Merry Christmas 2010

Merry Christmas everyone, have a safe and wonderful time with your family. Here are two photo's to show how I have re-used Jasmine's birthday party elements. I am all for recycling ;-)

Cheers,

Leoni

xxxxx

Jasmine's Birdy birthday party

A little bird told me........... this is what inspired me to create my niece Jasmine's birthday party a few weeks ago. I love, LOVE Tasha's work from A little sweetness, this lady truly inspires me and I loved working with her gorgeous art to create my nieces party. It was perfect for what I had in mind for a 2 year old's birthday. Tasha sells all sorts of gorgeous goodies, but beware, once you are in her shop you won't be able to leave!!

My biggest dilema was that Jasmine's birthday is only 3 short days from Christmas, I wanted a birthday theme that could be used for Christmas (I wanted to re-use a lot of the birthday elements) without Jasmine's birthday being too "Christmassy". I uhmmed and ahhhed a lot over the colour scheme, should it be green and red, no I want pink and green, it drove me to distraction. After doing some "homework" I was inspired by Amy Atlas's Wedding library dessert table I love the soft colours Amy used and the feather details on the table. I chose pale blue, red, white and natural because I already had some of the bird elements at home and I felt the colours were nice and fresh for our hot Ozzy sun.

This is my favourite food item on the table, "chicks on sticks" inspired by Bakerella's Spring Chicken pops. Some other foods were "worms" (sausages), "crows feet" (choc covered pretzels), "twigs" (bread sticks), "Magpies" (Aussie mini pies), "bird nests" (mini meringue with malteser eggs) and "Polly's crackers" (Sesame cracker biccies)

Since the party would consist only of 6 children I didn't want a huge dessert table instead I opted for something smaller like the antique drawer unit, chair and stand combo above. It worked quite well I think, even thought I was very nervous the week before I kept thinking this is NOT going to work and nearly canned the whole idea about 3 times lol

I didn't have much time till the party so I bought my bird gingerbread cookies from Dolls at the mount, not only were they yummy but they looked cute too. I hung some bird cookies from the branches above the table and some I popped under the glass dome (to keep them fresh).

The birthday cake was inspired by the invitation designed by Tasha, a lovely chocolate buttercream sponge covered in white chocolate fondant. The bird and mushroom topper I made to match Tasha's bird drawing, isn't it cute? I love it! Instead of ribbon I covered the bottom of the cake with feathers.

The chidren drank "GOOSEberry" juice from vintage bottles with custom a little sweetness bottle lables and cute stripey straws.

How cute are these cupcakes, I've always loved Natasha Collins from Amelie's House and was inspired by her Rockin Robin cupcakes. The toppers are made from edible fondant paper (using Tasha's bird drawing) and the vanilla butttercream cupcakes are encased in Kat and Nat's famous bird cupcake wrappers (from The Cupcake wrapper co)

On the main table I popped a white tablecloth on which I attached a feather boa. The eating bowls were mini baskets (like nests) and I popped the bird house boxes inside which are treat boxes but also served as name place cards.

Above the table I suspended some bird garlands made from twine, scrap ribbon and cardboard birds painted in blue, white, red and some left natural.

I used bamboo cuttlery for the party and used Kikki K's VAR bird stamp to personalise the spoons. Napkins and plates from Provincial living, baskets and cuttlery from Wheel & Barrow

Here are my bird house treat boxes (inspired by Torie Jayne's gingerbread house) ready to go home with the party guests (see tutorial below) Each one is made using cardboard and fabric scraps I had lying around the house , bargain! You can also view my photo's on my FACEBOOK page.

Birdy house treat box tutorial

So for the birdy party I was after some super cute yet unique treat boxes, I didn't want to spend a lot of money and wanted something I could do with my children so I came up with this cute idea. I downloaded a birdy house template from Torie Jayne's blog (thanks Torie), made a carboard template and traced 6 box shapes (since I needed 6 treat boxes) (see above photo)

and drew 6 x seperate rooves.

Then I cut out all the boxes and rooves

and traced the same pattern on some scrap fabric to cover my walls and rooves.

laying the cardboard cutout flat against the fabric I glued down the top of the eaves and the walls, I left the sides open since I would be sewing them together anyway. I scored the floor (square you can see in the middle of my cardboard cutout above) lightly with some scissors so they would bend along the fold more easily.

I then glued some felt to each of my rooves.

Now fold the walls up so they meet and using blanket stitch sew them together (the raw fabric edges are folded in as you can see above)

Your house will now look like this, you can trim the fabric back on the inside but I left it for tutorial purposes, you won't see it anyway once the roof is in place.

Now cut out some black felt circles to stick on the front of your birdy house (as the hole) I blanket stitched around mine to make them neater.

Glue the circle on the front of the birdy house and glue one side of the roof down leaving the other end open. Once you've filled your house with treats you can close the roof by tying a ribbon around the house and roof (see my blogpost above to see what I mean)

Going to the Chapel to get married...............

This is a lovely sample wedding cake I did as a tester. Colours were ivory, creamy gold and pale pink with pearl highlights. I love the soft colours and simplicity of this design.

Here is a close up of the the rose, I can see the shimmer from the the pearl dust I used on the tips of the petals.

Here are some matching cupcakes to go with the cake, it was just a sample box of 6 flavours and I experimented with some of my new impression mats. The birds were hand cut and handpainted, still haven't found an appropriate cutter I like yet. The other designs were inspired by the lovely Kylie Lambert who's cupcakes are AMAZING.

Tinkerbell giant cupcake birthday cake

I finally had a chance to bake and decorate a giant cupcake this week, boy did I have fun!!! I was lucky that the giant cupcake 3D pan was on sale at Myer a few weeks ago since I didn't fancy carving up a cake from scratch. Using the design from the Planet Cake book as my guide I covered an orange butter sponge cake (filled with orange buttercream) with some jaffa flavoured white choc fondant and proceeded to decorate to my hearts content. This birthday was Tinkerbell themed so I had to make a Tinkerbell figurine holding a paint brush since the birthday girl loves to paint.

Isn't she cute? I didn't try to replicate Tinkerbell limb for limb, I just used her as a guide and simplified her facial details.

Everything was edible, including the cherry on top which was make from red fondant given a super shine finish with my edible flower glaze (I love that stuff!!)

Wedding family characture portrait

Ok, I have to admit I found this request difficult, really, really, REALLY difficult. Last year my good friend Sel asked me to make this painting for a very special family member. Her request was a characture family portrait, no problem I said, easy I thought, if I can paint portraits and seascapes surely I can paint charactures right? HA! I was wrong, you see I am a realist, a thorough, anal, draw every detail kinda realist, I see it I draw it even to my high school art teacher's dismay. I sucked at abstract art and could never create anything by just using the object's colour or shape. So when I started on this painting I tried so hard to keep the subject simple and cartoonish that I lost the character of each person, I struggled, vented, chucked a tanty, tore my hair out, almost gave up about 15 times and drew the intial sketch a further 8 times before Sel and I were happy with the final design. Then I ummmmed and ahhhed, procrastinated, dug my heels in for a further few weeks before getting the courage to put the design on canvas. I was petrified I'd stuff it up, I think I tested the background colour 3 times, and did some mini colour versions before I finally took the plunge and started the painting. To my surprise I enjoyed painting it, I came across no hiccups, and ever the pesimist kept my triump under wraps right till the last stroke was complete. Am I happy with the result, heck yes! Will I be doing this again, heck no!! lol

Spiderman birthday cake

This is what I was busy completing for this weekend, a lovely Spiderman cake. Thank goodness I had the foresight to make the figurines two weeks ago, hot and humid weather + a very hectic schedule gave me very little time to do anymore figurines. This is a super moist choc mud cake with choc buttercream icing, the walls of the cake were a mixture of white choc fondant and Nestle milk chocolate (yum). The only thing not edible were the 2 cars I popped on the board at the last minute. I had a scary moment the night before where the hot weather played havoc with my milk choc walls, they kept going soft and wanting to break yikes!!! Thankfully the weather cooled down and I was able to complete the walls and cake, even if it was at 1.30am in the morning :-(

I made the spider webs from melted white chocolate, a template, some grease proof paper and a piping tip. Once they were dry I just peeled them off and "glued" them to the cake using more chocolate. Did I mention that the cake weighed a tonne? I nearly killed my back carrying it to the car!!