happy birthday {meg}

My sister-in-law conveniently decided to turn 22 the day after our final project for cake class level 2.  This made her the lucky winner of a birthday cake that I spent many hours preparing.  It made her the unlucky winner of a birthday cake she didn't get to pick.  She did get to pick the cake and filling, though, and opted for a white pudding cake with raspberry filling.  Yum!

First, here's the final pieces I worked on last week.  My favorite list of flowers is now:  pansies, violets, and mums.  Here's the lovely pansies:

I also did as I promised and practiced daisies for awhile.  I am much more pleased with this result:

A few of the other flowers from class:

We learned a new icing, too.  Color flow.  It dries rock hard, but allows you to trace logos, simple pictures, etc.  It doesn't taste as good as royal/buttercream icing, but I love it.  The detail it enables is just so FUN.  For Meg's basket-o-flowers cake, we went with butterflies:

I chose to make the wings separately so the butterflies could "fly" on the actual cake.

AND (drum roll please)... here's the beautiful blooming birthday cake!  This cake would be perfect for Easter, Mother's Day, or wedding/baby showers.  Any of the individual flowers could be used to decorate a cake all on their own.  They'd also make fabulous cupcake toppers!  So many ideas!

quick {polka dot} cake

I had some extra color flow icing left after class last week, so I made up some polka dots while we watched March Madness (and yes, my bracket is doing quite well.  Thanks for asking).  Here they are drying:

Yes, that is our picture beneath them.  I needed a flat surface and it was the nearest thing so it got hijacked by waxed paper and frosting.

Anyway, a friend needed a variety of desserts for an event she was having, so I just iced a white cake and decorated with my frosting bubbles the next week!  SO easy and pretty adorable.  I love the cake decorations you can make ahead!

So happy and spring-y.  Love.  It'd be easy to do many designs with these dots.  I'll be revisiting this idea again in the future...

supplies and such

Came home a week or so ago to this:

It looked neater, but I re-wrapped it to take a picture.  Haha.  A woman in B's class brought cupcakes in a nifty carrier and he thought I'd love one.  So, he (being the savvy shopper he is) researched a few and picked this cupcake carrying engineering marvel at Bed Bath and Beyond for me as a surprise!  I love gifts like that.

It has two trays for cupcakes that can be used to display them as well and can be popped down for storage, which is really nice.  Even has lines to help you cut your cake evenly!  Love.  Find it here.

{cup}cake inspiration

Saw a cute little article on cnn.com that cupcakes have taken America by storm.  I believe it... they're just too fun.

Here's some lovely sites that inspire me... excited to roll up my sleeves and experiment more with cakes and icing after looking at these!

• Cupcakes Take the Cake
• Coolest Birthday Cakes
• Charm City Cakes (of course!)
• I Heart Cuppy Cakes
• Cupcake Rehab

I'm looking over...

...a four-leaf clover that I overlooked before

One leaf is sunshine, the second is rain

Third is the roses that grow in the lane

No need explaining, the one remaining

Is somebody I adore

I'm looking over a four-leaf clover

That I overlooked before!

Happy St. Patty's Day!

B made a little display platter for the cake I made for our St. Patrick's Day bake sale at work from some of my favorite Christmas wrapping paper and a cardboard box.  I made the clovers ahead of time and skimped and used store frosting (tee hee).  It has a mint chocolate pudding filling!  Yum!  Only wish I could have tried it!

coming up {daisies}...

... or not.  Until yesterday, I had a favorite flower.  The gerber daisy.  It found its way into most of the flower arrangements from B, into my bridesmaid bouquets, and into our wedding boutennieres... I love that it's such a happy, colorful, care-free flower.  So naturally, when I saw lots of whimsical pictures of daisy cakes in our class book, that made me quite excited.

But the favorite flower status is on hold after class tonight.  We made apple blossoms, violets, violet leaves, daffodils and roses.  No problem.  Delightful in fact.  But the fun stopped with the daisies.  They seem so cute and innocently beautiful.  It looked so simple!

...but my daisies are oddly chubby, a bit misshapen and most closely resemble the bouquet of flowers my then-fiance dropped off while I was sleeping before he left for the summer with a wonderful note and an apology that "I believe these are the ugliest flowers I've ever seen.  That's what happens when you go to the grocery store for flowers in the middle of the night".  And while that bouquet and apology made me smile, these do not:

So I'm on daisy duty.  In our March "off week" I'm setting aside my Wednesday evening to practice daisies while the hubby studies.  Stay tuned.

Below are the flowers that I actually liked from class.  They're drying and contemplating their future on my sister-in-law's birthday cake.  The clovers are for a cake I'm making for our bake sale at work next week.  I'm hoping to have the words "I'm looking over a four leaf clover that I overlooked before" on the cake.  Notice there's only one four-leaf clover.  :)  Yes, that makes me smile.  I'm that much of a dork.

wedding bells, books, and bliss...

Thank goodness we set a date for our wedding or I would have never gotten it all planned.  I still haven't tied up the ends on a few projects to archive the best day of my life thus far.  I'm convinced the unfinished project is the woe of artists everywhere.  My creative mind is just too easily distracted.  Just tonight B was telling me that I unload the dishwasher "all wrong" (What?  You mean most people don't put one knife away, clean the stove, grab something to eat, put a bowl away, put another knife away, then get distracted by a plate on the stove again?)  I just find his orderliness constricting.... :)

So last night I rolled up my sleeves and invaded the hubby's tidy study space:

Poor guy.  Note the Swiffer Sweeper I bought at Target and just couldn't seem to put away before I started creating.  Anyway, I LOVE the board books that you can find at Scrapbooking stores and found a nifty one that comes in a cute little box before we got married.  Hopefully it will soon be a coffee table conversation piece, but I spent so much time decorating the box and cover that I'm only now getting to the pages.

Here's the box:

 

 

Pretty darling, huh?  And here's the book:

 

... and page one, which is all I got to last night.  I {think} it's done, but who knows!

 

 

One of my favorite things to do when creating is use {old} things in {new} places.  Scrapbooking makes that so easy since the whole idea is to use paper scraps, knick knacks and photos to tell a story.  My favorite recycles in this book so far are the label on the outside of the box, which I made using my grandma's delightful old typewriter AND the "me and you" gift tag/photo which is actually just an extra from a set of blank greeting cards I bought awhile back and didn't need.  I found it as I was rummaging through my things to get some up and knew I could find a home for it!