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.

Lilly in Decoupage

I love all things Lilly Pulitzer. Well, except for the price! I really do enjoy their vibrant, beachy fabrics, so when I received their catalog I ooh'd and ahh'd over the beautiful clothes, handbags, and accessories. And the price. That pesky price. I had been trying to figure out a simple and cheap project for a cardboard box that was sitting empty in my son's room. So empty cardboard box, meet Lilly Pulitzer catalog. This was my first decoupage project. I'm not 100% in love with it, but it turned out fine for someone who hasn't decoupaged a single thing since third grade. It's sitting on a shelf in my office, and houses a variety of office supplies like glue sticks, pens, sticky tabs, and extra post-it notes.



I definitely could have worked harder to smooth out some of the bubbles, and really, catalog pages aren't ideal for decoupaging because the colors run a little bit when you are trying to do just that. Oh well, it was fun, and I think it's pretty cute!

Rolled Paper Christmas Tree in a Shadowbox

My latest obsession in Pinterest, along with a lot of other people. I have gotten so many fabulous ideas, and this is the first that I actually made. You can find my pin here: .

I have an obscene amount of Christmas crafting/scrapbooking/card-making supplies, because a few years ago, I was going to start making my own Christmas cards ;) So when I saw this post, I knew that I already had everything except the shadowbox frame. When I clicked on the pinterest link, there was no tutorial or anything but a dead link, so I kinda winged it, but I am very happy with the final product!

Materials used:
an assortment of different Christmas scrapbook papers
Christmas buttons
3-D Christmas sticker
gold star brads
large sequins star
double-sided puffy stickers
8 x 10 canvas
shadowbox
glue gun
paper cutter
ruler

This is such a simple project, a kid could do it. I used my paper cutter to cut the papers, using the previously cut paper as a guideline, making each one smaller as I went along. I rolled each paper. I used a ruler to help maintain the same 'margins' on either side. That got a little tricky as the pieces got smaller and the glue gun got hotter :) I affixed the buttons using my glue gun, and secured the brads with glue as well.

Another idea I had, which I did not implement, was to add 'gift box' stickers under the tree. I did lay a few out, and it just looked too busy to me, as I was going for clean lines. I do think if I'd had a larger frame/canvas and a smaller tree, it would have looked better.

I cannot wait until it's time to decorate for Christmas so I can hang this on the wall!

First Cricut Project - Butterfly Wall Hanging

Well, my original 'first project' on my new Cricut was some elaborate (for my crafting abilities anyway) birthday party invitations for my daughter's birthday. When she decided to have her birthday party somewhere other than where we had originally planned, and invite more kids, I temporarily scrapped my idea. Tabled it, if you will. I think I will still make her invitations, but I haven't had any brilliant ideas that coordinate with the new location.

So...moving right along! A few weeks ago, I was going through some stuff in the basement and came across a large framed picture of my daughter when she was a baby. Not one of her better baby pictures, so I decided to remove the photo and make something on the Cricut to frame for her room. So glad I did because I really like the finished product. It is not perfect though, but she will love it nonetheless, and it was so cheap that if I ever decide to change it up again, I already have all the materials.

Anyway, using a butterfly from the Florals Embellished cartridge as my inspiration, I began my journey into the world of all things Cricut. Truth be told, the one pictured here is my second attempt at this butterfly. You see, when I made the first one, I wanted to use only paper that I had on hand, and I tried to copy the FE book as closely as possible, and I just wasn't happy with it. The colors were ok, but they had no texture and it was just sorta 'blah.' So I went back to the craft store yesterday and bought new paper, just enough for this project. Each paper had texture and I like this version so much better. Now, one thing I will say with the Cricut, is that (and perhaps this is because I haven't mastered it yet), it is fickle with textured/embossed papers. I had to trash some paper and ended up using a sheet from my original stash. I am not sure if I was using the wrong setting, though I did try a few different ones before I gave up on the paper. I think it might have be that some of the designs were rather intricate, using small/tiny cuts. Anyway, lesson sorta learned. If you click on the picture without the frame, you can see where some of the cuts were wonky and tore the paper in tiny spots. Oh well.

The other thing I had to do, which is what I'm not terribly thrilled about, is change up the matting. I did not want to go out and buy new matting, and since this was navy blue matting, and I didn't want to hassle with priming or anything, I decided to use coordinating scrapbook paper and basically, cut and paste. You can totally see it in the last two pictures. What I would do differently next time, is either buy a new matte, or decoupage the existing matte. But I just wanted to get it done and with all this said, I still like the way it turned out.