes ago) I wanted a small flower on the inside and didn't want to turn on the Cricut.

So, I was going through my punches when a light bulb went on!

My small Hidden Mickey was to be reborn as a flower. I punched out 4 and overlapped them into this cute little flower. 

Magnifico!

Happy Mother's Day to all the Moms in the world!

I'm submitting this design to the Make it Monday linky party, drop over and join the fun!