It's a Piece of Cake!

Here are the cakes I did for the cake walk at my daughter's school carnival: This was a pinterest-inspired cake, using Wilton tip #233, also known as the Grass Tip. It was an easy, though time consuming, cake, and it was so pretty I think I will make it again...

For this Angry Birds cake, I found an online decal of the bird, and enlarged the outline to fit my cake. I used 10" rounds, and just cut the cakes to make the shape of the Angry Bird. I didn't do a crumb layer because I ran out of time, and the gel transfer didn't work, so I resorted to the pinprick method and kinda winged it (no pun intended). I think it turned out pretty good!!

Bright flowers cake

Used pre-packaged neon fondant for this one, but the purple is buttercream :)

Dragon Cake

Also made for the cake walk last year, using a gel transfer

Green Bay Packers Cake

I made this cake last year for the cake walk at my daughter's school carnival.

Fish Bowl Valentine's

I wanted to do something a little different for my daughter's Valentine's this year. We decided we wanted to do some kind of treat, but she has a few classmates with severe nut/milk allergies, so we were a little bit limited. No worries! Spending way too much time on Pinterest always yields good ideas :) I saw these and these, and decided to combine the two to make our own. I did change things up a bit. Originally I was going to just buy a few large bags of Swedish Fish and put several Swedish Fish in the bags loosely. But then when I decided to use the inks, I thought it might not be a good idea to have something intended to be edible, rubbing up against ink. So I went the expensive route and cleaned out the individual servings of Swedish Fish at the local Target :)

Supplies List:
Cricut
Create A Critter cartridge
Cuttlebug
D'Vine Swirl (embosser)
Tiny Bubbles (embosser)

Swiss Dots (embosser)
Various cardstock
Brilliance Ink Pads in copper, platinum, and gold
ink swabs

various craft glues
Clear, rounded bottom favor bags
hole punch (for tags)
paper cutter (for tags, which I printed)
curling ribbon
scissors (for curling ribbon)
2 oz bags of Swedish Fish

• The first thing I did was determine the appropriate size that would fit in the rather odd shaped bag with a narrow opening :)
• I cut out the fishbowls using white cardstock.
• Using a pretty shade of blue, I cut out the 'water' feature.
• Using the Cuttlebug and the D'Vine Swirl embosser, embossed each piece of the water feature.
• Using platinum ink and ink swab, gently swiped over each swirl, to add dimension and shimmer.
• Using a sandy colored paper, cut out the 'sand' feature.
• Using the Cuttlebug and the Tiny Bubbles embosser, embossed each piece of the sand feature.
• Using copper ink and ink swab, gently swiped over many of the bubbles, to add dimension and shimmer.
• Cut out sea weed.
• Cut out various sizes and colors of fish.
• Using the Cuttlebug and the Swiss Dots embosser, embossed some of the fish.
• Using gold ink and ink swab, gently swiped over some of the dots on some of the fish.
• Glued everything together using various craft glues.
• Inserted each one into the bag, and carefully folded in half the 2 oz bags of Swedish Fish and put on the opposite side (where only the white card stock was visible).
• Using a label-making template, created the tags, and cut them out using a paper cutter.
• Hole punched each tag.
• Attached the tag to the bag using curly ribbon.

Crazy About Cake!

Even though this is a 'craft' blog, I am going to also post pictures of cakes I make, so I have a good place to keep track of them. I guess cake decorating is kinda crafty??? I just decorate cakes for fun. It's a lot of work, but I love the challenge. Every time I do a cake, I realize that I have so much left to learn. So if anyone out there has any marvelous tricks of the trade, please share them!!! :)

Anyway, this is a picture of the cake I made for my daughter's 7th birthday party, which was yesterday.


Cake info:
3 layers (6", 8", and 10"), 2 cakes each, which were all leveled using a leveler
4 white cake mixes (12 eggs, 4 cups water, 2 cups applesauce) + pink, leaf green, and lavender gel colorings to 'tie dye' the cakes
vanilla pudding filling (8 snack packs)
6 batches of buttercream frosting (white, pink, turquoise, and lime green) - note to self: I made WAY too much frosting this time
4 colors of fondant (light green, pink, orange, purple) used for flowers, stripes, and bottom layer trip balls
26 pre-made royal icing roses in white and hot pink used for middle later trim
15 pre-made royal icing leaves (could have used more but I ran out of time) used for middle layer trim
watermelon sours, used for top layer trim and on cake wires
1 small handful sugar pearls, used on top and middle layers
4 viva paper towels to smooth frosting
2 dowels, cut to size and 2 straws, cut to size, to house the dowels - this helps support the layers. I am not sure how much the cake weighed, but my hands were shaking after carrying it to the party room
2 cardboard circles (6" and 8") for middle and top layer
1 cardboard cake plate
8 cake wires by Duff - the kids loved these. Will definitely reuse. Next time I won't insert them in the top layer, it makes the frosting sag a little bit.

I think my frosting smoothing skills have improved since the last cake I made, but there is definitely room for improvement. I think I get a little frosting-crazy when it comes to the crumb layer, so there ends up being way too much frosting in some spots,and then after I do the cover layer of frosting, it's hard to smooth it out again. Something I think just needs lots and lots of practice! I do use Viva paper towels to smooth it out as much as I can :)

I probably wouldn't do the roses again. They were about $.50 each and I think most of the kids picked them off and threw them away. I could have done fondant rope, or maybe even some kind of sour licorice ropes. I'll have to keep my eyes open for something that kids might like to eat, it's just hard to find the right colors.

The original plan I drew had a harlequin design on the middle layer. I wasn't able to find a cookie cutter anywhere, and just didn't have time to sit down a draw a template. I knew it would take a lot of time to cut out the fondant and I knew I would run out of time. The 'swirlies' aren't the best, but the kids didn't care - they loved it!

Overall, I'm happy with how the cake turned out. It was kinda nice to watch strangers walk by the party room and ooh and aah over the cake. It's nice to get a little praise every now and then :) But most importantly, when I asked my daughter if she thought the cake was OK, she said, "WAAAAAAY better than OK mom!!!"

Merry Christmas Banner

I made this Merry Christmas banner for our party using the Cricut. The banner itself was made using the Celebrations cartridge, and the letters were made using the pre-loaded American Alphabet. I am fairly happy with how it turned out. I wish I had used a different color scheme, but I'll know to spend a little more time planning in the future.