Things are starting to get rolling! I have a few projects to blog about, never fear, but just a few updates on what's been going on lately!
I finally got my Etsy shop set up! Click the link below my blog header to go visit my shop. I got my first sale already, one of the teal chevron boy outfits. So exciting! Anyone out there have an Etsy shop? I'd love any advice!
I've added a few things to the right side of this blog. First off, I set up a Facebook page. It will be a great place to post about my blog, Etsy shop, and whatever new and exciting things that are going on, so take a look at "like" my page! Just click the link over there ----->
There's also a new way to follow my blog. Simply input your email in the field on the right. It'll ask you to copy in some letters and numbers to make sure you are a real person (you are, right?) and then it'll send you an email. You have to click the link in your email to confirm that you do indeed want to follow this blog by email. (AND YOU DO....RIGHT???). This way, any time I post something, you'll get an email so you can read it and never miss another post.
I know you've only reading this to find out about the celebrities, right? Well, I have toddler outfits going to two celebrities! Watch out, Hollywood babies!
I went to high school with Reese Witherspoon. We cheered together, and had lots of classes together. It's been so cool to see how well she has done with her career over the years. Unfortunately we have not stayed in touch, but I have a friend who has, and is giving her an outfit as a gift for her third child, Tennessee James.
Here's a blast from the past, Reese and I in our cheer uniforms (Reese second from the right, and I'm on the right next to her). This is a pic that Reese gave me as a Christmas present one year:
Remember that show, Blossom? Remember her best friend, "Six"?
That's actress, Jenna von Oy. I have a friend who knows her, and she got one of my outfits for her as a gift for her little girl, Gray. Jenna has a blog, www.cradlechronicles.com. She has some darling pictures of her and baby Gray (who is now a year old!) Darling!
So exciting! I hope they both love their outfits!!!
After making Ruthie's birthday cake, I got to reminiscing about cakes that I have done for my own kids the last few years. I've had so much fun coming up with ideas and making them come to life! (This is a super long post, covering the last 4 years of birthday cakes, so hoooold on......here we go!)
So....I love Curious George. Therefore, my son does too :). So we decided on good ole Georgie for Drake's first birthday theme.
I have a huge family. My mom is the oldest of 11 children, and we have 20+ family members here in town. So I generally have done a kids/friends party in the morning, and a family party for the evening. I've tried to work my cakes so that I can just make one big cake, and keep most of the design intact for the evening party. I made a big rectangle cake with a circle on top, serving the rectangle for the kid party, saving the George part for the evening party.
I always frost my cakes with buttercream, and for the details, I made my own fondant with marshmallows! I don't remember the exact recipe, but there's several online. I used it for George's face, head, ears and eyes, and then piped the black details (so hard to color icing black!)
Here's my little man, so cute! Looks just like Violet!
Fast forward a year! Look at this little boy! Not much baby left in this 2 year old! Drake's godfather made him this special birthday plate, so we try and use it as much as we can on birthday week! These are the cupcakes he took to school. Pretty simple!
By the time Drake was two, he was full on obsessed with cars. Especially Daddy's Yellow Car (a yellow VW bug). So we decided to go with a car theme, and a D.Y.C. cake. For this cake, I did three tiers of cake, with a cake car on top. I made fondant again, in gray to wrap around each layer like roads, and in black for the hubcaps. Maybe I should have done black tires with gray hubcaps, oh well.
I wish I had a video, but I successfully used two large spatulas under the D-R-A-K-E layer, and transferred the top two tiers (and car) to another tray, and served the cake from the bottom layer to the morning guests. So it was a complete cake for the evening!
Cars are still an obsession to this date, but when we got close to his 3rd birthday, all he could talk about was Mickey Mouse. There was no question as to the theme of this birthday! I did the three layer cake again. The Mickey hat is cake with fondant on top (this time I bought a small bucket of fondant, it's so hard to color stuff black like I said before!). I cheated a bit with the ears....they are cardboard covered in fondant.
The candle holders were a gift from my aunt when Drake was a baby. There are 5 silver circus animals. They are soooo cute! I love to pull them out at birthday time!
Mikey and Minnie!! I made Drake black corduroy longalls with a Mickey applique on it. Stay tuned for a birthday outfits post! (I was about 7 months pregnant with Violet here!)
On....to....ROBOTS! This was a really fun one to do. This little guy looks like he's going to Eeep Beep Boop, stand up and walk off the cake plate! The body and head are made of 3 layers of cake (8" and 6" squares), and the legs are one 6" square cut in half. All of the nuts, bolts, wrenches, etc are chocolate. I used this mold for the wrenches (arms and ears), and this mold for the nuts and bolts. I stood up lollipop sticks in the chocolate molds, so that I could push the nuts into the cake and they would not fall off. There are mini chocolate robots on the cake board as well, which I used for cupcake toppers for school. So cute!!!
I discovered a new product that I used for the face and name plate...Wilton's Sugar Sheets. You can get them at Michael's in many colors and patterns, and it cuts with scissors or a craft knife. I printed out the letters on computer paper, cut them out, and used them as a template for the Sugar Sheet letters. You just adhere them with water, and they are eatable. (though I wouldn't cover an entire cake in it, it's not thaaaat good to eat. But a good layer of buttercream underneath, and you can just peel it off if you don't like it)
Oh the elation on his face!!!
Not cake related, but these were the goodie bags and Nuts and Bolts snacks (pretzels, cheerios and M&Ms)
And now on to my precious little lady, Violet! Or, as Drake calls her "Our Little Sweet Potato", lol.
At one, they don't really have things they are super into yet. For Drake, I just chose George, so for Violet, I decided to give her a Violet Cake. I got a silicone flower mold, and some violet gumpaste. This is the mold:
Here are a bunch of finished violets, with a dot of yellow buttercream in the middle. This heart cake pan was the one my mom used on my first birthday cake! I ended up serving appetizers in them :)
I did three cake layers, and pressed the violets along the edges. I used Sugar Sheets again for the lettering and the 1. I brushed on some luster dust on the 1 to make it a bit glittery.
Surprise! Ombré cake! I separated the cake batter and colored each layer a bit more purple.
So pretty on a plate!
And here she is, my precious little doll. I made her dress, of course ;)
My cousin Ruth turned 30 recently, and I was asked to make the cake for her. She's a HUGE boyband fan. Especially One Direction! However, she was very indecisive as to what she wanted for her birthday. Did she want pink and girly? Did she want One Direction? Did she want a cake? Did she want cupcakes? So I got my creative juices going and came up with something that would hopefully be the most perfect cake she'd ever seen (and I think I lived up to it!). Pink, pearl-y, rhinestone-y, One Direction-y and last but not least, silver glittered microphone cupcakes!
I gathered my supplies...Duncan Hines Butter Golden cake mixes (the best cake mix in my opinion!), ice cream cones, bamboo skewers, rhinestones, sparkly scrapbook paper, candy pearls, silver sprinkles....
I started with the cake toppers. I used a variety of sparkly scrapbook papers and cut out the decorations.
A little glue, a whole lot of rhinestones....
And bamboo skewers hot glued to the backs, covered with another piece of scrapbook paper to hide the glue.
I wanted her to be able to keep the toppers, so I took a block of floral foam and wrapped it with pretty wrapping paper, and stuck all the skewers into it (the bunting is hung on braided embroidery floss). This helped us transport the toppers as well.
On to the cake! I made three 8" round cakes and froze them so they were easier to frost. I gave them a really thin crumb coat. I have a few tools, including a Wilton angled spatula, another cake spatula, but in this case, I just used my trusty Cutco spatula spreader.
After letting that set for a while, I added a thick top coat (using the Wilton spatula this time). After this top coat dried, I tried a version of the Viva paper towel trick. The original trick utilizes a Viva paper towel (the only brand that has smooth paper towels with no quilting imprinted on them). You place the paper towel on top of the frosting (once it's set) and smooth out any imperfections with your hand. Well, I hate buying a whole roll of paper towels just for this method, so I decided to try using a piece of printer paper. It worked wonderfully!
Look how smooth the cake turned out!
I used one of the extra skewers to impress diagonal lines on the cake. I then piped a dot of buttercream into the intersections and added sugar pearls. I also added large and small sugar pearls (the large ones have chocolate in them!) around the bottom edge.
Now for the microphone cupcakes! I filled each cone to the inner edge with batter.
Then I iced them, and rolled them in a bowl full of silver sprinkles. So pretty!
I made an insert for my cupcake carrier so the cones wouldn't tip over during transport.
And here is the finished product! So pink! So 1-D! So sparkly! I love it! And she loved it, even more importantly.
Whew! After two months of sewing sewing sewing, I finally had my craft show! Unfortunately it poured raining, and we had to be in the gym. It definitely hurt attendance, but I did make some sales despite it all! It was so fun to see the other artists and their work, including a student made 3D printer, Tye Dye Mary, and beautiful paintings, both student and professional.
Here's a few pics of my set up. I had two tables that I placed at angles to each other. I was really fun to see all of my work displayed so neatly in front of me.
Here's some of my bows, my headbands displayed on the stand I made, some pacifier straps and some super soft baby blankets with elephants on them!
This table had all of the teal, multi-color and helipcopter prints.
The second table had all of my silver and cardinal MBA colors. Matching outfits, hair bows, pacifier straps and burp cloths. I love how my poster of my promo pictures turned out. So cute!
The boys at MBA made us all signs for our spots. The color matches my collection!
I had a vinyl sign made at Staples (only $10 + shipping!) and hung some of the pieces. I think I like this part of the display the best!
It was a fun day. I sold some things, saw some friends, and visited with the other artists. Next step, set up and Etsy shop with the leftover inventory. Stay tuned!
