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Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Catching up on some Art Journaling!

With the kid’s birthdays preparations taking over, I didn’t get much of a chance to catch you up on some of my latest art journaling pages. There haven’t been too many, but the ones that I do get in are always such a joy!

First of all, here are a couple of pages I’ve done for an Art Journaling Exchange a few of my friends and I have going! We are a group of online friends that have known each other for 10+ years!  We each have a “traveling” art journal that we mail around to each other. And we each make one or more art journaling pages into the other’s journals, then send it on to the next friend! For many in this group, this is their first art journaling adventure/project ever, which makes it even more exciting to see some of the creativity burst forth!
At the end we get our journal back with lots of amazing pages from friends!
It is such fun!
And another Dianne Duda inspired girl came to visit! All of Diann's girls are so cute! I think I want to be her when I grow up!


In this page I used the Gesso texturing process I describe here. It’s really fast becoming my favorite way to add some texture to my pages while still remaining flexible, in both method and actual page flexibility!
Then I did this one for another friend:


And while I was in the midst of making the kiddo’s birthday cakes, I had a sudden desire to do some watercolor painting, mostly because I saw a lovely painting of dandelions on pinterest that just totally reverberated with where I am at currently, energetically. Since I could neither find the original artist, nor a way to purchase it, I just had to recreate it!
Whoever did the original painting - THANK YOU for your contribution, talent and inspiration!
And re-create it I did! Amazingly, this painting happened unusually fast for me. I tend to fuss about paintings and they take me forever, but not this one! I was done in about 2 hours! It turned out to be a lovely mix of water color paints, ink and shimmer mist sprays!

Had I known how well this one might go, I might have started taking photos earlier, so I could take you through the process, especially since this has been the first time in many years that I broke out my colorless masking fluid!
But alas I only thought about that once I was almost done with the painting!


Unfortunately, as always, the shimmer mists don’t photograph well. They are all over the painting, but I also splattered them across the painting as a very last step. So all the dark little “dots” those are actually little gold shimmering splats.

And here it is just before I rubbed the masking fluid off:


And once I had rubbed it all off, even the discard looked so pretty and colorful with shimmers running through it, I kept on thinking that there had to be something I could do with it. Alas I ended trashing it anyway!



Once all the masking fluid was off, I filled in a few unintentional gaps with water color and then proceeded to splat some shimmering mist all over the picture.



All shimmer and spritz, color and joyful energy!

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Sunday, October 21, 2012

Princess Castle Cake - The Final Assembly!

Ok, now to the biggie - the Princess Castle “My little Pony” cake! I mean biggie not just because of all the work and prepping involved, but actually because it ended up being quite a big cake!

Here is what it looked like all assembled and ready for some little girl birthday admiration!

 

 

 

 

If you missed the previous posts about this cake, here are the links:

Birthdays, Cakes, Wedding Memories And Other Madnesses!

Cake Progress And A Money Saving Tip For Texture Mats

Birthday Cake Progress

 

Since this is not the kind of cake that travels well, and I had to take it across town to our venue for the party, I basically took all the parts and did most of the assembling on site.

 

The night before the party, I cut out the castle wall fondant. I let it dry over night, so I could still shape it without cracking, but it would be dry enough to be stable and hold it’s shape once it wrapped around the cakes.

 

 

I rolled out several sections, scored them with a knife to make the bricks and cut the top with a small square cookie cutter.

 

The next day, I wrapped it around the cakes.

 

 

Then I wrapped everything up and transported it to the venue. I did lose a few flower petals, even with the best of wrapping, but that’s why I made plenty, just in case.

None of the tower pieces suffered any damage however, so that was great!

My very first step was to fix the roofs on top of the turrets with some white icing, so they would have a little time to dry and stabilize.

While they were drying, I stacked the smaller cake on top of the 8-inch one. The middle turret was easy to affix - I just pushed it into the cake and adjusted for straightness.

 

It was really as easy as affixing everything with white frosting at this point. I already had the door, the windows and all the flowers ready and dry, so it was simply a gluing job. To affix the towers, I made put a little pile of icing about the size of the turret in the spot where it would go, then I pushed the turret into it.

Then I made a little strip of icing where the side of the turret would meet the cake and pushed it into the puddle of icing, gently pressing it against the castle walls. Since the turrets are hollow inside, they weren’t very heavy, even though they were a tad top heavy with the sugar cone in the roof.

Once they were in there though, they didn’t budge! Not even after we cut into the cake!

I literally had to pull them back out, for total disassembly! I was quite pleased about how well they help up! Having a real flat bottom on the dried fondant turrets really helps there!

 

 

After that it was all about the little details. Finishing off the windows, placing all the flowers around the bottom of the castle, placing the candle and the figures in place and that was it!

 

 

Yes, I used the store bought tubed icing, since it was the easiest to transport!

 

Again, to make life easier, I had bought an undecorated 8-inch cake from Fry’s (Kroeger) and it worked out really well! For a start it came in a sturdy box to transport it in, which I would have had to purchase for the homemade one!

Once I was done, I scattered all the left-over tiny blossoms all over the cakes.

 

 

And in the end, there was  this castle cake and a VERY happy birthday girl!

 

 

 

 

Note how she’s already holding a plate, a napkin and a fork! This girl is all about the cake!

 

And it tasted really good too!

 

 

The top was a lemon cake with lemon cream filling, the bottom was a vanilla cake with strawberry cream filling.

So, between Anna’s cakes and Max’s, we had three cake options! How does it get better than that?

 

 

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Angry Bird Cake - The Final Assembly and Destruction!

So, yesterday was the big day! Max  and Anna turned seven! Wow, when did that happen?!

 

We had a great day full of excitement, kid energy, good friends, bouncing and partying!

And there was cake! Lots of cake!

 

Before I take you through the remainder of the steps for this Angry Bird cake, here is the final result!

 

 

 

 

If you missed the other post on the progress of this cake, check it out here: Birthday Cakes Progress, the Angry Birds Edition

 

Anyway, after that last post, Max requested an orange bird, so I made that one.

 

 

And some round boulders. Instead of having round lumps of fondant, which are really not all that pleasant to eat, I covered some whoppers in varying shades of gray fondant. It made it quick and easy, as the whoppers provided a solid shape to put the fondant on!  And there was little drying time!

 

 

I also stuck some chocolate wafers together with a little chocolate frosting, to make the structures. For some reason that photo went totally blurry however, so you have to just take my word for it!

 

I did take a short cut on this cake by ordering an undecorated 8 inch cake from the Fry’s (Kroeger) bakery. Could I have baked the cake myself - of course. Was my time better spent on other things - yes!

So, the night before the party, I rolled out some green fondant, cut a wavy line and placed it at the bottom edge of the cake - grassy hills or something. I also cut out some gold stars and placed those on the side of the cake!

I also pulsed some vanilla oreos in the food processor until they resembled sand.

 

 

Since I had to transport the cakes to our venue, I left final assembly until an hour before the party!

 

And then it was really just a matter of  placing the rest of the items on there. As you can see we ended up having lots of pigs that Max was able to keep as toys, while the birds and all the rest remained edible!

 

Since this was a playable cake, after blowing out the candle, Max got a little plastic sling shot and some more little toy angry birds and he pelted them at the cake until he “got” all the pigs!

We captured this on video, however, excitement took over and lots of little heads/bodies are in much of the video! I tried to extract some shots from the video, but somehow that doesn’t make for good picture quality. But you get the idea!

 

 

 

 

 

 

One way or another, it was definitely the cake as far as Max was concerned - and pretty much every other boy  at the party! And because of the “make ahead” and “ready made”  factor, this cake was really quite easy to put together!

 

And it tasted good too!

 

 

 

Next up, the Princess Castle cake!

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Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Birthday Cakes Progress, the Angry Birds Edition

First of all, the turrets are done and drying, so are any kind of extra windows, doors and a bunch of little flowers. For Anna’s cake, all the work is done for now, as assembly will have to happen on the day! Right now they are just drying!

 

 

Next, Max’s Angry Bird Cake. As I have mentioned before, he requested for some of the birds and pigs to be toys that he can keep, so I don’t really have to make very many! Yay!

I am also planning on using chocolate wafers for the building of the structure to be “destroyed” on top of the cake, so I don’t have to make those beams either.

I will probably make a few more rocks, folders and other things that can be “crashed” and leave it at that until it’s time to actually make the cakes on Friday and Saturday!

 

Here’s where I am at right now:

 

 

 

Funnily enough, I had the hardest time with the pig! Somehow it just didn’t want to look authentic. Doesn’t matter however. This is one of the “smash” pigs anyway. Meaning, I am playing with the idea of giving Max a plastic slingshot and got to town on his cake with some of the fondant birds and pigs!

 

Speaking of birds, here’s the step-by-step creation of the Red Angry Bird:

 

These are all the pieces you need to make a red angry bird.

 

 

First, place the white circle on the red body “ball”.

 

 

I would, in retrospect, make the tail hole, and let it dry over night. It will make the handling of the bird much easier. Mine was way soft and kept on changing shape , which just made things unnecessarily hard!

 

Next, take your v-shaped head feather, moisten the body with some water (use a small brush)  or the Wilton Dab-n-hold, and place the head feathers on, smoothing them into the head a bit.

 

 

Next, use a pair of small scissors to make a snip into the yellow fondant cone to make the beak and attach to the body. Then attach the white eye part, the black eye balls and attach the eye brows in a V-shape across the eyes to give the angry look!

 

 

This is the side view now:

 

 

Last, wet the tail indentation with some water and place the black tail feathers in it.

 

And there you have it! The red angry bird!

 

I created the others pretty much the same way, changing the colors and shapes according to the pictures of the original characters.

 

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Thursday, October 11, 2012

Cake Progress And A Money Saving Tip For Texture Mats

I have been working on the fondant pieces of the kid’s birthday cakes on and off over the last few days.

Some of these pieces really had to get done, so they can be dried pretty hard by this time next week. The cakes and pieces have to travel, so they need to be extra sturdy! I have however decided to do a lot of assembly on site, just to make transportation less stressful and leave less opportunity for collapse!

 

Anyway, since Anna’s Castle cake requires the most fragile fondant work, her cake has currently taken over a little as the structural pieces are really important!

 

As you can see, I made some more pointy roofs, and the rest of the tower pieces. These have now dried for a good 3 days and even though they are nowhere near dry, they are much more sturdy than they were.

 

 

First of all the turrets’ roof décor.

The twirly roofs are for the middle turret, which will be in the center of a double tier cake, so it doesn’t need to be as tall as the others. I made two, in case one breaks.

The other roofs are for the outside turrets and I kept the décor nice and easy on that one. Basically I just rolled out a piece of fondant, cut out some more or less evenly spaced notches with the long end of a “L” cookie cutter.

 

 

Then afixed it to the covered cone and finished it off with some small purple flowers.

 

 

 

The 4 corner towers are at this point dry enough to hold their shape pretty well, but still soft enough for me to CAREFULLY press the brick pattern in with the back of a paring knife.

 

 

I also took the opportunity to put on a window! I cut out the middle turret’s window, but for the outside ones I will affix them in this way.

 

 

 

So the outside turret, flanking the four corners of the castle will look like this:

 

 

And the middle turret will look like this:

 

 

Turns out I also needed LOTS more of the little flowers, so I got a start on those:

 

 

I was debating getting a texture mat for the “wood” texture I was going to need for both of these cakes, but wasn’t really too happy with the expense, considering that I may not need it again.

Well, eventually I remembered that I had bought a wood grain acrylic stamp a few weeks ago on sale ($2) and hadn’t even used it yet. Turns out it worked great as a texture mat on the fondant! Why hadn’t I thought of that before? DUH!?

Stamps are often SO much cheaper than texture mats and work beautifully! There was NO sticking and you hardly need to press at all. Stamps tend to have deeper grooves than texture mats, so you can really determine how deep you want an impression simply by how much you press down!

 

 

 

So, that’s where I am at on the cakes today. I also made a few more “bricks” for the Angry Bird Cake and a TNT box, but I’ll update you on the progress of that cake when I have a bit more to show for!

 

Have a joyful day everyone!

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