Well would ya Wookie here, it's a face painting inspiration!

I can't even explain to you how much I love puns. I love dad jokes, cheese, double entendres, and puns above all else. That's all you need to know :) 

Anyway, this isn't so much a "tutorial" as an inspiration. A teenager wanted a Wookie (after his dad tried to force him to get his face painted, then I assured dad it would still be cool if I painted on his arm like a tattoo and the teen agreed to that because I'm obviously the expert on cool). 

Chewy was literally on his shirt, but I was still drawing a blank on how to even start that. I ended up painting a base layer of brown, then using a fan brush to apply yellow highlights in the fur. The rest is pretty self explanatory. 

I think it's hilarious, and I hope it inspires you for any Star Wars face painting you have to do!

Now that Star Wars has more movies coming out (which seems like it could easily ruin the movies for me, but we will see) there may be even more opportunities for Star Wars themed face painting. 

Have you ever come up with a design on a whim? 

Thanks for stopping by :)

 

Elsa Cake

I know many of you out there have a frozen birthday to plan, so I hope this post is useful! 

This Elsa cake was made for my LOVELY niece's birthday using the Wilton Barbie dress cake pan. The cake pan is huge, it took almost two cake mixes to fill it. I put the left over batter into a six inch cake pan and baked it for a side project. After I baked the cake, I gave Elsa a makeshift slip by cutting a piece of blue paper to the size of a mini dress for her, then wrapping the paper onto her with Saran Wrap so she wouldn't get covered in icing!  

Because the doll we had was significantly taller then the cake pan, I put a very thick piece of light blue fondant like a tire around her upper thighs, from the top of the cake to her waist, so it looks like the top of her skirt. That whole section on the top of the skirt, from the blue piping icicles to the triangle "belt" is all fondant where her legs would have been naked. 

The top is a thinner layer of the same fondant, just make a rectangle, press it to her body, then use your fingertip to make a dip between her tata's for a sweetheart neckline.

The skirt was super simple! I iced it blue, then covered it with a thin layer of fondant. The fondant roll out was too big for the skirt, so I used a butter knife and cut the front to be even, but I left the length in the back for a train. The fondant was a little moist so I covered it with sprinkles to make it look glittery. 

Tired of fondant? Want an easier skirt that doesn't taste like a marshmallow? Just ice the whole thing blue and cover it with white and blue sprinkles. Ain't no one here to judge, you know what I'm sayin? Thought that counts, people!

To step my game up a notch, I took that leftover cake (in the small pan), mixed it with icing like a cake ball mix, then I put it on a small plate and covered it in blue icing. I made a sheet of blue rock candy then broke it into jagged sections, which I stood up in the cake ball mix and made a very cool little ice palace to put the candles in (so Elsa's butt wasn't on fire). To finish her off, she got a leftover piece of tulle from my stash as a nice little train shawl. Elsa and the ice palace (with fancy princess candles) are shown below: 

The reaction of the birthday girl, her little sister, and their cousin was beyond priceless. Definitely worth the time! 

I hope if you have any hang ups about making a frozen cake you can ***LET IT GO, LET IT GOOOO*** haha ;) 

Check out my previous posts for other cakes that call out to the kids (and kids at heart) in your life! 

Combining cakes

Mmmmmm, cake. I post an awful lot of cake tutorials, even though I make many other crafts throughout the year. I guess cakes are the easiest to explain for me! 

 I don't usually go looking for cakes to make, they just sort of find me. Word of mouth, someone remembering a cake they saw me make on facebook, things like that. This cake was no different! I didn't have a pan big enough, so I'm going to show some behind the scenes of putting together multiple cakes to make it look like one big ol' sheet. 

When an old friend from high school (excuse me? What do you mean next year is our 10 year reunion? That is so wrong) asked me to make a cake for another friend's bridal shower, I couldn't resist! She sent an inspiration cake, but I cannot find it through Google for the life of me. If I find it I will update this to include the link. Regardless, it was a square cake that was in the similar color and pattern as the one shown above. The issue was we needed a MUCH bigger cake, to feed 40-50 people. I only have an average sized rectangle cake pan and instead of buying a bigger one, I just attached together four separate sheet cakes to end up with one big two layer cake. 

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First, bake all your layers (since I had one pan, I would cook one, take it out,fill the pan back up and while that cooked I would trim the other cakes). If my cake looks funny, it's probably because it's a marble cake lol. Anyway,I'm not fanatical about getting my cake layers completely even, but I try to trim the middle with a large bread knife to get it as close to even as possible. 
 

After the four layers had cooked, I decided to "crumb coat" (apply a thin layer of icing and letting it cool for a few hours to smooth it all out) the cakes into two cakes. So, each cake is actually TWO sheet cakes stuck together side by side with icing. Get it? I've got a picture below 

After I let the cakes soak the crumb coat for a few hours, I removed them from the fridge, dumped a tub of icing on top of the bottom layer, then placed the top layer on. I ended up cutting off most of my crumb coat, because I cut the sides and top to give a more rectangular "gift box" appearance. After all my cuts were made (look how many crumbs are in the picture below!! Wipe those away with a clean paper towel before icing!)I added another crumb coat (super thin layer of icing) then put the rest of my white icing on. To avoid having a noticeable dip between the cake layers, fill the middle with icing until it evens the two layers, then proceed to ice the whole cake. To make the icing more white and less cream colored, I added white food coloring (found in Michael's  cake department).

The black icing was in a prepacked tube from Michael's, because I don't love to make black icing :) it was a perfect size also. It did not spread as well as I had hoped, but I have not practiced fine scrollwork much so I can't be too upset at the outcome! You can find scroll work patterns to follow online, but I just decided on a pattern and committed to it. 

Finally, I made some pink fondant and sized it to take up the majority of the cake. See that pink icing tube in the bottom of the photo below? That's the same brand and size as the black, but I bought the pink to make the border around the edge to clean up the cake's edge. 

Remember, just because you don't have a large cake pan it does NOT mean you 

can't make a large cake! If all else fails, keep throwing icing on that bad boy until it looks tasty ;) 

If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask. Thanks for stopping by! 

 

 

 

 

 

A Blog Getting A Makeover

       Okay, so I never envisioned myself as a "post a day, omg let's chat all night!!" kind of blogger. It's not that I'm antisocial...at least not when it comes to the computer :) . The problem is I am a busy girl, working roughly 50 hours a week and working the hours that many do not want to deal with (3 pm to as late as 3 am, depending on the day) which works out fine because I am a night owl. I knew I would be working during the quintessential dinner-with-my-ipad-so-I-Can-catch-up-on-my-fave-blogs hours, I just assumed I would post....SOMETHING.

       It's been over a year since I've made a post. It's not that I'm NOT crafting, quite contrary actually. It isn't that I haven't been going on exciting adventures (I went on a two week roadtrip across country!). The problem has been two things: getting inspired, and staying inspired when my blogger won't work over and over and over again.
   
         I cannot blame blogger or my blog layout entirely for this, because I knew they were being slow and glitchy and I did not take the time to solve the problem (which is funny, since I am all about trying to fix anyone else's technological issues), but I have tried to post 3-4 times since my last post, only to get an error sign. I have spent more then one hour elaborately writing a post, only to have blogger time out, then not save, or save it to draft but it "cannot publish at this time" and after having the error for a week or two, instead of hopping on the computer and trouble shooting, I just got rid of the (weeks later, seemingly lame) post. Aside from that, I just didn't feel like it was "me", like I couldn't quite identify myself in the blog world, you know?

      Enough of my whiny post. With the new year comes new business aspirations in the craft world, a new header for my page (do you like it? I designed it with my own dinosaur drawing!), and a new layout from 17th Avenue Designs .

     


             I'm not saying I'm going to post much more, I am just letting you all know I'm considerably more inspired then I was before :)