Introducing Baby Bunting... see what I did there?!

Long time no blog post I hear you say. Well yes, sometimes life gets in the way, in a good way of course! I am now the proud owner of a four week old baby boy (as well as two two and a half year old boys, *gulp*). So there we go, absence explained by the end of a looong pregnancy- he was 12 days overdue, and more recently by having a new baby.

Archie Patrick born 15.11.11 weighing 10lb 14oz (yes, you read it right!)

The business, which I've recently pared down to focus on just cakes, although I may reintroduce other bits at a later date, will be undergoing a revamp over the next few months and this blog is a bit directionless at the moment, so any sporadic posts will probably be rambling and diary-like!

I'm making snowflakes to decorate the house today. I would say I'm doing it with the children, but that's a lie... they're watching Toy Story! So, if I get my act together, my next post will be some lovely festive photos of my house :)

A taste of summer- cream tea cupcakes

Our lovely neighbours, tasked with letting our dog out in the garden while he was alone for long days last weekend, went beyond the call of duty and walked him twice a day, so as a thank you I made them a box of cream tea cupcakes (along with a bottle of wine of course!).

Unfortunately, the oh-so-helpful two year old delivering them managed to drop the box, top down on the door mat as they opened the door!

Flowers and pearls

Having started this theme with the hen do cupcakes, I carried it on this week for a fairly last minute family cake. OK, OK, it was mostly to use up the rest of the pink and green icing, but still, Mr A's Granny liked it!

That's it for today, but it's Handmade Monday again, so remember to have a look at what everyone else has been doing!

A classy hen do?!

Is there such a thing?! Well, they can start off that way at least! This one did, with a sophisticated selection of lemon cupcakes with pretty vintage inspipred girly designs. I loved doing these- they are my favourite yet.

To see more of the individaul cakes, please visit my Facebook page, and don't forget, it's Monday, so to see what other crafties have been up to this week, take a look at Handmade Monday.

Tinkerbell Cake

Today's cake... Tinkerbell!

Pretty cupcake experiments

I'm coming to Handmade Monday a bit late this week for various reasons, but I thought I'd show you some pretty cupcake experiments I made a few days ago. I have a big fair coming up on Sunday and although I'll make much more basic cupcakes for that, I need to be able to show what I can do. Hopefully I'll get a chance to do some more this week and next Monday I hope to have a decent report on the Taunton Fair and Motor Show!

Anyway, here are the posh cupcakes!

Triceratops cake!

This week's Handmade Monday theme for me yet again is cakes! I was asked to make a dinosaur cake for a friend's son's birthday. I didn't know it was a triceratops until the day before though, otherwise his collar would have stood up properly! Anyway, I'll keep my post short. Suffice to say I had a lot of fun making this and I really hope they liked it!

Postman Pat, Postman Pat, Postman Pat and his black and white cat!

My sons were two yesterday, so for this week's Handmade Monday, I thought I'd share their birthday cake with you. They are more than a little obsessed with everyone's favourite postman at the moment, so the subject matter wasn't even up for discussion. I made it as easy for myself as I could and did Pat and Jess on a break, not because I couldn't be bothered, but because for various reasons I didn't start it until gone 10.00 on Saturday night! Feeling rather pleased with my efforts, I crawled into bed well after midnight, only to wake in the night in a panic because I hadn't made any glasses for Pat! Luckily that was easily remedied yesterday morning.

My hard work was rewarded when the usual cries of 'CACK' (why they call cake cack I've no idea, but it's kind of caught on!) were joined by even more excited cries of 'PAT, MUMMY! JESS!' Hooray, success, they recognised them! Do you?!

My other cake project this week was a simple 40th birthday cake. Pink and glittery, fabulous!

Papercut card tutorial

Well, I promised that I would do a post about how to design a paper cut card, so here it is! I'll do it really simply, with lots of pictures and try to explain in English- I'm not making any promises though!

You really don't need much- a card blank, some paper to line the card, a pen/pencil, a sheet of scrap paper and a craft knife (and ideally a cutting mat, but I can't find mine so am currently blunting knives at a rate of knots using a piece of card to protect the desk!)

The first step and probably the hardest, is to think of a design. I need to make a new home card for my brother, so I'm going for a house with 'New Home' inside it. Draw the outline of your design onto scrap paper, but make sure it'll fit on the front of your card first.

Sketch in the wording/interior of your shape. When you realise you can't fit all of the letters in, adapt your outline!

When you are happy with the design, start to block in the bits you are going to cut out. Remember that the paper surrounding your shape is the card and therefore, your interior bits need to join to it or they will fall out. If you have done this correctly, it should become obvious when you block it in- just don't draw lines anywhere you're not going to cut like I've done in the photo below.

Place your template over your card on your cutting mat and start to cut away the shaded areas.

When you lift away your template, you may find that you need to go over the design with the knife again in some places.

That's it! Add your lining paper, and voila, a super-impressive paper cut card!

Wedding fever

For Handmade Monday this week, I thought I'd share something edible (which I know you've all missed recently!) as well as something crafty, so here are the cakes and cards I made for a wedding...



Flavour cards- people need to know what they're eating!



Shame the glitter doesn't show up in the photos!

And finally a card for the bride and groom. A papercut heart with their initials inside- now available on Folksy!

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All that glitters

If you've read my blog or looked at my Facebook page before, you'll know that I am a big fan of glitter! I use it anything and everything and that includes cakes. Now, I didn't realise what a lot of controversy there is surrounding cake glitter until recently. I read a discussion thread about whether or not cake glitter is safe to use if it doesn't state that it's 'edible' and indeed why you would want to eat it.

OK, let's get this straight. Most of the super sparkly, very, very lovely cake glitters around are classed as 'non-toxic'. That means that they have no nutritional value and basically will pass straight through the body without being absorbed. The less sparkly varieties which are 'edible' are made of sugar flakes and really, look nothing like the glitter we all know and love. This is all down to EU regulations on the meaning of edible- basically, it has to be a foodstuff with nutritional value, which glitter does not.

 As for why you would want to eat something that isn't classed as edible... well, I don't know about you, but I eat with my eyes a long time before anything passes my lips!

So, rant over, here's what I really wanted to share! I was sent an email recently by a company claiming to want to send me some free glitter samples. Being the sceptic that I am, I doubted they would arrive and thought that if they did they would be tiny unuseable amounts. How wrong I was! They sent me five different samples, with a huge amount of each colour that really will go a long way. On top of this, they offer amazing prices on bulk orders. Well, that was all I needed to hear! With a wedding cupcake order coming up and more over the coming weeks and months, I splashed out on a whole collection of super sparkly (non-toxic!) glitters.

The range of colours is fab and I have to say that the customer service was brilliant, as was the free gift! I don't like to do this often,but I feel that this company really deserves a mention, so thank you to Janice from http://www.cakeboxshop.co.uk/- I will be back!

Paper cuts hurt!

They hurt my back anyway- I spend so long bent over the table concentrating that I get very achey. Luckily I've managed not to slice my hands either on the paper or a knife... yet!

I've made a few more designs this week, so once again I've got something new to offer for Handmade Monday, hooray! Today I went to a dedication ceremony (similar to a Christening) and the parents had requested no presents. I hate not taking anything, so I made each of the girls a papercut card of their initial, which can be framed if they want to keep it. They took ages, but I think the result was worth it. I'm planning to make one for the baby's room if it plays ball at the scan and we find out what we're having. I need to try bigger ones to add to my Folksy shop too.

Even more papercutting!

Apologies if you're a Facebook follower- you'll already have seen these!

I couldn't have hoped for a better reaction from Thomas- he was thrilled when he opened his card... even though he had already opened his telescope!

So spurred on by his reaction, I drew a few more grown up designs. They weren't the easiest thing to work out how to draw, but once I'd got the hang of it, it was fairly logical. I made just two cards to start with, one a really simple heart design...

Love heart papercut card

And the second a more self-indulgent (read time-consuming!) congratulations card.

I'm so pleased with them that I've got several more designs in the pipeline including good luck, age and personalised wedding/engagement cards. There might even be some new baby framed papercuts on the way!

Why is it though, that every new spark of inspiration has to cost me money?! As I was making these cards, the blade kept falling out of my knife and when I took the photos I realised how woolly the lines were because the blade wasn't sharp enough. Later that day a routine trip into town saw me 'investing' in new blades for my swivel knife and a totally new knife! I need to get some really good examples into my Foksy shop a.s.a.p. and get promoting!

As usual on a Monday, to see what other crafties have been investing their time and money in this week, take a look at Handmade Monday.

A new obsession...

I needed to make a card for my nephew's birthday yesterday. This happened to coincide with seeing the latest issue of Making Magazine. A few years ago, I saw an amazing example of papercutting and the magazine reignited my interest, so I thought I'd give it a go. The card needed a space theme, so I designed a simple rocket card with his name and age on it, cut it from black card and backed it with foil. Needless to say, I loved doing it and since then, I've designed a whole series of cards to add to my Folksy shop! I'm going to be hoovering up tiny offcuts of paper and card for months!

I've just done a quick Google search for papercutting, and have a feeling I'lll be back soon to share some of my favourites with you!

To see what other crafties have been up to over the weekend, take a look at Handmade Monday.

Just a note...

Last night I decided that enough was enough and I got out my drawer full of magazine cuttings and paper scraps. I only made three cards, but it's been a while, that's my excuse anyway! I went for a paper applique type card and just played around. Anyway, here are the results...

The top two are my favourites, and I have loads of the gold circles cut and ready to make more. I just need to find some more contrasting bits. Old Next catalogues here I come!

Finally some non-mother's day cards to add to my Folksy shop! Hopefully I'm on a roll now and there will be no stopping me. Hmmm, we'll see... You can see other people's crafty pursuits here at Today's Creative Blog.

Babies, babies, babies!

OK, so it's time to confess. I've been AWOL from blogging for about the last three months because the thought of sitting at the computer has made me feel sick! Not one of the usual morning sickness triggers, but there you go, it's what did it for me! Anyway, I'm starting to feel better now and I'm looking forward to getting stuck into some crafty/cakey type things over the coming months.

There really have been babies everywhere recently and I seem to have made nothing but new baby cards like these...

And for those of you who have been missing your cake fix, here's a Winnie-the-Pooh style swiss roll with fresh cream and honey that I made the other day...



It's oh so quiet!

Just a very quick one to say that I haven't totally disappeared! I am still here and will be back to blogging a lot more regularly very soon. All will become clear!

Just for ewe

With Mother's Day approaching, I had a it of a card making evening to get stock ready for Thorne's Farm Shop. It took me a while to get into it, because cakes seem to have taken over my life and squeezed out some of my other crafty pursuits! I got there in the end though. I kept the cards simple, the way I like them and embellished them with the odd bit of sparkle- even the ewes got the glitter treatment! For once I have something other than cake for Handmade Monday! If you want to see what other crafties have been up to this week, have a look at 1st unique gifts' blog...