Pink Flamingo and Balloons birthday card

 

Flamingos are a really popular motif at the moment and one night while feeding the baby I decided they would look really good on a birthday card, and bought a flamingo stamp from Dovecraft on Ebay.

I also bought some die cut balloon shapes - it would be cheaper to buy the die in the long run and cut my own shapes but time is something I don't have a lot of at the moment (I'm writing this while the baby takes a nap but can already hear signs she is waking up!) so I just bought the shapes pre-cut.

I was playing around with shapes and thought the card would look nice with several layered embellishments in different shades of pink - there's quite a lot going on on this card but I really like how it turned out.

To start I covered most of a white square card blank with a piece of pink patterned paper, leaving a small white border clear around the edge. I stamped the flamingo onto a piece of cream card and coloured it pink with a Promarker pen.

I cut a scalloped shape around the edge of a slightly larger rectangle of purple paper (which was actually a recycled birthday card envelope I'd received) and mounted the flamingo card on that. I found a wide glittery pink ribbon in my stash that I'd bought and never used - it is quite wide and very pink and glittery so a bit OTT for most cards but I decided it worked for this one! I stuck that across the middle of the card using double sided sticky tape and mounted the flamingo topper on that.

The final touches were two die cut balloons, one in pink and one in purple, and a stamped 'happy birthday' sentiment from the 'Say it with stamps' set from All Night Media on a piece of the same purple paper as the topper which I cut out with a wavy line. The perfect card for someone who likes a bit of glitz and glamour!

Here are some of the products I used:



I'm sharing this with Stamplorations where the theme is 'things with wings'; Crafty Ribbons challenge, As You Like It where the theme is pink or blue, and Creatalicious Challenges where anything goes with the option of 'all that glitters'. As I re-used an old envelope I'm also sharing it with Use Your Stuff where the theme is upcycle/recycle, plus Addicted to Stamps challenge where the theme is 'ribbons galore'.

Accessorize Yourself: How to Make a Fascinator for a Wedding

Wedding, floristry and craft supplies company Country Baskets invited me to take part in their latest bloggers' competition, Accessorize Yourself. They sent me a hamper of eight products and asked me to use at least five of them to make an accessory I could wear to a wedding.

I briefly thought of embellishing a clutch bag, or making jewellery, but there was really one thing at the forefront of my mind: a fascinator. I also thought that using five of the supplied items to make just one piece of jewellery might end up looking a bit OTT!

 I was allowed for this project to use any other materials I wanted but I didn't have much time to buy anything and am in the middle of packing to move house, so I had to make do with just a few things. Still, it just goes to show how easy it is to make a fascinator!

Here are the products that I was sent:
A roll of purple organza
A bunch of artificial flowers
A roll of heart-print ribbon
Some heart-shaped wedding place cards
A three-strand wide silver chain
A long silver chain with gems attached
Some short silver stems with purple gems attached
A pack of wide lace ribbon

To make a fascinator you need to start off with a headband. You could also use a crocodile hair grip but a hairband is easier to keep on, and if you use a wide headband, you have a bigger surface area to attach the other accessories to.

I used a wide plain black hairband and wrapped the lace ribbon around it to completely cover the band. Secure at each end with some glue.

You can buy base discs for fascinators from craft suppliers but I didn't time to order one and wanted to show that you can make your own, so I cut out a circle from some thick cardboard. I covered the cardboard in some of the purple organza I had been sent, and secured with glue.

The posy of artificial flowers I was sent was lovely but far too much for a fascinator, so I undid the bunch and chose one flower. I pinned it on to the organza.

As I needed to use five products from the pack I had a look at what else I could use, and thought the silver chain with gems was really pretty. I cut a few short lengths and wound them around the headband.

I also used some of the shorter stems with purple gems; the colour went really well with the purple organza. I wound them around the base of the artificial flower so they would be on the main disc of the fascinator. I also had to decide how to attach the fascinator to the headband. You can glue it with superglue, or make two holes in the cardboard (making sure you go through the organza as well) and thread some ribbon or, as I did, the stem of one of the purple gem pieces through one hole, around the headband and up through the other hole, to effectively tie it on.

The finished fascinator: the headband covered in white lace, a base covered in purple organza, featuring an artificial flower and some purple gems and some silver gems wound around the band. It looks much better on, as you will see below...

Please excuse the photo - trying to take a #selfie with your phone to get the best angle on the fascinator isn't easy! You can arrange the silver gems so they follow the line of the headband and sit neartly along your hair; if you have curly hair you can weave them into the curls. The flower sits neatly on the other side of your head; you can only just see the purple gems in this photo which is mainly an issue with lighting, but they are there.

I actually really like this and might wear it to a friend's wedding! One of the great things about making your own fascinator is that you can match it exactly to the colour of your dress, and also be sure that nobody else will have the same one! Thanks to Country Baskets for providing me with the items I used, and for inviting me to take part in their competition.

 

New Baby Picture - Christening Gift

 

This is a Christening gift I made for a friend's baby. I was approached by a company called Fantastic Ribbons which is an online retailer selling a huge range of ribbons and buttons, which you can use for wedding decorations, crafts or gift wrapping. They asked me to choose two items to review, and I immediately knew what I wanted to make.

I was looking on their site for a blue ribbon that would be suitable for a new baby picture and was very pleased to find one with little baby footprints. It was only £2.50 for a 4 metre roll; there was also a blue gingham ribbon I liked. I was also hoping that I would be able to get some blue buttons and the pack I bought, costing £5, was perfect for this project - I received a re-sealable bag with buttons of different shades of blue and in different sizes. I wanted a mis-matched effect so this was ideal.

 Because the buttons were quite thick, I knew a normal picture frame wouldn't work and I needed a box frame, which gives you more space between the picture and the glass, so you can put keepsakes or embellishments on the picture. I was very pleased with the one I bought from Hobbycraft; they had various sizes and I chose 20cmx20cm. The white frame was great as I wanted something neutral and thought this looked nicer than a wood effect,  and at £8 I thought it was good value.

 I also bought some letter stickers from The Works; again these were perfect as the mismatched sizes and colour were just what I wanted. These were £1.49 per pack and I bought a couple of packs to make sure I had enough of each letter.

To make the picture, I started with a large piece of backing card which I picked up from my local card making shop; you can also buy these online. I had a photograph of my friend's baby which I actually printed out from one of her Facebook photos, so I wouldn't have to ask for a picture and spoil the surprise! I trimmed the photo and decided where I wanted to place it on the card and stuck on the lettering to spell the words "cute as a button". Now you can see why I wanted the buttons!

I added the baby photo and glued the baby footprint ribbon around the photo to make a frame. I then stuck a handful of buttons of different sizes and shades in a slightly haphazard fashion around one corner of the photo. Finally I placed the whole thing in the frame. I'm pleased with this and hope my friend liked it!

Thanks to Fantastic Ribbons for sending me the ribbon and buttons.

Pink and black polka dot shoe birthday cake

So you might have seen the shoes I made from Mexican paste at a recent cake decorating class - I made them in black and pink as I had already decided those would be the colours of my birthday cake. I also decided I wanted a two-tier cake so there would be plenty to go around, though I needn't have worried as we had plenty of cake in the end!

I thought the cake I made for my boyfriend's birthday was such a success that I would do a similar thing again. So I decided to make the Green & Black's Ultimate Chocolate Fudge cake as the bottom layer - you can find the recipe here or in the Green & Black's Ultimate Chocolate Recipes book. As I made it and blogged about it in the previous post, I won't repeat it again here, other than to say that it's really yummy!

For the top layer I decided to do something different and chose Dan Lepard's Easy Chocolate Birthday Cake which I found on the BBC Food website.

It was very simple to make but I liked the sound of the ingredients including double cream, sunflower oil which I thought would make it very moist, and four eggs. However I tend to prefer chocolate cakes that contain melted chocolate and this one used cocoa powder.

You melt the butter in a pan and mix with most of the wet and dry ingredients, then add the milk and cream

Then add the flour and baking powder. I found it made quite a runny mixture which is always nice.

Bake in the oven.... you cover the top with foil initially then remove it later in the cooking process.

So when it came to assembling the cake, I took the bottom layer - the Green & Black's chocolate cake - that I had left to cool, and used my cake wire to split it neatly in half.

Unfortunately it wasn't quite as cool as I thought. When I split the cake, the inside was still quite warm and soft but in my impatience - as I still had a whole birthday party to prepare with just a few hours left to go - I decided to lift the bottom layer anyway to put it onto the cake board. At which point it promptly broke into four pieces!

I wasn't put off by this minor crisis and decided to sit the pieces back together and use this as the bottom layer; I carefully spread frosting (my own recipe of melted 75% dark chocolate, butter and icing sugar) over the top and carefully placed the other half of the cake on top. I don't think you can tell from this picture that it's broken!

When I made my boyfriend's cake I tried to cover the two layers at once with white fondant, and realised it would have been a lot easier if I had covered one layer at a time. So I decided that's what I would do this time, and got out my pink fondant to cover the bottom cake.

However I don't think it was really turning out to be my day! I had bought the bright pink fondant a few months earlier for a cake that I didn't end up making. While the fondant was well within its best before date, when I took it out of the packet I found it was already a little dry. I discarded some of the dryer icing around the edges and kneaded the remaining lump for as long as I could bear.

When I covered the cake, a few cracks immediately appeared, and as the fondant dried out, even more cracks appeared.

It looked fine from a distance but close up you can see there were some really bad patches. In future I'll try to use fondant almost as soon as I buy it!

I also covered the second, smaller chocolate cake and placed it on the top. It looked like it really needed something....

Luckily I had already planned to make the cake a polka dot pattern, so while I couldn't quite hide any mistakes as well as with my boyfriend's cow print cake, I did still have the opportunity to cover a few of the biggest cracks.

I had recently bought a cupcake plunger, to be used when filling cupcakes - you place the plunger over the cupcake, push it down, and pull the handle up, leaving you with a nicely shaped hole in the middle of your cupcake to fill with whatever you want. I hadn't got around to trying it out on a cupcake yet, but decided it was the perfect size and shape to cut circles out of black fondant to make the polka dots.

I used a little edible glue to stick the circles onto the cake - I think it gives a really nice effect. I also found some spotty ribbon that I had left over from something else and decided it would be perfect to hide the joins in the fondant!

I placed the shoes and a sort of pink feather thing that I bought a while ago on a whim on top of the cake. The shoes are slightly the wrong colour pink and look a bit small in comparison to the cake but I was quite pleased with the finished effort!

Here's a close up of the top... I love these shoes! They were made using the Jem shoe cutter set, as described in my earlier post.

Instead of candles on the cake I had mini sparklers! Happy birthday to me :-)