Birthdays etc.

Between October 15 and December 5th, four of my grandchildren have birthdays.  Which means during that time I am either thinking about cakes or making them. 

Caleb and Brynn live in Quebec and I have previously made the trip by train for their birthdays in October.  This year I didn't go, but the two birthday cakes did along with my two daughters and their families.  

Brynn is in the everything- princess stage so I couldn't go wrong with a Princess Elsa from Frozen theme.  Caleb has always been about cars and my son suggested a smash-em-up derby.

I chose to use a ready made princess instead of trying to model one.  The castle I made using Ruth Rickey's method that I learned in a class last summer with her.

I built up the side of Caleb's cake to make a hill, piled the three Matchbox cars in a heap on the chocolate racetrack, and tipped the fourth car down the embankment.

Elijah's birthday came next and my daughter suggested something from the Lego Movie.

At my cake partner Verdie's, we have been busy too.  Here's a pretty order of cupcakes:

On the sewing end of things I finished a flannelette rag quilt for my youngest grandson Sammy (forgot to take a photo), and another pincushion teacup for the owner of the quilt store that I teach at.  I think that this is my favourite one so far.

Love the little feet on this.  I made little dangly bits so that they would hang in between the violets on the cup.

One of the seams that I like is the cretan.  In between the threads I stacked different piles of sequins.  The idea for this came from a photo frame I bought at a Fair Trade shop.

A small section of the frame.

Thank you for the music......

This was so much fun to do! My daughter's two friends were celebrating their 40th birthdays. Suzie designed and I executed. It's a 12" x 18" vanilla. Isn't it amazing how many music systems we've gone through in just 40 years!

Sugar time

The 100 year old gentleman that I made this 12" x 12" cake for was a concert pianist. He's still pretty spry and still plays the piano. The lettering is a new set from FMM called Funky Alphabet. The capital letters are about 1 1/4" high.

Another "sweet" day

Do you remember the post last week with all those little faces? Well, here is the resulting cake, finished. My friend Verdie and I worked all day on these five and three others. The occasion is a meeting at a local church of "Small Group Leaders". The cakes are an 8" carrot cake heart, two 6" vanilla and two 6" lemon. All are filled - cream cheese buttercream, buttercream and lemon curd with buttercream and fondant covered. The lettering and logo are in colourflow. The cakes were varying shades of blue on a 16" x 20" fondant covered board. We just delivered this cake and some of the meeting attendees were there already. They had such a lot of fun picking themselves and others out of the faces. We hadn't actually modelled them after any of them, but certainly there were some similarities!

This looked so pretty! An 8" "black fruit cake" smothered in gum paste flowers.

Sugar Wednesdays

I seem to be posting more about cakes these days than sewing. And for sure Wednesday afternoons have been all about Sugar with my friend Verdie for several years now. And this Wednesday was no exception. We are working on a cake to celebrate the various groups that meet within an organization in June. Part of decoration will be clusters of "people", and here is the beginnings of that: We needed a couple of dozen rosebuds to decorate a "cut up" cake, and as I was preparing for that I decided to do a quick tutorial on how to make these cute little rosebuds.

1. Roll either fondant or a mixture of fondant and gumpaste out fairly thinly and cut circles. These are about 1" in diameter. You need three circles. If the fondant is very soft, leave the circles to dry out a bit before moving on to the rolling up part.
2. Use a paintbrush to moisten each circle with a little water.
3. Lay each circle overlapping the next.
4. Start rolling, fairly tightly.
5. Roll to the end.
6. Divide in half and neaten the ends. You get two rosebuds from each roll.
7. They are so quick to do. These were done in less than 20minutes.

I also worked a bit more on the fuchsias, and added the next step to the fuchsia tutorial which is further back in my postings.


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If you love making gumpaste flowers, please read about my new 

Gumpaste Flower Tutorials Booklet, available in booklet form or PDF. 
The tutorial covers four lovely flowers: Tulip, Daffodil, Lily of the Valley and Gardenia.  Check it out at my Etsy shop here 

Cake overload!!

This past weekend I had three cakes due. A Baptism, a 70th birthday and my son's b/d. It was hard work on Thursday and Friday and I was happy with the results. My son's cake was a bit of fun as he is a staunch Toronto Maple Leaf Hockey fan. He lives north of Montreal and is usually up against Montreal Canadiens fans. Last year his b/d cake looked like a Maple Leaf jersey, this year here it is.........This is a 12" x 18" birthday cake for a friend of mine's father from British Guiana. The palm trees I made from fondant and used the PMM Exotic Lily Set petal cutter for the palm leaves.TheAn 8" baptism cake.When you live in a condo, one space doubles for other uses. This is my dining room/photo studio.

Gumpaste Fuchsia Tutorial - Part 1

Fuchsias are the prettiest flowers I am making these for a competition cake later in June. I'll be taking pictures at each stage and writing instructions in the form of a tutorial.

Here are some real fuchsias. The colours and shapes are so varied. I'm making a purple and dark pink colour combination and I'll be making them double; similar to the one below, but opposite with the darker petal on the top.

1. Colour the paste you will use for the petals. You need three half stamens and one long stamen for each flower. Cut the tip off the long one.
2. Cut a 3" piece of 26 or 28 covered wire and bend a little hook at the end.
3. Take a small piece of paste and form it into a small rectangle.
4. Moisten very slightly, the inside of the paste and wrap it around the stamens and wire at the join.
5. Roll gently with your finger, back and forth, until the paste has spread up and down the wire and is smooth.
6. Leave to dry.
7. This is the set of fuchsia cutters. and the tooling pad I am using.
8. To make the first row of petals start with a small ball of paste and form it into a "Mexican hat".
9. I used the wooden tooling stick to roll out the paste from the centre outwards, leaving the "hat". If the "hat" part gets too long, then cut it off.
10. Then I placed the cutter over the hat part and cut out the petals. I turned it upside down and put the hat into the hole in my mat.
11. I used the ball tool to soften the petals.
12. I moved the petals to my board, turned the petals the right side up and used a tooth pick to frill each petal edge. Use a little cornstarch to stop the toothpick from sticking or tearing the paste.
13. I made a small hole in the centre of the flower, moistened it, and pushed the wire from the stamens into the hole far enough in so that the paste on the stamens is level with the petal.
14. I held the flower upside down by the wire and brought my partly closed hand down over the petals to give them a rounded shape. Hang them upside down to dry.
15. To make this a double fuchsia, I cut out a flower, this time without the Mexican hat. Tool it to thin the edges, then frill the edges. I use the wooden tool and a toothpick.
16. The I pushed this petal up the wire and on to the Mexican hat part of the flower. I had moistened it slightly.
17. Push it all the way up to the base of the other petal, and make sure that each of the new petals is over the space of the first ones.
18. Hang to dry. To be continued ....... I have the next step in the process, but I cannot seem to get the photos to the bottom of this post. So I will create another post and place it right below this one........                 

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"JUST RELEASED!"

My New (August 2011)

 *** Flower Tutorial Booklet*****

If you love making gumpaste flowers, please read
about my new Gumpaste Flower Tutorial  
which is available in Booklet form or PDF.



The tutorial covers these four lovely flowers:
Tulip, Gardenia, Lily of the Valley and Daffodil. 


Check it out at my Etsy shop here 

Tulip

Gardenia

Lily of the Valley

Daffodil

Fuchsia Tutorial - Part 2

This will be the calyx, the outside part of the fuchsia. Using the second colour paste, start with a small Mexican hat shape. Roll out from the middle until the centre post is about 1/4" and the paste is thin, but not paper thin. This is the calyx cutter. The hat part of the paste needs to fit into the hole, so roll it between your fingers until it is about the right size. You may have to lop a bit off the top. Now it's cut and still inside the cutter. It will not drop out because some of the "hat" is wedged in the hole. Use your paintbrush end to push it out. It won't be a pretty sight, all squashed, etc., but just rebuild it with your fingers until it is a neat shape again. If you are using a metal fuchsia cutter you will not have these problems.

Using a pointed stick or the end of a thin paintbrush handle make a hole right up the middle of the calyx. Tool the petals slightly so that the pointed ends raise upwards. Now, push the calyx onto the dried petals which you have already moistened slightly. Keep pushing gently until it covers the pink petal base. Smooth around so there is no pink showing through. Gently curl the calyx so that it is folding back from the pink petals. There's still the little seed bud to add at the top of the calyx. And then I will dust and steam. So, there you go, this is the fuchsia. It looks so complicated, but once you see each step separately, it's not rocket science!