Cake and Jewelry

Side trip: valentine crayons

2012-02-12T07:40:00.000-06:00

This technique is not new; Ben and I have been talking about trying it out to make his crayon odds and ends useful for a long time. But I kept explaining to him that if we used a pan for making the crayons, we couldn't use it ever again for food products. This conversation took place no less than seven times. I've read about using cupcake tins with liners and that might be ok, but I just didn't want to run the risk of getting any of the crayon wax on my bakeware.

On our last trip to Target we stopped in the $1 section and saw some heart shaped silicon ice trays and I knew it was our chance.

We finally got out that bin of crayons and unwrapped them all, then tossed them into the trays.

We baked them in a 200 degree oven for about 15 minutes (maybe it was longer...I didn't really time it, just kept checking on them until they were melted) then let them cool and popped them out.

We packaged them up in individual bags and I cut decorative edging on cardstock for Ben to use for the header tags. He stamped each one and stapled them onto the individual bags to take to school next week. Valentines: done.

Side trip: Sharpie tie dye

2012-01-29T17:35:00.000-06:00

I've seen this tshirt tie dye technique all over the place on Pinterest. After I showed it to Ben, we decided we had to give it a try.

It's a lot less involved than traditional tie dye, so that's a plus. Just use a Sharpie marker to draw a design on a cotton surface and add rubbing alcohol to bleed it out. The instructions I've seen tell you to lay the drawing over a plastic cup and secure it with a rubber band before you add the rubbing alcohol with a dropper. We didn't have a dropper, so I just used an old syringe we had from a round of antibiotics and it worked fine.

Before:

And after:

This works great, but the cup also makes a definite edge to the bleeding. We also tried a couple of spots with words.

And agreed that pictures work better.

Really easy, and we had fun discovering the results with different designs. Instead of tshirts, we used cotton bandanas and plan to put a couple in simple frames for Ben to hang in his room. Once we were all done, I heat set the bandanas in the dryer. I also washed one to see how the color would work on a t shirt in case we decide to try that route later on; the marker definitely loses some of the vibrancy that way. Still fun, but very much like tie dying a tshirt with Rit dye.

Ben also drew a giant heart on one of the bandanas, and since that wouldn't fit over any plastic cup we had around the house, we laid that out over waxed paper and added the rubbing alcohol along the lines.

We had a great time and we'll definitely be trying this again. We've already gotten a couple more bandanas in solid colors to give it a whirl without the stark white background--I'm thinking that if we make smaller designs and cut them out with decorative edges, we can use them lots of different ways....little pictures to use in frames or stretch over embroidery hoops, maybe even a way to dress up the lids on jarcakes we send out for gifts.

Valentine surprise cookies

2012-01-21T10:25:00.000-06:00

Real life has been a little rough lately. Baking is a nice diversion, especially when it's with Ben. So even though it's a little bit early for Valentine's Day baking we decided to give these cookies a test run.

I found this whoopie pie pan a while ago. Initially I resisted it; I'm not much of a fan of the whole whoopie pie movement. Maybe I just need to find the right recipe, but so far I haven' t been too impressed with the whoopies I've tried. Anyway. At some point I decided to get the pan because it would make awesome, thick cookies.

Ben and I decided on peanut butter cookies and used my go-to recipe:

Peanut Butter Cookies

1/2 cup salted butter, softened
1/2 cup creamy peanut butter
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 large egg
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 1/4 cups flour

Mix the peanut butter, sugars, vanilla and butter until smooth, then add the egg.

Gradually mix in the dry ingredients.

Bake in a 375 degree preheated oven. If you are making regular cookies, bake for about 9 minutes. If you are making these in the whoopie pie pan, bake them a bit longer--I started checking them at 12 minutes but each batch probably baked more like 14 minutes.

Since this pan makes huge cookies, I decided there was room to add a chocolate center to each one--Ben said the chocolate would be a Valentine surprise, so we went with it, referring to them from that point forward as Valentine Surprise Cookies.

Put a scoop of the dough in each heart cavity, then flattened that down and added a chocolate piece. (Next time, I will add two pieces of chocolate. I was afraid there wouldn't really be enough room for that and the chocolate would be seeping out the top or sides of the cookies, but that wasn't the case!)

Add another scoop of dough on top and flatten that out to cover the chocolate.

We decided to drizzle chocolate over the top of ours and have a little bit of ice cream with them--they were pretty awesome.

We loved them so much we did another batch with chocolate chip cookie dough...

We'll keep using this pan to make cookies like this--they were really good and stayed soft. I froze a bunch of them and they were great a week later, so they will be a good option to make ahead for celebrations. Now I just have to think about flavor combinations...

Initial rings

2012-01-04T17:02:00.000-06:00

I'm not sure how many rings a person can have before it's too many, but I may be getting close to my lifetime limit. I wanted to make stacking rings and since I needed to make a test set, I made these for me.

I used 16 gauge sterling wire for the shanks and added small sterling discs with initials stamped into them, then hammered them to add some texture. I love how they turned out and I think they would be a nice, personal gift idea--maybe something for the Etsy shop.

Gingerbread house 2011

2012-01-01T21:11:00.000-06:00

Every year for the past...I don't know, nine years? We've made a gingerbread house over winter break to take with us to see our extended family. We use the same gingerbread recipe every year because it works well for construction and it also tastes pretty good, thankyouverymuch. I probably made the first six or seven houses without so much as trying the gingerbread part of the house because I pretty much hate gingerbread anything. But my sweet little sister talked me into trying it one year and then I ate half of the house by myself in the span of a few hours. Did I mention how sweet my little sister is for talking me into that so I could quadruple my calorie intake during the gingerbread house festivities? Anyway.

This year we crushed up candy canes to use in the windows (we didn't have any opaque candy, so the windows came out sort of a bright red. This was ok, but an ivory color works much better...lesson learned). I found these Wilton Holly Mix Sprinkles and totally cheated by using them on the wreath hanging over the window on the front of the house.

Here is the house pre-candified:

...and the finished product:

And my niece, giving us the best review we got for the house once we delivered it and demolition began--

Holiday cookies

2011-12-26T18:20:00.000-06:00

We made our holiday trays for neighbors a couple of weeks ago and included a lot of our usual elements--the chocolate covered pretzel sticks, brownies, and these cupcakes. My favorite addition to the trays were Chocolate Peppermint Bark Cookies. I'm not a big fan of the flavored Hershey's kisses, but I tried the candy cane flavor on these cookies and the amount of peppermint was perfect...not to mention that they were much less messy than my usual attempts to crumble up candy canes to use in this type of recipe.

I found the recipe here; basically they are just sugar cookie chunks topped with chocolate and peppermint...a great flavor combination for the holidays.

Holiday glass beads

2011-12-06T16:45:00.000-06:00

It was finally time to take the little glass Halloween characters off of Ben's backpack...but we had so much fun with those that I wanted to do something similar with holiday characters.

Here's what we ended up with--a snowman, an elf, a penguin and Santa.

I really loved the little snowman, so I made a few more to mail out to my youngest nieces. Hopefully they will love them as much as I do!

Holiday bottle necklaces

2011-12-02T19:32:00.000-06:00

The last few weeks have been packed with activity. Coordinating the Bizarre Bazaar event took more work than I could have ever imagined, but it was successful and I'm glad I had the opportunity to be involved at that level of things. We had 147 artists at the show this year--the most we've ever had--and now that we are a week out from it, it seems that most of the loose ends are taken care of and it's time to go back to everyday life.

So...remember these? Even though I think they are definitely what I would pick to hang around a wine bottle or my favorite soda, I decided to make a few others with holiday messages on them.

Bottle necklaces

2011-11-10T18:49:00.000-06:00

After I made these, I had a discussion with my father and sister about how to incorporate those types of beads into other things. Dad brought up the idea of bottle necklaces and I had absolutely no idea what he was talking about.

I guess in the late 1800s/early 1900s, people often kept their alcohol in decanters with labels hanging from them to distinguish between the different types. So something like this:

That conversation started the crazy ideas rolling. Here's the thing: I know not one single person who owns decanters and would want a label like that....all of the bottles have paper labels on them. Sara mentioned seeing bottle necklaces as more of a decorative element, so that was the direction I went.

These are the first few...and very much my sense of humor, so who knows if they will actually appeal to anyone else. Time will tell!

Party cakes

2011-11-07T20:07:00.002-06:00

Last week I made two cakes for parties...one for a going away celebration and another for a birthday.

The first one, a cake for someone moving on to a new job, included a caricature of the guest of honor sitting in a little sailboat with his guitar and a cup of coffee.

The second cake was one of my favorite flavor combinations--a chocolate cake with peanut butter ganache and peanut butter cup filling and peanut butter frosting. This was for a birthday and had the guest of honor sitting with his backpack and sketchbook, looking over a map.

Now it's really time for me to turn my attention to prepping for the Bizarre Bazaar--it's less than three weeks away!

More Halloween beads

2011-10-24T19:59:00.004-05:00

Ben wanted to give out the Halloween beads on backpack clips for favors at his birthday party, so I made more of these. I added some pumpkins and mummies to the mix and made sure all of them had great glow in the dark elements.

And then there was this guy:

Um, no. This was my stab at Frankenstein, but he looks more like Frankenstein dressing as Groucho Marx for a Halloween party. So I set that one aside and may try again, but it's getting late in the season to keep turning out the Halloween characters....maybe next year.

The second birthday cake

2011-10-21T19:42:00.007-05:00

The Monster House rice krispie cake was gone by the time Ben's actual birthday rolled around. For his celebration at home, he picked a chocolate cake in the shape of a pumpkin. I told myself I was going to make it small since it was the second cake and it was just for our family....but that didn't really happen.

I made two chocolate cakes in bundt pans and stacked them with chocolate malt buttercream filling and frosting. Before I covered them with fondant I turned a small mason jar over (I have a lot of those around) to put in the center part of the cake to support the stem.

A round of airbrush (have I mentioned how much I love that machine??) and some black fondant pieces for the face finished it off.

I didn't know where to put the candle, so I made a chocolate shot glass with this silicone Halloween mold and filled it with frosting to hold it. The online reviews for it aren't very good, but I've used it with poured sugar and chocolate and it's easy to use and always works on the first try.

Time to turn my attention back to the jewelry for a while...the Bizarre Bazaar is in about a month and I still have a lot of prep to do for that!

Monster House cake

2011-10-18T20:41:00.017-05:00

October is a big deal in our house. Both of the boys' birthdays fall in the middle of the month, and Ben and I adore Halloween. We watch Halloween shows and movies on Nickelodeon and Disney over and over again (how many Halloweentown movies are there anyway?). One of our favorites is Monster House, and Ben decided he wanted the cake for his birthday party to look like the house in that movie...something like this:

But the party was at a gymnastics place and I wanted to do cupcakes for ease. We agreed the house would be more decoration-- like a cupcake tower topper-- that we would bring back home. I considered using a Styrofoam structure, but really. What’s the fun in that? I went with a giant rice krispie instead.

Since this was more showpiece and less dessert, I wanted to be sure it was stable enough to hang around for a couple of days. I coated the entire thing in chocolate, then cream cheese frosting, and finally fondant.

Lots of details followed...poured sugar for the glass windows, little LED lights to go inside the windows, airbrushing...and chocolate-dipped grape stems for trees. Ben loved how it turned out!

Peanut butter cup brownies in a jar

2011-10-06T17:44:00.006-05:00

Since shipping cupcakes in a jar worked out so well, I decided to try it out with brownies to see how they would fare...I think they are actually better than the cake--everyone who tried them approved.

I started with brownie batter and added chopped up Reese's peanut butter cups (you can't go wrong with that combination. Ever). I baked them in the smaller mason jars at a lower temperature (325) because they were so thick. I ended up leaving them in the oven for almost 45 minutes--I just kept checking them until they were done since I had no idea how long to let them bake.

Anything in the jars does better with a ganache over the top, so Ben helped me make peanut butter ganache and pour it in over the brownies. We had a few after dinner and I froze the rest overnight. We shipped a bunch of them to Grandma for her birthday--success! I will definitely be making more of these.

Peanut Butter Ganache
*This recipe is for a thin ganache consistency--if I wanted to use it for filling or frosting a cake I would reduce the cream or increase the chocolate a bit
* 10 ounces milk chocolate, coarsely chopped
* 1/2 cup smooth peanut butter
* 1 cup heavy cream
* 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

To make the ganache, put the chocolate and peanut butter into a heatproof bowl and set it aside. Pour the vanilla extract and the cream into a saucepan over medium heat and bring it to a simmer. Pour the cream over the chocolate mixture, cover, and let it all sit until the chocolate is mostly melted--about two minutes. After that, stir the mixture until the everything is completely melted and smooth.

Glass practice

2011-09-18T11:20:00.015-05:00

There is no wasted session when it comes to glass. Even though it's possible to spend two hours over the torch and end up without a useable bead (this happens often), I learn something about the way the glass moves in the heat and where to place extra glass if I want to move a design element to the middle or the side...it's always helpful to the beads I make later on.

Last week Ben drew some adorable little Halloween characters and asked me if I would make him some beads like the guys in his picture. Halloween is one of my favorite times of the year, so there was no way I was going to turn down the request.

So here is what I came up with--
the spider:

and the skull:

But I couldn't just stop there...so I made a few more things to go along with those two.

A witch:

I love the wart.

A ghost:

A bat:

and an eyeball:

Here is the whole group:

and the final set put together for Ben to use as a zipper pull on his backpack:

But what is Halloween anything without glow in the dark elements? So I embedded some glow in the dark glass in the layers...awesome.

Broom cast pieces

2011-09-12T17:20:00.002-05:00

I love everything about broom casting. The process is involved but the ability to put my silver scrap to genuine use is fantastic. (Especially now that silver is $40 an ounce!)

Retrieving the broom cast pieces from the straw is like opening presents--there are fabulous surprises in there. Some duds too, but it's very cool to see the results. Some of the silver sort of wraps around the individual straw pieces and I have to slide them off the end to see what it looks like. Those are great to use in jewelry because they have little areas that stick out and under and I can tuck a few pieces together.

Assembling them into an actual useable piece of jewelry is extremely time consuming. It's like putting together a teeny tiny puzzle by dropping the pieces into place with tweezers. I map out the piece by laying it all out, then take it apart to flux and add solder to it, then put the puzzle back together again, hopefully in the same (ish) order it was in before. My family thinks I'm out at my workbench making jewelry, but in my head I'm really doing this:

I have the tweezers. I grasp the silver and care.full.y. place it where I think it will go. Sometimes it stays there, but it often slides or falls, occasionally taking other pieces with it. So all of this stacking and re-stacking takes forever.

The soldering is also a guessing game; under the torch the piece seems to swell from the heat and the flux as it sort of bubbles up. When everything settles back in, the pieces don't always end up where they're supposed to. Soldering the broom castings = multiple attempts.

So it can be frustrating and unrewarding. But when it works, it's glorious...probably because the road to the final product is filled with disappointments.

Over the holiday weekend I made broom castings to work with and made two rings. Forget the sanding and polishing--just the broom casting sessions and the soldering took almost four hours.

But I love them. And that's really an understatement. I think they're weird and cool and interesting and fun all at the same time. And if nobody else thinks so....well, they both fit me and I would be happy to keep them!

Not so hi hats

2011-09-08T18:56:00.001-05:00

I've seen these all over the blogosphere and have wanted to try them for literally years--Hi Hat cupcakes. I'm not sure where the name really comes from but the concept is simple...cupcakes with chocolate dipped frosting.

I started with chocolate cupcakes and peanut butter frosting (as far as I'm concerned you can never go wrong with that combination). The general idea is that you swirl the frosting high on top of the cupcake--at least that's how I've seen them in the past--then put them in the freezer for a while to firm up before dipping them in melted chocolate.

I think my frosting turned out to be more like regular height...something to keep in mind for the next time. Once they were all frosted, I put them in the freezer while I got the chocolate coating ready.

I poured a bag of milk chocolate chips in a glass pyrex measuring cup and heated it in the microwave for 20 seconds at a time, stirring in between, until they were completely melted. I added a couple of tablespoons of peanut oil (I'm not sure it has to be peanut oil, but I had a little note from some recipe I found forever ago that said peanut oil...so that's what I used) and stirred it in. I dipped the frosting portion of the semi-frozen cupcakes in the chocolate sauce and set them up to cool--easy. Messy, but easy.

The only downside to these is that you have to store them in the fridge. If they are left out at room temperature, the chocolate doesn't hold up too well.

Glass focal bead

2011-09-05T09:31:00.003-05:00

This lampwork bead is another product of the vacation time I took at the beginning of the school year. I added green copper glass and fine silver beads to an ivory base, then finished it with a leather cord and sterling silver findings.

Vacation goodies

2011-08-26T21:20:00.008-05:00

Ever since I became a mother, my vacation days from work have primarily been about my kids' schedules. I take vacation days at the beginning of school to make sure everyone gets started ok, I take vacation days at the end of school to attend all of the ceremonies and do a little celebration to kick off the start of summer. I take vacation days when school is out to be home with the kids.

One of the things I love about the school days off is that I can spend lots of time with the kids (well, "kid". One will hang out with me and the other won't, but I should take that up with a therapist rather than in a blog post) but also have several hours in between to work on my own projects. Generally these activities swirl around cake or jewelry and I can get completely lost in either of those for hours. I walk around with my phone in my pocket, earphones plugged in, listening to satellite radio through an app for hours. Most often it's the 80s music channel. And I sing. Loudly and very badly. So lucky passers-by can surely hear me when I work at the jewelry bench in the garage with the door open. Nothing recharges me like working with glass and metal does, especially with the music playing and hours before I have to be anywhere.

So last week with the start of school, I took Wednesday through Friday off. I probably got at least eight hours of bench time in, and it made me ridiculously happy.

I started with some metal work; earrings and a necklace from 12 gauge sterling:

Catching up

2011-08-19T17:45:00.003-05:00

I have actually been making things, I just haven't gotten things organized and photographed. So this is just a quick update.

My sister made a lemon/blueberry cake for some friends who were getting married and asked if I would help decorate it. So she made all of the materials and I just put it together. I think she uses an Italian meringue buttercream recipe-it sounded like the recipes I've seen for it, anyway. I've never tried it, and that's because every single review I've seen for it raved about how it wasn't as sweet as a regular buttercream. Why would anyone want that? It was really light and fluffy...like decorating with stabilized whipped cream. Easy to frost with, but not so good for piping.

I've also done some glass work in the last couple of weeks, starting with a few simple necklaces on leather cords.

Spinner bracelet

2011-08-07T16:26:00.001-05:00

One of the reasons I buy books on jewelry making techniques is because I seem to take in the information in layers. I read about a process, try it, move on to other projects, then go back to the book and realize there is something I could do to improve my work. This is especially true with lampwork and metal forming.

Last weekend my kids and I went home to visit my parents, most of my siblings, and their kids and/or significant others. (Yes, I still call it "home" and always will.) When I packed, I stuck the Complete Metalsmith: Professional Edition and Foldforming books in my bag for downtime reading. I reread a few of the sections right before bed (I did put them aside to go downstairs and ask the youngsters to quiet down at one point...you know you are the old hag sibling when you issue noise citations for a card game at 11:30pm) and was inspired to do some metalwork when I got back.

I love using stakes to forge metal, but I have a lot to learn...maybe I just like to smash the metal with a hammer. I worked copper over a metal stake with a plastic tipped hammer to form a concave bracelet. Then I used a ball peen hammer on parts of the metal for some texture and decided to give it a little spinner detail, like these rings.

Twins! cake

2011-07-31T11:51:00.007-05:00

I made this lemon cake with cream cheese frosting for a fashionista mother who had twin boys. She has fabulous shoes, so the gumpaste slingbacks seemed like a good choice, adding a baby into each one.

The mother's sign of good luck is a red bird, so I used an exacto knife to cut one out of fondant and added it to the back of the topper.

It's been a very long time since I made fondant figures, and I forgot how much prep time goes into them--lots of tools spread out over a large area. I used to have this process organized fairly efficiently, but I'm sure this time it took me much longer than it needed to because I kept putting away tools and having to get them out again...hopefully I will remember those things for the next time?

Floating gems

2011-07-25T06:57:00.000-05:00

I've been thinking about making these rings for a long time but couldn't devote the bench time until last weekend. The general idea is that the settings sort of float between your fingers when you wear them--very little of the shank is visible.

I made two of them--think assembly line--and I almost gave up on both of them. In the planning process, I apparently gave not a single thought to the fact that I would have to balance the settings on the flattened top of the ring shanks to solder them on. I finally got them on by sweat soldering the spots and using cross locking tweezers to drop the tube settings into their resting places. That might have been attempt #17, and I was just relieved to get something to work.

All of the stones are 2mm; one ring has lavender cubic zirconia in the tube settings and the other, peridot. I'm happy with the end result, but I don't know that I will be making more of these anytime soon...

Wedding cakes and cupcakes

2011-07-16T10:20:00.008-05:00

Last weekend I made 96 cupcakes and a couple of small cakes for a friend's wedding.

On the menu:

Chocolate malt cupcakes
Raspberry lemonade cupcakes
Chocolate cupcakes with raspberry buttercream frosting
Lemon cupcakes with cream cheese frosting
A double layer six inch flourless chocolate cake with cream cheese filling and frosting
A double layer six inch chocolate cake with cookies and cream filling and frosting.

These were all recipes I have used before, so it was just a matter of organizing my time to get it all put together in time to deliver. I put all of the frosting ingredients out on the counter so the butter and cream cheese could soften while I got the cupcakes ready so I could just pipe the frosting on right before transporting them.

So.
Much.
Butter.

I was happy with the results--this is the way I would want to do a party myself. Lots of variety and interesting flavors.

(Incredible cake photos by Hally Crangle)

The two best recipes to come out of this combination were the cookies and cream frosting and the flourless chocolate cake, so I'll share those:

Flourless Chocolate Cake

1 cup water
1 1/2 cups sugar
36 ounces of semi sweet chocolate chips
2 cups salted butter
12 eggs

Prepare two six inch cake pans by spraying with olive oil spray and lining the bottom with parchment paper.
Heat the water, salt and sugar on the stove until all combined and set aside.
Melt the chocolate in a glass dish in the microwave in 30 second bursts, stirring in between each session. Put this into the electric mixing bowl
Cut the butter into pieces and add them to the chocolate very slowly--beat in each piece before adding the next. Then add the hot water/sugar mixture.
Add the eggs to the mixture very slowly, one at a time.
Pour the batter into the prepared pan. Put each of the cake pans into a larger cake pan then fill the outer pan about halfway with very hot water to create a water bath.
Bake the cakes in a preheated 300 degree oven for 55 minutes or until they firm up a bit; the centers of the cakes will still look wet when they come out of the oven.
Remove from the water bath and cover tightly (while still in the pans) when cool enough to handle. Chill the cakes overnight in the fridge. To remove, dip the bottom of the cake pan in hot water for 10-15 seconds, run a knife around the outer edge of the cake, then invert onto a plate or cake board.

Cookies and Cream Frosting

1 cup of salted butter, softened
1.5 tsp vanilla
4 to 4.5 cups of powdered sugar (adjust to desired consistency)
A couple of sleeves of crushed up Oreos or Newman O's, whichever you prefer

Beat the butter and vanilla until fluffy, add the powdered sugar a cup at a time, then add the cookies and continue to mix. This is not a frosting that can easily be piped onto cupcakes because of the cookies--better for spreading on a cake or using for filling.

Copper fold forming

2011-07-09T08:44:00.002-05:00

I made a giant copper cuff bracelet last year that people were very drawn to. At the Bizarre Bazaar, people would be walking by my booth and stop when they saw that cuff, even if their intention seemed to be to pass me by. The problem with it was that it was really too big; most bracelets are about seven to eight inches in length, and the cuff was more like nine. I kept thinking about cutting it down, but I put it in my Etsy shop and got involved in other things. About a month ago, it sold (much to my surprise); I shipped it out but decided I would make another one in a smaller size.

I love the process of fold forming because it's so organic. I don't feel like there is a wrong way to do it and the textures and patterns are incredible. Fold forming in copper is oddly gratifying because it is such a soft metal and seems to be a natural fit to the technique. Don't get me wrong--sterling is great too, but I would pick copper any day over the silver when it comes to fold forming.

I ended up making one much like the original:

as well as another fold formed cuff:

and some fold formed earrings:

Random bits

2011-07-03T07:50:00.002-05:00

I've been pretty scattered the last couple of weeks with cake and jewelry work, and getting the photos up just never came together. So this is more of a catch up post than anything else.

I did some sterling fold forming last weekend that I used for earrings. The first pair is about an inch long and the second is about an inch and a half--pretty big pieces.

I've done several lampworking sessions lately and am starting to put the beads to use--this pair of earrings was a gift, so I had to get them done and out first.

On the cake front, I helped my friend Kelli do the decorating for a wedding cake. She was looking for a way to get a floral damask pattern on the cake without piping it on in frosting. I downloaded an image and used the Make The Cut software with the Cricut Cake to cut out the pattern and we arranged it on the cake tiers the night before the wedding. Make no mistake--this was her project; I only helped with the damask pattern on the sides. Kelli baked the cakes, she covered them, she added the monogram and the flowers. It turned out fabulous, if you ask me--we make a great team!

Lampwork and silver rings

2011-06-19T12:38:00.001-05:00

After many failed attempts, I finally made a couple of lampwork cabachons that I am happy with. I set them in silver and made rings out of them to put in my Etsy shop.

The first one has three tiny beads of fine silver embedded in the surface:

...and the second one is more organic looking and has a matte finish:

Copper love

2011-06-12T20:12:00.002-05:00

This post could also be called, "texture love".

I made several pairs of earrings over the weekend with some copper I ran through the rolling mill with sandpaper. I used 16 gauge sterling jump rings to connect the discs and finished the copper with a patina to highlight the texture of each piece. I like these enough that I may actually keep a pair...

Pendants

2011-06-04T08:13:00.001-05:00

I got some bench time in over the long weekend and made a couple of pendants--one is a gift and one will go into my Etsy shop.

The first one is a very simple sterling pendant--stamped with flowers and oxidized. I added a little pink Swarovski crystal dangle.

The other one is made of brass that has been hammered and dapped with a sterling cross soldered onto it. This sterling has been through a lot--it's one of the ingots I made recently then put through the rolling mill with steel wool.

Ice cream cake

2011-05-28T09:42:00.000-05:00

Even though Gage won't eat cake anymore, he has realized that giving decorated cakes to people has some value and has asked me to make cakes for a couple of his friends for birthdays in lieu of taking them a gift. I made a two tiered animal print cake for a Sweet 16 party (and was running so late with it that I didn't even get a picture of it!!) for his friend a couple of weeks ago. When he asked if I was willing to make another birthday cake I was happy to have a reason to make one--and even more excited when he asked if it could be an ice cream cake. Something I hadn't tried before.

I decided that since I only had a few days to put it together I wouldn't try to make my own ice cream. The texture can sometimes be an issue, so I went to Dairy Queen and bought several quarts of their soft serve. While I was there I scoped out their cakes to get an idea of how to layer mine.

A lot of this cake could be prepped ahead, so I started by lining cake pans with saran wrap then filled them with the ice cream and stuck them in the freezer. I crushed chocolate cookies and coated them in melted chocolate to keep them crunchy in the fudge sauce filling and set that aside.

Decoration instructions were minimal: Something Hello Kitty. I made an image for the top of the cake using the piped chocolate method, but this time found a picture online to use rather than drawing my own. This is a really simple, fast way to get a decent image on a cake without trying to pipe frosting free hand on top of the cake. Fast as in like less than ten minutes start to finish, and that's always good for someone like me who will work on details right up until the deadline.

When it was time to really put the cake together all I had left to do was make the whipped frosting. I found a recipe for stabilized whipped cream online and went with it--I needed something that would hold up better than just whipped topping. This tasted really good and was perfect for the cake:

Stabilized Whipped Cream Frosting

(adapted from allrecipes.com)

4 tsp cold water
1 tsp unflavored gelatin
1 cup heavy whipping cream
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/4 cup powdered sugar

Combine cold water and gelatin in a small dish until the mixture combines, then heat the mixture on the stove until the gelatin dissolves. Remove from the heat and allow it to cool for several minutes. Add a bit of the cream into the gelatin mixture and stir until incorporated (I learned the hard way that this will help keep the gelatin from clumping). In a mixing bowl, beat the whipping cream and powdered sugar. Slowly add the gelatin/cream combination to the mixing bowl and continue to whip until stiff.

The assembly was a little bit frustrating since I had to keep running the cake to the basement freezer to keep in from melting in between steps. But the finished product was worth the effort, and I made sure I made enough of everything for a cake at our house too...for Fat Sunday, my favorite time of the week.

Glass gifts

2011-05-23T09:30:00.000-05:00

http://hallygracephotography.com/homeWhen I made the PB/chocolate cupcakes for my sisters, I also gave them some jewelry. I sent the Doc a couple of pairs of earrings and made Hally a necklace. Since she had taken those incredible pictures of my torch work, I decided to make her a glass cabochon and set in sterling. I said that very casually, but every single attempt I had made at the glass cabochon up until that point had failed miserably. In fact, many of them had ended up on the garage floor after practically leaping off of the mandrel with me hopping around trying to avoid a burned foot.

This one was a success--just layers and layers and layers of glass. I gave the sterling setting a matte finish because that is a bit easier to maintain...minor scratches and tarnish aren't an issue as much as something with a shiny polish on it.

The other bead I made during that glass session was a replacement for a friend who had a simple necklace I made a long time ago. She lost the necklace, so I recreated the bead (as best I could remember--I know it is similar, but glass has a way of moving around in ways that make replication impossible for me) on leather cording for her.

Peanut butter chocolate cupcakes

2011-05-17T07:47:00.007-05:00

I have two sisters graduating this semester. One is an amazing artist and the other a doctor. As in PhD. Pretty incredible, right? I think so. I couldn't let these occasions pass by without doing something for them. Since my cupcakes in a jar trial run was a success, I decided to do another batch of them in a flavor I know they both love: Peanut butter and chocolate. I made a double batch; half in the jars for the grad girls and the other half as regular cupcakes.

I started with dark chocolate fudge cupcakes and filled them with milk chocolate ganache, then layered chopped mini Reese's cups with peanut butter frosting.

I didn't have a recipe for the PB frosting, so I just adapted a basic buttercream by cutting the butter and replacing it with peanut butter. I was worried about it being too oily, but it turned out fluffy and light--perfecto. In fact, it turns out that this frosting is dangerous for me. I could have easily sat on the couch with the entire mixer bowl full and a spoon, inhaling it and happily watching trashy television all day.

Peanut Butter Frosting

1/2 cup salted butter
1 cup creamy peanut butter
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
4+ cups powdered sugar (I started with four cups and kept adding a little more until I got the texture I wanted--this may have been almost five cups)

Whip the butter and peanut butter to a fluffy consistency. Add vanilla extract and then the powdered sugar a half cup at a time.

Milk Chocolate Ganache Filling

8 oz milk chocolate chips
4 oz heavy whipping cream

Heat the cream on the stove. Put the chocolate chips into a glass bowl and pour the cream over the top. Cover and let this rest for about five minutes then whisk.

In the jars, I reversed the frosting and the ganache because it helps sort of seal in the cupcake and keep things fresh. I froze them and sent some of them UPS to Dr. Susan and served the others when Hally was over for lunch.

More rolling mill earrings

2011-05-11T08:03:00.032-05:00

I started these projects a very long time ago, but couldn't seem to figure out how I wanted to use the metal. I rolled a sheet of brass with some sort of flexible screen I found in the garage.

Here's where I can get in trouble. Sometimes I get some sort of weird tactile crush on metal like this. I run my fingers over it again and again while I'm trying to figure out what I want to make. I tell myself I'm thinking. Or letting the metal tell ME what it wants to be. That's really just BS. One of my sisters used to rub her blanket while she sucked her thumb when she was little for comfort. I think this is my version of that...except I'm pushing 40 and I'm supposed to be a responsible adult.

Anyway. Flash forward three weeks, when I finally decided I would cut discs out of the brass.

Lots of them. Like 30. At this stage, they lose their soothing quality because my fingers hit the edge of the disc almost immediately. I had such grandiose ideas about what to do with them...and most of them involved using every single one in one pair of earrings in some sort of metal cascade. This failed and I put them aside for another couple of weeks.

So here is what I ended up with for the first pair--oxidized and hanging with smoky quartz.

The rest of them are sitting in a big pile on my desk. I keep picking them up and looking at them, but that's about as far as it has gone. I still think about the metal cascade and might be hoping the answer to that construction will come to me in the middle of the night.

I also had some sterling sheet I had rolled with steel wool (in case you don't know this, steel wool is incredibly messy when you pull it apart. I'm not sure I will ever have every bit actually cleaned up) that I finally turned into a pair of earrings:

Personalized pendants

2011-05-07T07:43:00.001-05:00

My nieces' birthdays are fairly close together--one in April and one in May. When I send the girls their gifts, I usually send one package with both presents. This year, I had big plans: I was going to make them each a sterling pendant with their name stamped into it with a crystal the color of their birthstone. I had the plan. I had the materials. What I lacked, apparently, was the motivation to get both pendants done in time for the first birthday. So I sent a gift certificate for the April birthday. But I have siblings, and I understand the code. I could no longer call these necklaces "birthday gifts", because I had screwed up the timeline. I couldn't send one girl a gift certificate and the other a personalized handcrafted necklace...so now these necklaces are "just because" gifts and the May birthday girl also got a gift certificate.

A couple of birthday cakes

2011-05-03T17:45:00.014-05:00

I made mini cakes for a couple of people recently to celebrate their birthdays.

The first was for a fashionista friend--the one I made the tiny edible shoe and giant cupcake for last year. This year I went with a mini clutch purse "cakelet"--a one or two serving size cake--since she wouldn't want to have an entire cake at home. I froze my chocolate cake, then stacked, frosted and carved it before I covered it with fondant. I used the spray color on the fondant for the base color and then painted the leopard pattern on.

The other cake wasn't so much a cake as it was cake-shaped. Sara looooooves rice krispie treats with frosting (I mean, who doesn't??). So I made her a double layer rice krispie cake covered with cream cheese frosting for her birthday. There wasn't much I could do with it in terms of decoration--the frosting trim I tried to put around it just wouldn't stay put--so I just pressed m&ms on the top and around the bottom of it. It isn't the prettiest thing, but that isn't really what mattered this time.

Cheeseburger and fries

2011-05-01T08:04:00.003-05:00

Ben's school carnival was this weekend, and one of the activities was a cake walk. We decided to enter the cake decorating contest portion of the cake walk with something he was interested in making and could also be very involved with: a giant cheeseburger and fries. There were five categories with a prize awarded for the winner of each one, and the cheeseburger cake could fit into almost any of them.

During the week, I baked and froze several mini loaves of poundcake, a giant brownie, and a yellow cake. We got all of those out on Saturday morning, and Ben made the buttercream frosting and tinted it red to look like ketchup.

He cut all of the poundcake into zig-zag shapes to look like fries and I monitored them under the broiler.

Then he made the "cheese" slices out of Laffy Taffy by running them through the pasta attachment on the mixer then cutting random circles in them with cookie cutters (this was his favorite part).

He rolled out red fruit slices to make tomatoes and we put together the same green chocolate-covered cereal we made for the April Fool's sub sandwiches. I helped him stack the cake and he added all of the toppings and the frosting. We dusted the top with sesame seeds, arranged the fries, and added a little dipping container of frosting ketchup. Done!

His cake won the most creative shape category, which earned him a free bundle of carnival tickets. He was really proud of his cake, telling anyone who mentioned it about rolling out the Laffy Taffy. A fun day for both of us!

Lampwork process: pictures

2011-04-25T19:39:00.009-05:00

My talented sister/favorite photographer Hally took video and pictures of me working over the torch recently for a school project. I hadn't done any glasswork in a long time and it was nice to get back to it!

April Fool's Day take out

2011-04-02T08:15:00.003-05:00

Last year on April Fool's Day, Ben and I put together these TV dinner cupcakes for his daycare.

This year we decided to go with another sweet treat dressed up as a main course.

French fries

and sub sandwiches

We found the idea for both of these components in the book, What's New, Cupcake? and I started clearing my calendar. Every time I have made any of the cupcakes from that book, it has taken hours to prep all of the components. The end result doesn't disappoint, but I often steer away from those projects simply because I can't put in that much time.

The fries are made from crinkle cut pound cake put under the broiler to give them some color (for every one usable fry, there were three burned ones). Mini cupcakes topped with tinted frosting were simple and worked out well for the little ketchup cups on the side.

The bread on the sandwich is the top half of a mini loaf of pound cake, brushed with edible glue and sprinkled with sesame seeds. The lunch meat and cheese were made from Laffy Taffy candy that I rolled through the pasta attachment on the mixer. The lettuce is Special K cereal coated in melted chocolate (I suggest you do not try one of these just to see how they taste...I ate half of the first batch without even realizing it) and the tomato is a fruit slice, rolled flat.

I packaged each sandwich with some fries and a ketchup cup in a plastic clamshell container and dropped them off at the daycare. They were a big hit, Ben was happy, and I have an entire year to recuperate from all of the ridiculous prep that had to go into these!

Rolling mill, take one.

2011-03-23T18:37:00.001-05:00

I've been playing around to get a feel for the textures I can get on metal with the rolling mill, and I finally put some of the pieces together to create a finished pair of earrings.

The little discs were rolled with steel wool (I love the texture, but the mess was almost not worth it...almost) and the larger discs were rolled with a paper towel. I cleaned and polished the pieces, then them with a hard boiled egg. I'm happy with the result--hopefully I will get more of the rolling mill pieces finished this week while we are on Spring Break.

Faux cupcakes

2011-03-14T19:53:00.002-05:00

My sister's birthday was last week, and she came through town yesterday. All of the siblings pulled together for a gift, and Sara and I planned dinner out to celebrate. That left just one item on the to-do list....what to do for dessert?

After considering cake and cupcakes, I decided to go with an old standby favorite: Rice Krispie treats. Ben and I decided to make them in cupcake form, since we were taking them to a restaurant and needed to have something portable.

But isn't everything better with frosting? And we needed a little bit of personalization, so I made some chocolate "32s" to put in some of them.

These were way better than any cupcake I've ever had...but I don't care much about the cake portion of a cupcake, so keep that in mind. Frosting. On top of a Rice Krispie treat. Awesome.

Happy Birthday, Susan!

Cupcakes in a Jar. Or, How to Ship a Cupcake

2011-03-05T07:15:00.003-06:00

Someone (it was my mother) told me that anything can be shipped. I didn't really believe that...I mean, yes, it's probably technically true, but that doesn't automatically mean it's a good idea. I have seen these things to send individual cupcakes:

But the empty space between the frosting and the top of the container made me think the cupcakes wouldn't arrive in one non-messy piece. So I did some surfing on the web to find some other options, and I finally decided to send cupcakes in a jar and let go of my ideas of how a proper cupcake should be presented.

Instead of making cupcakes in wrappers and a pan, I lined up glass canning jars up on a cookie sheet and filled them about halfway. Don't do this. It was too much batter--they baked completely over the top of every jar and I had to throw the cake away, wash all of the jars and start over. So I tried again, filling them about a third of the way.

I wanted to add ganache to help kind of seal the cupcakes into the jars, so I used this recipe that I made for the neighbor trays at Christmas. Once the cake was completely cool, I added the frosting and ganache to the jars, then put them in the freezer. I had a couple of taste testers try them out to make sure they were ok (you know I really hate the mint stuff, so I wasn't going to do it) and that functionally, they weren't too awkward. You have to eat these with a spoon, but it's nice because you can get a little bit from each layer of the jar in each bite. *I looked for wide mouth mason jars but found none--I think those would be even better.*

I used a giant circular scrapbooking punch and some ribbon to add a little bit of color to the lids, then wrapped the jars in plenty of bubble wrap and boxed them up.

They weren't going too far, so I didn't feel the need to overnight them and just went with UPS ground shipping. This particular shipment went to my Grandma, who shares my love of frosting and is recovering from a recent medical procedure. She sent me an email (she's a very hip Grandma--she's on Facebook too) to let me know she got them and it sounds like they arrived in good shape. Success!

Birthday celebrations

2011-02-26T07:56:00.007-06:00

Last weekend was full of cake. First, there was this cake for a baby shower:

This went to a baby shower for twin boys (get it? The two little blue bees on top?) and was a new and slightly improved version of the first beehive cake I did several months ago. Getting a decent picture of this cake was not something I really figured out--it's very tall and as with all cake deliveries, I had about 30 seconds to try to capture it on film before I needed to get moving to drop it off on time.

Once that delivery was complete, I turned my attention to a theme party for my one year old niece. My sister only gave me direction in one word: Gnomes. (Then she asked me not to "go crazy". I decided she did that to be polite...I mean, she knows me. I don't know how to just quietly say, 'Happy Birthday' to anyone, let alone an adorable niece.)

I found a few things at the party store--a tablecloth that looked like it was a blanket of grass, some tableware and balloons. Check.

The cake was a little toadstool house with a sleeping gnome on the side of it. But the best part was the mushroom top--it was one giant rice krispie treat covered in a layer of cream cheese frosting and then fondant. I'm not going to pretend that wasn't the best part of the entire cake. It was.

Ben and I found a quick and easy gnome costume online that we made with felt. We made hats for everyone and little beards to go along with them, but the fumes from the adhesive on them proved to be a little bit much to casually wear the beards around as I had envisioned. We tried, though!

It was a fun little party and wonderful to get to spend some time with my sisters!

Side trip: Bedazzling

2011-02-21T19:48:00.000-06:00

I freely admit it. I am drawn to things that a lot of people consider gaudy. I love big hair, lots of makeup, and sparkly stuff in general. I think it comes from my 80's experience.

So I'm enamored with the idea of bedazzling. I know I shouldn't like it, but I do. When I was visiting my parents last fall, I talked to my mom about the need for everyone in the family to have a shirt with their names bedazzled on the back of them.

A few weeks ago, I saw this in the craft store:

and it was super cheap. Eight bucks for the bedazzler thing and a ton of bedazzles. I stood in the aisle, fantasizing about all of the STUFF Ben and I could make with it. So I got one.

We started with some little projects...a tote bag, an apron for my sister. But I kept thinking we needed to do something...bigger.

I thought my mom needed something, but what's the point of bedazzling if you don't personalize it? Since she prepares taxes, Ben and I got her a sweater wrap to wear in the office and just baaaaaaarely decorated the front of it with a little tastefully restrained pattern of silver stones (well, not really stones, but whatever they are) on each side.

And the back:

Isn't that FUN??!! Business in the front, party in the back.

I'm still looking around for other items to bedazzle, so if you are relieved you haven't gotten anything like this sweater from me, just be warned: yours may be on its way soon.

Nothing.

2011-02-13T10:07:00.005-06:00

That's what it probably appears I have been doing. That isn't entirely true....but my attention has been focused on family life and I haven't gotten any pictures loaded to post until now.

I've been playing around with the rolling mill to get different textures on silver, brass and copper--I love that thing! (Is it wrong that I consider it a cardio session when I run the metal through the rollers about 20 times? I mean, I break a sweat and my arms are usually sore the next day...I say it counts.) I'll post some of those pictures in the next week or so.

But first, I can't go through a holiday with no caking.

I found these Conversation Hearts Kits at Micheals, but wish I had picked up more than two of them. I haven't seen them since then, and I have looked online, at Micheals, Hobby Lobby, WalMart...no luck. They have giant blank sweetheart candy hearts and a food marker inside, and I was a bit skeptical because there are two kinds of food writers, as far as I can tell. The kind you can get in the baking aisle of the grocery store and the kind you can get in more specialized stores. The grocery store food writers are terrible. Some of the others work well. My point is that it's a crapshoot when it comes to these things and it would make the whole kit sort of ridiculous if the markers were no good.

The markers were A-W-E-S-O-M-E. Ben and I colored an entire kit to try them out and had a fabulous time.

We sent the other kit to Ben's after school group with cupcakes so they could make their own personalized treats.

Making ingots

2011-01-02T19:16:00.004-06:00

When I hear the word, "ingot", I immediately think of a pile of gold like this:

sitting next to someone like this guy:

But like almost everything I learned about in cartoons, it isn't quite an accurate picture of what an ingot is. Or at least not the kind I can make at my workbench.

When the price of sterling hit $30 an ounce (an ounce!! I used to buy sterling for about $12 an ounce...and that was only a few years ago), I decided to look more seriously into reusing my silver scrap. I read up on what I would need to do and bought an ingot mold and rolling mill so I could start recycling my scrap into wire and sheet. They sat for a while with all of the December traveling and festivities, but today I got out the ingot mold and the acetylene torch and braved the frigid garage to see what I could do with them.

I picked out my scrap and coated the pieces with flux, then dropped them in my crucible.

I prepped the ingot mold to make wire (if I want to make sheet instead, I can turn the mold around, but that is for another day.) I read somewhere that I needed to heat the mold to make sure there was no condensation hanging around in it, so I did that before heating the scrap.

Once it was molten, I just poured it in the mold. Then I opened the clamp and used tongs to move the pieces to a dish of water to quench them. Much faster and easier than I thought!

If I had used more scrap, it would have given me more pieces of wire in the end...something to remember for next time. But not bad for a first run!

I suppose I could stack them in a cartoonish pyramid if I made enough, but the ingot mold I have creates round edges on the wire, so I'm pretty sure they would just roll all over the place.

Holiday trays: chocolate peppermint cupcakes

2010-12-27T17:12:00.031-06:00

Another treat on our holiday trays for the neighbors was a box of cupcakes—dark chocolate cupcakes with peppermint chocolate ganache filling and peppermint buttercream frosting.

The chocolate cupcakes were just box mix—I made them using the soda method, then set them aside to cool for several hours. I decided to core the cupcakes rather than use a bismark tip to fill them with the ganache. There are little kits available to core cupcakes, but I just used the fat end of a large frosting tip.

Just push that into the center of the cupcake, twist it back and forth, then pull it out of the cupcake. Most of the time, you get a nice little cylinder of cake that can be replaced after the filling is added. But really, who cares how nice it looks? It will be covered with frosting eventually anyway, so even if they don’t look too great, they are definitely usable.

I filled the cored area with peppermint chocolate ganache and drizzled some over the top of the cupcake (in the spirit of a simple syrup), then replaced the cake cylinder.

Then I topped them with peppermint buttercream frosting and crushed bits of candy canes. They were incredible…but very, very rich. I am someone who eats frosting by the spoonful, but I could only eat one half of a cupcake before setting it aside. Consider yourself warned.

Peppermint chocolate ganache

4 oz. milk chocolate chips (I used ghiradhelli)
½ cup heavy whipping cream
¼ tsp peppermint extract

Place the chocolate chips in a glass dish. Heat the whipping cream on the stove top until hot but not boiling, then pour over the chocolate chips. Cover with plastic wrap and set aside for several minutes, add the peppermint extract, and stir until smooth.

Peppermint buttercream frosting

½ cup salted butter
¼ tsp peppermint extract
4 cups powdered sugar
1 tsp water

Mix the butter and the peppermint extract until fluffy. Add the powdered sugar and the water, mix well. Humidity can really change how much water you need to add to the frosting, so if it seems too thick, add a bit more water. If it seems like it isn’t thick enough, add a little bit of powdered sugar.

Holiday trays: easy turtle candy

2010-12-22T11:16:00.004-06:00

We made our holiday trays for neighbors last weekend, and I tried a couple of new recipes for the occasion.

First up: homemade turtle candy. These are simple and people love them, so they are a great addition to a dessert tray or to put in those little cello bags and tie with ribbon for a gift.

Materials:

Mini pretzels
Rolo candy
A topping of choice--I used cashews, pecans, and m&m's.
Chocolate (to drizzle over the top...this is optional)

Lay out the pretzels in a single layer on a cookie sheet and top each one with a Rolo. I hate unwrapping all of those individual candies, but it's worth it in the end.

Heat the oven to 100 degrees, then shut it off. Put the pretzel/Rolos in the oven for five to 10 minutes until they soften up.

Top each one with whatever toppings you choose. This is sort of messy, so I cover the not so pretty parts with melted chocolate drizzle.

Pumpkin whoopie pies

2010-11-28T09:01:00.003-06:00

I wanted to try whoopie pies for Thanksgiving, and what better flavor for the season than pumpkin? I spent a fair amount of time trying to find a recipe that doesn't use Crisco; I knew that would be unacceptable to Sister Sara and I'm also generally grossed out by it.

Here they are--pretty good for a first run.

I adapted the recipe from one I found on allrecipes.com:

Pumpkin Whoopie Pies:
For the cookie portion:

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
1 1/4 cups granulated sugar
2 large eggs
1 1/2 cups of packed pumpkin
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Beat the sugar and butter until fluffy, then add the eggs by incorporating them one at a time. Then the pumpkin and vanilla. Once that is all well combined, add the sifted dry ingredients.

Bake at 350 on parchment paper lined cookie sheets for about 10-12 minutes. I used a little cookie dough scoop to try to keep them about the same size.

I covered them since I made them a day ahead and filled them on Thanksgiving day with cream cheese frosting. I covered them tightly and would not be so rigid about that the next time--they were a bit sticky the next day.

Since I really don't like pumpkin and Thanksgiving is a day that I absolutely want my sweets, I had to bring a couple of stand-by desserts in case there were others who would not be interested in that flavor:

I set up a dessert bar that consisted of the pumpkin whoopie pies, Reese's peanut butter cup brownies, chocolate cupcakes with raspberry buttercream frosting, red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting, and a triple chocolate cheesecake.

So now it's back to the regular routine of work and school around our house...we are all looking forward to more holiday family time in December!

Oxidizing without toxic chemicals

2010-11-21T17:22:00.004-06:00

This technique isn't new, but it's the first time I've tried it. I generally use a liver of sulfer solution to oxidize my silver pieces and give the darker dimension to recessed areas. I apply it with a small brush, wait a while, then polish the high spots on the piece with a cloth.

This weekend I finished up a few stamped silver charms I've been working on and decided to give the alternative method a try. It's ridiculously easy:

Boil an egg.
Put the hard boiled egg in a plastic bag, shell and all.
Smash the egg. (I just gave it a quick punch on the counter...quite satisfying, actually.)
Add the metal pieces to oxidize.

I could see a change in the sterling within a couple of seconds of adding the pieces to the bag. I left them there for a few hours and they got nice and dark with relatively no mess or worry about chemicals. I just fished them out and tossed the egg bag away.

Sure, the sterling is ugly right out of the bag, but the polishing cloth takes care of that quickly. A couple of these charms became part of a mother's necklace for a friend who just had her second baby. I waited to put it together because I wanted to add crystal accents in the birthstone color for each child and you never know until the baby shows up which birthstone color to add! Good thing I waited...the little guy was supposed to make an entrance in mid November but was born in late October.

Hybrid cupcakes

2010-11-14T09:21:00.001-06:00

Hally has mentioned a couple of times (or about a thousand, maybe) that when she was in grade school, she wanted a very specific birthday cupcake for her school party. Since her birthday falls between Halloween and Thanksgiving, she wanted cupcakes made in a Halloween wrapper that looked like a turkey on top. It sounds like she got a part of that order, but not all put together the way she envisioned.

So this year for her birthday, I made her the cupcakes she wanted when she was eight.

First, the turkey toppers. I made them using Bakerella's cake pop method...and every time I make those things, I swear I won't make them again. They just take for. ev. er. But there are times when a situation calls for cake pops, and this was one of them.

I used chocolate cake and cream cheese frosting for the base of the cake pop and covered it in chocolate. Then I attached the embellishments with melted chocolate. I really like how....alarmed they all look.

I got Halloween-y cupcake wrappers and picks on clearance and used those to make the other half of Hally's vision come true.

Hally's boyfriend planned a little surprise birthday party for her at the bowling alley where she works. We had the place all to ourselves and had a great time--happy birthday, Hal!

Halloween wrap up: Mummy cookies and the costume

2010-11-06T10:49:00.004-05:00

Last weekend was sort of a blur. We had Ben's birthday party (small, but an affair nonetheless), pumpkin carving, baking, and trick or treating on the agenda.

I made these cookies to give to neighbors and family members on our trick or treating route. If they are going to dump a mountain of sweets at my house to tempt me for the week after Halloween, I figure I can return the favor.

Materials:

Nutter Butter cookies
Almond bark or chocolate melts
Reese's Pieces baking bits--the little guys

First, I dunked the Nutter Butters in the melted chocolate. (I tinted mine a light orange, but I have also made these with a sort of sickly looking green and that looked good too.)

Then I added Reese's Pieces eyes, using a little bit of melted chocolate for glue.

I dragged lines of white chocolate across the coated cookies to mummify them

and let them set up on the counter for about half an hour before packaging.

I used my Foodsaver to heat seal the cello bags that became their new home and added these little labels I found a couple of months ago. (Hobby Lobby? I can't remember, sorry.)

Once the treats were ready, we turned our attention to getting costumed up to go out.

A couple of months ago, Ben announced his intent to be a Despicable Me Minion for Halloween--a one-eyed Minion, to be specific. One of these guys, from the movie:

I looked around for the costumes that were available online and they left a lot to be desired, IMO. So I decided to make one for him.

Now, when I sew things, I don't follow patterns. I wave them off like I don't need them. But the truth is, I can't make sense of them. If I try to use patterns, I get frustrated and cranky and sometimes end up balling up all of the materials and dumping them in the trash in a fit of rage. My strategy is generally to buy about three times as much fabric as something is supposed to take and feel fortunate if I can pull it together on the second or third try. The whole process is very touch and go and I don't ever really know until I'm done if it will work out. So in the back of my mind, I was prepared to go out last minute and find some other costume if needed.

Here is what we ended up with--not professional quality, but it definitely did the trick. People seemed to know what Ben was supposed to be (ok, my brother thought he was supposed to be some sort of doctor, but in my defense, I don't think he has seen the movie!) and he loved it. We had a great evening--the weather was perfect and Ben got quite a stash of candy to share.

Glowing sugar for a special order

2010-10-30T08:40:00.000-05:00

I asked Ben what kind of cake he wanted for his birthday, and I swear he had to have been saving this up. The order: A boy, trick-or-treating in a ghost costume, with glowing red eyes and a candy bag next to him that was as tall as he was. Oh, and a number six coming out of the bag.

I immediately wanted to point out that glowing red eyes changed the boy to something sinister, but the customer is always right. Especially for his birthday.

I made a chocolate bag to put next to the ghost-boy-creature first, then made a batch of poured sugar with this recipe for the glowing eyes.

I found some little battery-operated LED lights in the wedding section at Michaels (at the second Michaels I went to, so if you go looking for these, they may not have them at every store).

When I pulled the sugar off the stove, I added the red coloring and poured it into this silicone mold. Then I waited. I was nervous about plunging those plastic covered lights into 300 degree pool, but at some point I knew the sugar would be less forgiving and I wouldn't be able to get them in there. I poured six molds in the hope of ending up with two that worked.

As they cooled, all six of them flickered and went out at one point or another. But eventually, they all came back on. (Side note: those lights boast a glow for eight hours. I put the remaining eyes aside to see how long they would last. One week later, they were still glowing!)

I made the ghost with two six inch cakes and one half of the ball pan, covered in fondant. I added the sugar eyes (first I covered the back of each eye with a little ball of fondant to keep the plastic materials out of the cake) the chocolate bag, and finally, the number six candle.

Generally, when I make cakes, I bake them the night before I need them and put them in the fridge overnight to help with stability. I didn't do this with the ghost cake. I was unwilling to put the cake in there with a red-onion-filled salad. A thick coat of saran wrap is no match for onions, and I decided to do a flash freeze the next morning instead...but never got around to it. So after I got it all assembled, the weight of the fondant started to make the ghost-boy a little...fatter. And fatter. I'm going to blame it on all of the Halloween candy the kid-ghost would have ingested.

Ben was happy, so I was happy!

Chocolate bags

2010-10-25T20:09:00.002-05:00

Apparently, lots of people know you can make bags out of chocolate. It was news to me, though, and when I heard about it a couple of weeks ago I knew I had to give it a try. And Ben's order for his birthday cake gave me the perfect opportunity.

I have to admit that this is incredibly easy, so that makes it considerably less impressive. But here's how it's done:

Materials

chocolate melts or tempered chocolate
unused coffee bags (how you get these is up to you. I spent a lot of time spinning elaborate tales about why I needed extra bags with no coffee beans in them, but you can probably just ask if you can buy them at the store)
pastry brush

The coffee bags are important because they have a slick lining in them that helps with removal once the chocolate cools. I decided to do two bags in case one failed. One was really flexible and the other was pretty rigid, so I figured one of them would work out.

Melt the chocolate. I needed a black chocolate bag, so I totally cheated and bought black chocolate melts. (One time, probably seven or eight years ago, one of my best friends told me she refused to split her grocery shopping between three stores to save nickels and dimes here and there. She said, "my time is worth something". So that's what I say to myself every time I decide to pay a bit more for something to save myself some time. I don't really buy into it since I'm a chronic overdoer, but it works in the moment.)

Cut the top portion of the bag off--down to whatever size you want your chocolate bag to be.

Use the pastry brush to paint the melted chocolate into the corners of the coffee bag and let that layer cool. Then paint the rest of the inside of the bag and let it cool. Keep adding layers of the chocolate "paint" until you think it's thick enough.

I probably went overboard on the thickness, but when the bags were done I had no concerns that they would hold up if they survived the unmasking ceremony.

Put the bags in the refrigerator for 15 minutes. This isn't totally necessary for the cooling, but I have found that if I let chocolate cool at room temperature instead of giving it that blast of cold, it seems to sort of disintegrate when I touch it. The fridge gives it some sort of stability you don't get when you leave it on the counter.

Remove from the fridge and peel the bag away. I just went to the bottom of the bag where the seam was and pulled from there...simple.

I didn't need two bags; they both worked out really well. I decided I liked the look of the one that came from the more flexible coffee bag better for the cake I was making, since I had to stuff it and it sort of sagged to provide a better opening to do that.

I won't lie, I think this is pretty awesome. Mostly because of the detail you get in the seams and folds. But also, the whole project took less than half an hour--including fridge time.

Texturing hammers

2010-10-20T14:18:00.002-05:00

I have coveted a rolling mill for years. I love the textural possibilities it brings to metal, so every time I see the results another artist gets with their rolling mill, I shop around online to compare prices. But I always ultimately decide that I don't want to buy something in the moment that is super cheap (still $250!) and later wish I had waited until I could afford something better.

I got a catalog in the mail from Kingsley North a few weeks ago. I generally groan when I get those giant volumes. They just take up space and since Lowell is a recycling ninja who also believes that everyone is trying to steal our identities, it means that I have to flip through the catalog and make sure that all identifying information is out of there before dumping it in the bin. Once (one time!), I missed that center form where the company has pre-filled your address information and Lowell simply pulled it out and dangled it in a floppy hand off his hip, wearing a look that said I was totally, hopelessly irresponsible. So I don't want to relive that. Besides, I prefer to buy jewelry making supplies online...it's just easier.

So when this catalog showed up, I wasn't too thrilled. Also, I had never heard of the company before, so I was a little bit suspicious. But I noticed something about new texturing hammers on the front of the catalog and had to at least take a look. I have seen hammers like this from other companies, but they had changeable hammer faces and my experience with that sort of thing has not been great. KN had three kinds with different texturing elements on each side of the hammer head--bubbles, lines, squares. They looked promising and really didn't cost much, so I went against my intuition and ordered the hammers.

And they are glorious.

Side one:

Side two:

Bottom line, I love them. I still have clean-up to do on these pieces, but here are my results from the first run:

Beer-flavored cake

2010-10-09T20:44:00.002-05:00

I have to start this post by apologizing to my brother Paul, the recipient of the first beer bottle cake I made. Had I really thought things through, I would have made him a beer-flavored cake as well. Sorry, Paul...next time, really.

I made cupcakes and a groom's cake for a wedding reception last weekend. When I asked what flavor they wanted, the groom said, "beer". We moved on and the cupcakes were assorted vanilla, chocolate, and red velvet. But I found several recipes online for Guinness beer cake to use for the groom's cake and decided to go with it.

For the cake, I used a Dark Chocolate cake mix and just replaced the liquid the instructions called for with the Guinness beer. Before adding it, I reduced it on the stove by simmering it on low heat for about 15 minutes. Then I mixed and baked the cake as directed on the box.

When I taste-tested this, I couldn't really taste the beer. The cake was very rich and moist...very chocolate. No beer flavor that I could tell. Not a bad thing, but the beer flavor was the whole point.

But that was just the beginning. I reduced another two cups of the Guinness and used that to brush the cake like a simple syrup. Then I made Guinness buttercream frosting. This was very touch and go, since I couldn't find much for a recipe. Poor Lowell had to taste test it for me three times (what. I don't have the slightest interest in tasting frosting that is not perfectly sweet--what if it ruined frosting for me? Also, the smell of stout at 10 am simmering on the stove was making me slightly queasy) before I decided it was just time to put it on the cake and call it good. Even then, he said he really couldn't taste anything but "frosting". But there is only so much liquid you can add to frosting before it becomes glaze, and that was not what I needed.

Guinness Buttercream Frosting
1/2 cup unsalted butter
4 1/2 cups powdered sugar
Approximately 5-6 Tablespoons Guinness

I doubled the cake and frosting recipes to make the double layer 9 inch cake and used the Guinness frosting for the filling and the crumb coat. I covered the cake in fondant and sprayed it a gray-silver color to look sort of like a metal bucket.

Earlier in the week, I made a batch of poured sugar ice and a sugar beer bottle using my silicone mold. The groom's favorite beer is Miller Lite, so I bought a six pack of the beer and soaked one of the bottles in the sink until the label peeled off easily. I used that to create an edible image, and added that to the sugar bottle.

I might be willing to admit that I'm a little bit proud of how the bottle and the ice turned out.

Just a little.

Ok, it was hard to actually just put the cake down on the table and walk away. But I did. And I also gave the groom the six pack of Miller Lite, label-less bottle and all.

The bride told me that they all loved the cake and it was very moist, but that she could really only taste the Guinness in the frosting. She complimented the amount, though, and said it was detectable but not overwhelming. Success!

Etsy treasuries--who knew?

2010-10-05T10:45:00.002-05:00

I started my Etsy shop in earnest a few months ago. I decided I will phase out the website and use Etsy because it's so much cheaper and I'm soooooo bad at marketing my stuff. I really just need a place to have something "out there" and a way for people to find me and contact me for jewelry.

Shortly after listing a few items, I got a "convo" (this is Etsian for "conversation") from someone saying she had put my necklace in a treasury (that's Etsian for little collections that members put together, often with some sort of theme. Sometimes people comment on them or shop by going through them...basically, it's a nice way to get some exposure. When you go to the Etsy home page, the majority of what you see there is someone's treasury). So I took a peek. She had put my amethyst and sterling necklace in a treasury with a sort of dark, gothic feel to it. I have to admit, it felt kind of cool. (Then I worried briefly that maybe THAT was my 15 minutes of fame??? I guess it's better than making the paper for being arrested on a drug charge.)

So a couple of days later, I made my own treasury. It was fun, just surfing around to find items that I thought would fit into my little collection. Soon after, I made another one. Before I knew it, I became sort of hooked on making treasuries. I would come home from work in the evenings and do searches on the laptop for 15 or 20 minutes while dinner was on the stove. I put items in little collections based on a feeling or color or an event. Serenity. Halloween. Cake. (There is some seriously awesome stuff on there. Seriously.) This treasury is my current favorite (probably because people commented and told me I was clever...I'm a sucker for that kind of thing).

I like the idea of supporting handmade items, and I like how much weird and interesting stuff Etsy has to offer. There is even a feature to "shop local" that filters out the artists in your area. And some of the pictures are stunning--so many of the photographs are creative and artistic--it's incredible. I had no idea.

I don't know that I will ever sell anything from my shop, but I think I will keep popping in to do treasuries here and there--if you haven't checked it out, you may want to the next time you need a gift!

Cakeapalooza

2010-10-01T09:46:00.015-05:00

I've sort of fallen off the face of the earth in everything I do online lately. I haven't gone to the forums to check out what's going on, I've fallen way behind on the blogs I follow, and I obviously haven't been posting anything here lately.

I've been caking in most of my down time. I made two big cakes for baby showers last Saturday and worked at the bakery on Sunday. This weekend, I'm making 100 cupcakes and a groom's cake for a wedding. And after that, I think I just have a regular sized cake to do every weekend through the end of October, getting easier as I go. I delivered both cakes last weekend on time and there was only a brief period when I considered putting my fist through the second one, so I say that was a successful cake weekend.

The first one was sort of fun--a double layered white cake with chocolate buttercream filling for the base and a chocolate cake with raspberry buttercream filling for the top. I covered both tiers with cream cheese frosting and marshmallow fondant.

I think the fondant bees were the best part.

That cake went out late morning. I was relieved that I didn't have to color any fondant for the second one, but it was GIANT. Three layers of cake on the bottom and two on the top--same flavor combinations as the first--that thing was heavy. (Incidentally, the three layers on the bottom were the problem when I almost lost it and punched the cake. I rolled out the fondant FOUR TIMES before I got enough to actually cover it. Seriously. My forearm muscles were extremely sore on Monday when I went back to my day job.)

This one was my gift for a friend I work with at the bakery. I've witnessed an awkward moment more than once when a party is being planned for someone who makes cakes...there is usually some dead air when the issue of the cake comes up. I don't think anyone was going to ask her to make her own cake, but you do wonder--what do you get for the person who makes five tier cakes for other people? I volunteered and it worked out great; the party planner couldn't have been more organized and gave me clear instructions about what she wanted. Plus, I didn't have to stack that monster and try to transport it all put together. I took it in separate pieces to the shower and added a border between the tiers when I got there.

So the biggest cake weekend is over. It's all downhill from here, right?

Sterling and hematite necklace

2010-09-22T09:17:00.019-05:00

I started this necklace several weeks ago, but kept running into trouble about what to do for the chain. I made a sterling link chain for it initially, but it was too big for the pendant and looked terrible when I added it. So I used that chain on the shapes necklace I posted earlier this month and kept messing around with this one.

Martha Stewart says to plant bulbs in threes and fives (or maybe she didn't, but someone told me she did), and I tend to think about that when I am mapping out a project. I don't always stick to it, but I definitely start from there--the odd numbers do generally look better.

I used scalloped bezel wire and cut the back plate to mimic that pattern. I planned on putting a rivet at one end and hang the pendant vertically, but I couldn't shake the image of a snowman when I looked at it that way. See it? That made me think for one fleeting moment that maybe I should try sketching my ideas before I cut the silver.

So I turned it horizontally, added sterling rivets, and used a scribe to add some random lines for texture.

After trying a couple of chain options, I finally settled on a leather cord instead.

Side trip: Monarch Watch

2010-09-14T08:58:00.006-05:00

One of the perks of living in a college town is that the school often has fun events for kids in the community. Last weekend was the annual Monarch Watch weekend at KU, so Ben and I headed over to campus fairly early to make sure that we were there in time to get a chrysalis before they had all been given out.

The students of some science-y class take families through little centers in the building where they can hold caterpillars, watch a little video on the life cycle of a butterfly, hang out in a big screened-in area full of plants, caterpillars, and butterflies, and run the "seed separator" machine to comb the milkweed seeds away from the...well, fluff.

They even had little games with themes like "make the egg stick to the leaf". Gage and I went to it several times when he was younger, and I've always been really impressed with how not-boring those college students can make science for the younger kids.

See how FUN it is??

They give each child a chrysalis of their own to take home and watch until the butterfly emerges. (Each child, no questions asked. I struggle with this a little bit, because I had to pass a background check to get my dogs from the pound.)

Ben and I came home and hung the chrysalis in the window and went about the rest of our day.

The next morning, Ben went straight to the window to check on his little buddy. The chrysalis was split in two and a monarch was sort of clutching the window trim, trying to find something to hold on to. Ben said that he remembered from the movie that the butterfly wouldn't be able to fly yet--the wings needed time to dry. We took it outside and put it on a flower in the garden.

It stayed there for several hours, then finally flew away. I know it's a little bit silly, but the whole process made me feel sort of weepy. Pretty awesome though, really.

Shapes necklace

2010-09-07T06:20:00.009-05:00

When I was in Junior High, I had a silver metal belt with alternating geometric shapes sort of like this one that I wore with an over-sized teal button down shirt. Often paired with an almost white denim skirt. It was a pretty incredible look, especially when I added the green eyeshadow to the mix.

Anyway. I made the chain on this necklace for a different pendant, but it just looked very wrong when I put the whole thing together. So I took it apart and made this pendant from 14 gauge sterling wire that I hammered to give it some texture. I didn't think of the 80's belt when I was trying to decide what to do with the chain, but the memory certainly slapped me in the back of the head when I stepped back and looked at the finished necklace.

I wonder if that means I didn't learn from the past and I am condemned to repeat it? I do have a pair of pretty awesome leg warmers waiting for an appropriate occasion in the back of my sock drawer. And I can still rat the hell out of my hair.

Test drive results

2010-09-02T19:57:00.000-05:00

I wore the double ring for a week to see if I wanted to make more of them. It was extremely strange to have my middle two fingers connected like that at first and took a while to get used to, but it was really very comfortable. And I got a lot of great feedback about it--people really noticed it and asked to see it or try it on.

So now I have a problem. I don't have enough fingers to wear all of the rings I would like to. I am waffling about it...I really like it and want to keep it. But I can't wear it AND the other rings I already wear...

Not a terrible problem to have, but still...I'm on the fence. So I'll polish it and put it aside for now.

Meanwhile, I made another one with a tube set faceted peridot (you had to see that coming, right?).

Easy embellishments

2010-08-29T10:11:00.012-05:00

This weekend I made cupcakes for a wedding shower and decided to add a few fondant flowers to them. I love these little embellishments--they feed my need to add something fun, but without becoming too crazy. Plus, they take almost no effort with the right tools.

I used the pasta attachment on my KitchenAid mixer to roll out the fondant. (Ok, this isn't a necessity...a roller will absolutely get the job done. But it's a beautiful thing to just put the fondant in at the top and have it roll out, all the same thickness, with no fanfare in about ten seconds.) Then I used a plastic five petal cookie cutter, popped out the shapes, and used this silicone flower veiner:

It takes the cutout from this

to this:

Then I put them in little flower formers to keep their shape while they dried and I frosted the cupcakes. I added the flowers at the very end, along with some sugar pearls for the centers.

Even though I am all about over the top decorations when it comes to caking, I like that you may not notice the flowers at first, but as you get closer, can see the details.

Double ring

2010-08-22T20:32:00.005-05:00

I was watching a recording of Project Runway from my DVR last week and saw a ring that completely derailed any attention span I had for the show. One of the designers was wearing it during the judging of the make-a-garment-out-of-crappy-party-supplies challenge. (She won the challenge, although I can't say that I understand why. But I digress.) This is how it goes with me. You might think you are meeting with me about some serious, important matter...and I'm participating, really. But don't think I don't notice the earrings you are wearing, or that you seem to prefer gold over silver.

The ring was very simple--a silver rectangle that went across two fingers. I. Wanted. To. Make. That. Ring. When I told Gage about my plans, he informed me that he was pretty sure that brass knuckles were illegal.

I combed the internet via Google to try to find a still image of that ring, but didn't have any luck. I found some of those rings, but almost all of them fit over two fingers and had a name spelled out in metal with some flowery font. No, thank you. So I resorted to pulling a screenshot from the PR website.

Since I wanted to make one continuous sterling loop, I used 20 gauge silver sheet so that it would be sturdy enough to hold the shape of the ring. The sizing was a bit awkward, trying to size for two fingers using one ring mandrel. The ring I saw on PR looks like it is fairly angular, but I wanted mine to be comfortable and really fit both of the fingers, so this is the shape I ended up with:

I wanted to keep it fairly simple and created an overlap on one side and added a sterling rivet and a couple of holes with copper inlay to it.

(Please excuse the severely dry hands of the model...using chemicals and spending time at the workbench in general isn't too conducive to soft hands.)

So this week, I'll test drive the ring to see how it feels and decide if I want to make more. Maybe I will make Stephanie M. one that says, "Twilight" in a flowery font for her birthday!!

Whoppers and cupcakes

2010-08-20T20:52:00.001-05:00

I was at the grocery store for a mid-week stop to grab a few essentials and saw a giant display of candy boxes on sale.

As soon as I saw the Whoppers, I remembered a recipe for chocolate malt cupcakes and decided it was time to give that another run.

I made chocolate cupcakes last night using the soda cake method. When I make cupcakes mid-week, I always bake them in the evening and frost them the next morning. It's easier for me to avoid sampling the frosting that way--early in the day I always have such good intentions--and it only takes about 15 minutes of my morning to put together.

This morning I made the chocolate malt frosting with this recipe:

1/2 cup unsalted butter
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
4 cups powdered sugar
1/4 cup chocolate malt powder
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 Tablespoon milk

I added the frosting and finished them up with the Whoppers candy and some chocolate sprinkles:

Ice cream cone...cakes

2010-08-13T19:44:00.000-05:00

Bakerella posted on her blog about these and when I saw them, I knew I had to try them.

They look like mini ice cream cones, but there is no ice cream involved. Instead, they are filled with cake--red velvet with cream cheese frosting. I used a method that Bakerella is well known for using in the caking community--little cake bites. To make them, I baked the cake as usual. When it cooled, I raked a fork through the cake to break it up and added frosting to the mess. Then I scooped out spoonfuls of the cake and frosting mixture into the ice cream cones and put them in the freezer to firm up.

Supposedly, you can find mini ice cream cones. I didn't, so I cut down regular sized ones with my kitchen shears. (Sure, the kitchen shears were overkill. But I wasn't quite sure how to do it with a knife without crushing them.)

After they came out of the freezer, I dipped the cake on top of the cones in melted chocolate and decorated them with sprinkles. They take longer than I care to admit, but they were fun to make.

I went with peanut butter m&ms for the cherry on top of the ice cream.

See? No ice cream.

The best part of these is that they don't have to be perfect; the chocolate can drip, the cone can fall over--it doesn't matter.

I even had enough of the cake mixture left to make cake bites--always a nice treat!

A weekend at the bakery

2010-08-08T20:27:00.001-05:00

I don't work a ton of hours at the bakery; sometimes I go a couple of months without clocking in there. Everything depends on the number of hours they have for the week in that department of the store...and maybe how much I stop by and whine about wanting to work.

Here are the top reasons I love to work there:
1. I don't work that often, so it doesn't feel like a drain on my time. It's more like going on a play date.
2. I love the people I work with there.
3. I don't have to bake any of the cakes and there seems to be an endless supply in all flavors and sizes.
4. I don't have to wash ANY of the dishes. None. Not a single frosting-filled tip!
5. I can usually get away with coloring very little fondant--it's often already done in a rainbow of colors.
6. I don't have to find some poor, unsuspecting crowd of people to unload the cake on. I simply put the cakes in the case and walk away.
7. I get paid to do it!

Last weekend the stars aligned and I got to work four hours on both Saturday and Sunday. At one point, I was showing a coworker how to make 3D figures out of fondant using existing colors. There were some really ugly color combinations going on, and my friend Kelli asked if I was making a clown.

When I say the word "clown", my mouth twists up and the distaste I have for them is visible on my face. Seriously, they're creepy. But when Kelli said it, she was excited. She said she would love a clown for the display case. So this is what I made*:

Not tooooo creepy, I guess. We needed a cake to go with him, so I put this together:

That slice is really an eight inch cake with the sides shaved off--that's about the size I like to have if I'm eating a piece of cake!

I also made a cake I have been wanting to try but didn't have a reason to--it's really simple and only took me about 20 minutes start to finish (remember, no baking or cleaning up!).

I will definitely do this one again--it is something I can do when I'm short on time.

*A drawback to the bakery time is that the pictures are only as good as I can get with my phone and those florescent store lights surrounding everything.

Giant amethyst pendant

2010-08-04T19:45:00.001-05:00

This thing is enormous. But I love it.

The pendant is two and a half inches in length and width at the widest points and hangs from a hand forged sterling silver chain through sterling rivets. The beaded wire around the base of the bezels is oxidized to bring out the detail and the rest of the silver is polished.

The clasp is at the back of the necklace so it can be adjusted.

I wore the necklace for about an hour to make sure the chain wasn't uncomfortable because I wasn't sure about those square links. But it's very comfortable. I like the weight of it.

Too bad it isn't very "me"...I don't think I would wear it, so I won't be keeping it. I considered it!

Carousel cake

2010-08-01T19:56:00.000-05:00

I made this cake for a birthday and used the Cricut Cake for the fondant decorations. So far, so good with the CC--I used the Make the Cut! program to import the image of the horse I found online. I used it to cut all of the decorations on the cake just to see how things would go. It took a while to get the cuts done, but I think that would go faster if I used it more often.

I used Wilton fondant because it is a little bit drier than marshmallow fondant and the humidity is high right now...I have read a lot of information in the cake forums about the MMF sliding off cakes if it is humid and didn't want to take that chance.

Do it yourself lampwork tool

2010-07-28T19:51:00.000-05:00

There are lots of discussions in the lampworking community about "pandora" or "troll" beads (like this one) which are basically just large-holed beads that fit over a thick chain. There are tools available that hold the bead in place and bring pressure to the silver to add the center core. Word on the street (well, in the forums) is that these can really increase consistency and efficiency to the process, but it takes practice and it's easy to chip or crack the bead. Most of the tools I own have some sort of learning curve to them, so that didn't bother me too much. I found one online and considered it, but the cheapskate inside me was unwilling to spend a couple hundred dollars for a tool I would only use occasionally.

The silver core is really just a large rivet. But I know from experience that treating this process the same way as adding a rivet to metal is a mistake; the length of the tubing that runs through the bead makes it prone to buckling and the hammering puts a lot of stress on the bead and it can break or crack.

Someone (sorry, I can't give credit because I don't know who it was!) posted in a forum on Lampwork, etc about how to make your own tool to add the silver core to a lampwork bead. I followed his basic instructions, and it didn't cost me anything at all because I had the materials laying around in the garage already.

I started with a large nut and bolt--this one is two and a quarter inches in length and a quarter inch in width on the threaded end.

I took the nut off of the bolt and measured down the threading about a quarter of an inch. That would give me enough room to use with a larger bead--one I would use for a focal bead. Then I used a bastard file to take the threading off and fit the silver tubing I had.

That's it--the whole tool is a nut and bolt with the threading filed off.

Here it is in use:

First I measure the amount of silver tubing I will need to cut using the tube cutting jig:

I put the nut and bolt combination into my vise and added the tubing, then the bead.

The nut cradles the bottom of the bead to help keep it from breaking during the riveting.

It's still easy to chip the bead around the rivet, especially when the bead is off the nut/bolt and flat on a stainless steel block putting in those last few taps. If the hammer comes down a bit off center, it can take little chunks out of the bead close to the rivet.

The final product:

Beachy cupcakes and shower cookies

2010-07-25T20:26:00.007-05:00

I made these cupcakes for a birthday celebration at work last week. Since the guest of honor loves going to the beach, we decorated the office with all things sand and sun. I have seen people use brown sugar on frosting to create a look of sand, but even I thought that might be too sweet and sought out another way to go in that direction.

I made the red velvet cupcakes and topped them with cream cheese frosting, then used a piping bag to add graham cracker crumbs to the edges of them.

I also made three dozen baby shower cookies for a friend:

I knew that humidity could be an issue with the icing, but I have to admit that I underestimated just how much of a problem it could create. It took forever to dry and certainly didn't end up as smooth as the cookies I made during the winter for my sister. I'm sure that if I had been doing them on a regular basis, it would have been easier to tweak the recipe to respond to the weather...maybe I will only make them from October to April from now on!!

Side trip: fireworks show

2010-07-23T21:27:00.002-05:00

We spent the Fourth of July with family and had a great time. The boys and I shopped for fireworks in the tents that are put up for three glorious days and opted for fewer, bigger items rather than a ton of little crappy things. I blocked all attempts to add firecrackers...I don't understand them. They scare animals (and me) and don't really do much visually, so I'm not a fan. Sara complained loudly about fireworks in general, but when it was time to light fuses, she was front and center. She and Gage handled all of that and put on a beautiful show, and I got to try out the night setting on the camera.

I should disclose that I read absolutely *none* of the instructions about using that setting. I'm sure they could be better, but I was surprised at how well they did turn out with no effort from me.

Broom cast pendant and turquoise earrings

2010-07-04T20:44:00.005-05:00

This pendant is made with sterling broom cast pieces and has a matte finish. I selected pieces that created a sense of upward movement and would fit together well in order to try to make it easier to solder them to each other and the backplate. The broom castings take a lot of time to arrange and solder, but I really like the outcome.

These turquoise and sterling earrings have copper rivets and have a matte finish. I used a chasing tool to add texture to the sterling and oxidized it to bring out the contrast a bit.

Red, white and blue cupcakes

2010-07-03T21:25:00.015-05:00

Just a quick post--I have been thinking about cake decorating most of the day and got materials to make dummy cakes to decorate. (And then, what, I'm not sure. They can't really sit on my dining room table. Maybe I could take a tiered, decorated styrofoam cake to work as a backdrop while I work on fiscal reports?) But it was getting late, so I decided to go the cupcake route tonight.

I made these cupcakes to share with the neighbors for the fourth of July holiday using the same technique I did for the rainbow cupcakes a couple of months ago.

It's not going to take forever, Hally!

2010-06-30T21:28:00.003-05:00

My youngest sister was born when I was 16. We didn't share much in our childhoods, but we live in the same city now and I have had the chance to spend more time with her over the past few years. Hally is really creative and has an amazing ability to see beauty in what most people consider to be ordinary.

When Hally is with us, she and Ben pal around quite a bit. His endless energy seems charming to her long after others are ready for a break. A few weeks ago she gave Ben a video she had put together of him during a visit at my parents' house, and it was nothing short of amazing. She truly has a talent for editing, audio, timing, angles...whatever else goes into making a video clip really "work".

Hally came over to visit one evening several months ago with this bag for me:

Yes, that's what was really in the bag, and she was hoping I could make her a pair of earrings. Out of her teeth. I was thinking a pendant with resin to suspend them, and she said that would be ok, but I could tell she was really hoping for earrings. At the time, it was cold and I wasn't able to get to my workbench in the garage much. I put the bag aside to wait for warmer weather and inspiration about how to handle a pair of tooth earrings.

Last weekend, I opened the bag to see what I really had to work with.

I wanted the end result to be a pair of earrings that just looked like...ordinary earrings. Until you got closer. I used the dapping block to dome two silver discs and drilled a center hole through each, then used sterling wire to wrap the teeth and extend through the top of the silver discs. For stability, I put a small dab of E6000 on the wire at the top and the bottom of the tooth. It dries clear and is flexible, so I'm hoping it can absorb any shock and help keep the teeth inside the wire cage. The discs sort of spin, so it's very hard to get a good picture of them. Maybe Hally can give me one that she takes--she's much better at that than I am.

In one part of the video that Hally gave Ben, he is coloring a giant picture on an easel and Hally can be heard off screen saying something about how it will take forever. Ben responds, "it's not going to take forever, Hally!" She probably wondered if it was going to take me forever to make those earrings, too!

Side trip: flower garden

2010-06-28T07:12:00.002-05:00

This year we planted wildflowers in a flower bed notorious for refusing to cooperate. The results have been fabulous...I guess I was trying to force things too much in past years and should just stick to what will grow naturally on the side of the road around here.

I took pictures of the sunflowers and echinacea over a few days as they opened up at different times of day--early in the morning or late afternoon. I am very drawn to the echinacea early on in the blooming process because I love the harsh, spiky centers. When I'm running, I see thistle growing and promise myself often to return with the camera to different spots to take pictures of the thistle heads for the same reason. I never have, though. I know thistle is an aggressive, hateful weed, but I think it's beautiful. Good for a yard? No. But so pretty...

Chasing and repousse

2010-06-25T21:24:00.008-05:00

I decided to try chasing and repousse last weekend. I got a book by Nancy Corwin several months ago and it seemed like something I could eventually try. Like so many other jewelry projects, I collected the materials over time and had everything I needed to give it a shot. I got out my pitch bowl and filled it with chunks of the red pitch I got from Rio Grande.

I should mention that this was not my first attempt at setting up the pitch. However, the first time, I had black pitch. I read that the black pitch was really not the way to go because the red variety was much more pliable, but the black pitch was SO much cheaper. It came in some sort of tin can and was extremely brittle. The pieces that I got into the pitch bowl resembled jagged, broken glass. When I heated it to put a piece of metal into it, the metal wouldn’t really sink into it and would often break—almost snap, really—away from the pitch when I checked to see if it was secure. So I put it aside and eventually ordered the red pitch. What a difference! I chiseled pieces of the pitch away from the block form easily; the pieces were sort of soft and dense. (I’m not sure why it comes in a giant block…I only put about one sixth of it into my pitch bowl.)

The pitch melted easily and smoothly.

I used a piece of copper and drew circles on it with my template. Then I went over the lines with a scribe to give my chasing tools a guide to follow.

The basic process goes something like this: heat the pitch to soften it and place the metal on it. Then chase on one side of the piece, outlining the design. Heat the pitch again to loosen the metal, flip it over, and work the metal on the opposite side to give it depth. Repeat, repeat, repeat. Well, most people probably wouldn’t repeat as much as I did—I was experimenting with moving the lines a bit and just getting the feel in general, so I know that I overworked the metal. In fact, I was surprised that I didn’t ever actually go through it.

The chasing tools and hammer I used:

Here is the piece, early in the process and at the end, prior to cleaning.

And as final as this will get--I didn't want to spend much time trying to clean it up since it is just a tester.

Some notes for future attempts:
1. Sometimes being a cheapskate can make things harder. I should have just bought the red pitch to begin with. (Ok, I didn't actually learn that lesson just now, and I probably won't follow it in the future. The force is too strong in me.)
2. There is NO NEED to push the entire piece all the way down in the pitch. It makes a mess to clean off when flipping the piece and I found that pushing just the corners in worked well.
3. I need to do a bit of research on how to really clean a piece like this. I didn't put it in the pickle pot because I didn't want to get any pitch in there, but I'm not sure what the proper procedure is. Not a big deal on a test piece, but it will matter later.

I have a lot of practice time in front of me if I am going to make anything using this technique, but I like the challenge, so maybe I will have more of this to post down the line.

More, more, more

2010-06-24T20:57:00.008-05:00

When Ben was beginning to talk, he used sign language for some of his communication. He would sign "more" to us by bringing his hands together in front of his chest over and over with all of the fingertips touching. Eventually, it became his first word (and for quite a while, his only word), and he would say it while signing. He would practically chant "more, more, more".

That's what I thought of when I was making all of these things. Not new techniques. More, more, more.

A fold formed copper cuff (about an inch wide) with sterling rivets added in:

More spinner rings--trying out some other textures.

And another tube set amethyst pendant with silver shavings fused to the front of the sterling surface for some texture. That's right, I save everything I can at my work bench. I even catch the silver that falls away while doing rough filing and sawing. It makes the cheapskate in my heart sing.

Lemon quartz and crystal earrings

2010-06-19T18:49:00.014-05:00

My love affair with faceted gems continues...

These lemon quartz briolettes are so tiny that it took me a while to decide what to do with them. I've had them for several months and kept getting them out to use without success. I do like how they hang from the matte sterling discs here, though.

I took this picture outside, and while it's not a good one to really see the earrings, the lemon quartz looks pretty incredible!

I also made a simple pair of hammered sterling hoops with Swarovski crystals.

More bursts

2010-06-17T18:20:00.002-05:00

I used the last of the smaller broom cast pieces to make a couple more sunburst pieces with faceted stones. These are smaller than the first one I did--both are about the size of a dime. I guess I will need to do more broom casting soon to see what else I can come up with!

Textured earrings

2010-06-16T20:53:00.001-05:00

I used a chasing tool to texture the sterling discs on these earrings and then shaped them with a dapping block before adding the beaded components. I recently got a wood block for just this type of work--I was hoping that the wood might be more forgiving on the texture I add to my metal pieces than my steel block. It seemed to do the trick--I was able to get a nice domed shape on the sterling without losing any of the details.

The first pair is fairly simple--turquoise beads and oxidized sterling discs on wires:

Next, my first attempt at post earrings. My mom suggested I make some a few years ago and I wasn't that interested...but it seems like I have seen more people wearing them recently. I have always preferred wires, so that was what I made.
I added copper rivets and bamboo coral to the discs, and I love how they look. (Not that I would ever wear them...post earrings generally annoy me!)

Winner!

2010-06-13T20:23:00.002-05:00

I know several people who seem to win a lot of things. Contests on the radio, playing at the casino, whatever. They just seem to be very lucky. I'm not one of those people. Sure, I don't try to win very many things, and there is the saying that 'you can't win if you don't play.' But honestly, even when I HAVE entered contests, I didn't win.

When I started blogging, I started following other blogs as well. When there is a giveaway on those blogs, I usually enter to win if I am even remotely interested in the prizes. But I do so without any hope of actually getting any of them.

That changed when I won some beautiful gemstones in a giveaway on Melissa Muir's blog. I started laying them out with different design options as soon as they arrived, and finally settled on a pair of earrings for the peridot and a pendant for the amethyst. I used 24 gauge sterling silver discs and added texture with a chasing tool to hang with the gemstones. I love them!

Picnic cupcakes

2010-06-12T19:58:00.003-05:00

Today we went to Ben's annual class picnic. This is one of those events that as a parent, I feel obligated to attend, but dread. It's always hot and muggy and awkward. The teachers have been wonderful, and I generally opt to help with set up and then settle in to watch Ben play until it's time to go. But. Ben has a great time, and we have fun deciding what dessert to bring along. Last year, we took sunflower cupcakes, so we needed a new idea.

This morning, we went through the What's New, Cupcake? book that has some cute designs. Ben picked the ants at a picnic design, so we made white cake cupcakes and let them cool while we went to the store to get the toppings we needed.

The instructions call for chocolate covered nuts, but there are some kids with nut allergies in the class so this wasn't an option. We found regular M&Ms sorted by color for a ridiculous price. After some thought, I gave in because we probably would have had to get some huge package of the regular assorted colors to get the 100+ brown M&Ms we needed. And while the rest of the family would forget about that 50 pound bag of candy in the cabinet when the picnic was over, it would beckon to me at all hours until I ate it all. By myself. In the dark.

We frosted the cupcakes with vanilla buttercream frosting and dipped the edges in sprinkles (the book shows edging in coconut, but I have a special hatred for it and pretended not to see that), then put the chocolate on top of each cupcake. I piped chocolate legs on the little guys and we used candy fruit slices to make it look like they were carting off food from the picnic.

They were pretty simple and didn't take a huge amount of time. But I have to admit, these were much better in theory than execution. Since the M&Ms were so much flatter than the chocolate covered nuts would have been, the ants looked less like they were carrying off the food and more like they were being pulverized by it. It didn't seem to matter to the kids at the picnic, though.

Time out for cake

2010-06-06T20:02:00.001-05:00

Ben helped me put together the ideas for this cake. We knew we would have a giant cupcake cake delivered to us, ready to frost and decorate. We knew we wanted to use the Cricut Cake for the letters, and our instructions were to go in the direction of castle/dragon/whimsical.

I got the Make the Cut program for the Cricut Cake--it is a one time purchase rather than several cartridges and the variety of fonts and images is incredible. I found the font I wanted on the computer, then hooked the computer to the Cricut, hit a button, and it printed out the lettering for me. Simple! The lettering is what I was most hoping to get from the CC...it takes an enormous amount of time and often doesn't look uniform when I do it by hand or with cutters.

We looked at the option of doing a two dimensional dragon for the side of the cake shaped somewhat like a castle, but it just wouldn't come together. Since the actual cake portion would have to be put together quickly, I wanted to focus on the dragon and let the cake be more of a backdrop. I was not sure I could put together a 3D dragon with less than 24 hours to dry, but decided to try loading the fondant up with tylose powder to help it firm up more quickly. It worked out!

Fold formed silver cuff

2010-06-05T18:04:00.001-05:00

Since I liked the outcome of the fold formed copper cuff, I decided to give it a shot in sterling with a couple of variations. This one has more fold lines and I added sterling links and a clasp. When I was done polishing it, it just looked...wrong. I wish this picture was a little bit better in terms of the contrast between the cuff and the wood it's sitting on, but it's the only one I took.

I put a satin finish on it and like that much better:

Spinner rings

2010-06-04T07:05:00.004-05:00

When I was probably 10ish, my mom got me a barrette with several tiny fabric people wearing brightly colored clothes attached to it. All lined up, like they were lying down next to each other. She told me they were "worry people", and the idea is that you tell your worries to those little dolls and they take on the burden of what is troubling you. She probably thought they were interesting and fun--and they were--but they made a big impression on me and I really talked to those little guys about my anxieties.

Years later, I discovered the "worry stones" that have a polished groove to rub your thumb in when you are anxious. Same idea, as far as I was concerned...transferring your troubles.

So even though these were introduced to me as "spinner rings", I immediately connected them to the worry people on my barrette and the worry stones I have seen in rock shops. Something to spin while I fidget.

The first time I saw them was probably a couple of years ago on the Jewelry Artists Network...Randi posted the one I saw first and I was hooked. (Incidentally, Randi referred me to the JAN from another site where I had posted a question about soldering.) I added them to my never-ending to do list.

These are made from sterling silver sheet and hammered wire. I still need to size them, but they are both pretty big--probably 9 or 10. I like the idea of wearing them on my thumb or index finger, but I suppose I will try to make some in smaller sizes eventually as well.

Upcycled silver: the first broom cast piece

2010-06-02T19:54:00.000-05:00

I have heard people using the term "upcycling" in place of "recycling" recently. Ok, I get it--sort of like saying I am vertically challenged instead of short. Just to make sure I wasn't missing some new spin, I checked Wikipedia for a definition. Upcycling means reusing materials to create something of better quality or higher environmental purpose. This sort of makes me laugh because it's so subjective, and I think reusing materials for just about anything is better than tossing them away. So I declare my use of scrap silver to make a pendant upcycling.

I used some of the pieces I made during my first broom casting session and arranged them around a tube setting on a backplate. I was thinking about some sort of organic sunburst, and I love how it turned out.

I selected an amethyst from my newly acquired stash of faceted stones to set in the center, then oxidized it.

Tube settings

2010-05-31T20:59:00.003-05:00

I spent many hours over Memorial Day weekend at the jewelry bench. I took my coffee out to the garage in the morning on both Saturday and Sunday and worked until Ben woke up several hours later. I haven't felt that absorbed in the jewelry for a long time and was nice to fall back into it.

I am part of an online jewelry community that provides me great resources and inspiration for the work I do with metal and glass. The forum is full of talented artists who are willing to share their knowledge and support others. On the site, there is a section where members can opt to have their individual blogs feed in as the posts are published. Recently on the forum, I read a blog post by Melissa Muir giving a tutorial on using bezel punches to set faceted stones in sterling tubes. I couldn't help myself...immediately after reading the post, I went to the Contenti and Rio sites and ordered a set of bezel punches, some heavy walled sterling tubing, and a variety of faceted stones--semi-precious stones with a few cubic zirconia thrown in for good measure.

I have never really been drawn to the faceted stones. I don't know why, but I generally prefer larger, bulky stones in irregular shapes and the faceted stones seemed very dainty to me. After making the amethyst pendant for my sister, I realized I had been very wrong about the faceted stones...I would take that amethyst out and just stare at it sometimes because of the way it caught the light.

So Melissa's tutorial led me to try the tube settings in these pendants. I polished them first, but decided to go with a matte finish on them. I learned a lot by making several at once, and some are better than others, but I'm generally happy with all of them.

I can't get over the colors of the stones in this picture--I took it outside and the natural light really makes a difference.

...and the final product of the one that needed a chain:

Thanks, Melissa!

Disaster ring and wire project

2010-05-31T17:44:00.011-05:00

About a year ago, I started making a ring. I set it aside several times, picking it up here and there to do a little bit of sanding or soldering when I was at the jewelry bench doing other things. The bezel gave me a ton of trouble, though, so I had to redo it more than a couple of times. It would solder everywhere but one point, or would be a little uneven. Then I would sand it to try to get it level and weaken the bezel and decide to just start over. I don't know what it was, but there was something about that ring that just wouldn't come together. This happens from time to time, and when it does, I try to just set the troublemaker aside to try my luck on another day.

The sterling ring shank was super wide, and the large bezel setting waited for a hematite cabachon. A couple of weeks ago, I finished the setting. I thought. But I went to do one final sanding on the bezel and managed to create a small weak spot at the base. As I faced the thought of doing that bezel setting yet once more, I decided it was probably time to put the ring aside--again--for a while so I didn't get frustrated with it. But first, I would heat the whole thing up and take off the defective bezel so I would have a fresh start the next time I picked it up.

Instead, I overheated it.

Under my torch flame, the surface of the shank started to bubble and shrink back in what I have come to know meant the total death of the piece--the point of no return. I didn't turn off the torch and move away. I turned UP the torch and fried that entire thing into a shimmering puddle, gritting my teeth and probably muttering obscenities.

It wasn't until later that day that I realized I was relieved that the ring had melted into worthlessness. Finally, free of that stupid thing. I won't go out to the bench to work on something and see it lying there, mocking my inability to finish it. I don't have to try to figure it out. Ever. Again.

So all I have to offer is a sort of before and after of the ring; the materials I started with:

and the final product.

I guess it's a good thing I know I can at least use this mess by broom casting with it at some point.

I turned my attention to a project from Wire Jewelry magazine.

(Side note: I just started getting this publication and have been pretty pleasantly surprised by the abundance of ideas and projects it has. I don't do any wire wrapping, but I do use a lot of wire to make my findings and some of the simpler pieces I do. I get a few jewelry and glass work magazines and feel like they are half advertising...Wire Jewelry seems to go lighter on the ads.)

I made this bracelet, and I like the concept of it, but it's not so great on the functionality front. It is really hard to get on and off, and doing so can distort the wires going underneath the wrist. The project called for 14 gauge wire and I used 12, but still feel like it's a bit flimsy. I have thought about a way to make a clasp to attach the circle to the other side, but everything I have tried looks very out of place. In the end, I'm not sure what to do with it. I am going to have to put it aside for now and revisit it later...hopefully the result will be better than the ring I kept putting aside!

Cricut Cake: the trial run

2010-05-19T20:08:00.001-05:00

Last night, Ben helped me try out the Cricut Cake. It was easy to set up--basically plug and play--and we had great success with our first attempt.

Between the time I knew I was getting the CC and the time it arrived, I watched some YouTube videos to pick up some tips and tricks for use. A couple of things that were universally recommended were to roll out the material directly on the cutting mat and to let it rest for about 15 minutes before cutting. (Some people even put the mat with the fondant or gumpaste attached into the freezer for a few minutes. I didn't do that, but would have if the fondant didn't firm up.)

I used Wilton fondant, primarily because it is fairly dry compared to marshmallow fondant. I think if I use MMF, I will add some tylose powder to keep it from sticking during cutting.

Since these were test pieces, I didn't add color to the fondant before cutting. I used the Wilton color mist spray and edible ink markers on them after the fact...a rush job, so pardon the coloring issues!

These were our first shot at it:

So far, so good! More to come...