Cookery Album

For my second Papermaze project for May, still using the Bo Bunny 'Kiss The Cook' collection, I made a cookery album. I have been looking at 'You Tube' videos on how to create albums. I love the idea of paper engineering to make something that is practical and appealing. Please see the blog for details on how it was made and where to fing all the materials used.

This is a work in progress, and I will add to the album as I discover new favorite cake recipes. 

I hope this has inspired you to have a go at making your own album, for photos, recipes, journalling or another purpose.

Thanks for looking.
Lynn x

Happy 80th Birthday - Cards, Cake, Family and Friends

It was Dad's 80th birthday on 1st October and we celebrated at my Sister's house with a tea party for family and friends on 5th.

I made Dad a card using the Cricut, and the Birthday Bash Cartridge. This was my design team card for Scrapology for this month's challenge. The papers are from Basic Grey's Indian Summer collection, which was perfect for the Autumnal colour theme chosen by team member Sheena.

With the help of Catherine I did a lot of baking and cake decorating in the days leading up to the party. I made a big three tier cake, one layer vanilla, the second chocolate and the third was chocolate chip. All decorated with fondant icing.

Then we decorated cup cakes, 36 for the party, another 12 lactose free so Emily could have some and another 12 for Catherine to take to a party she was going to later in the weekend!

We decorated many of them with the same fondant we had made for the big cake. Others were piped with orange and lemon flavoured butter cream.

 

These all made it safely to my sisters house in the car!

Sylvia had prepared all the other food and Bob had put up the Marquee.

People travelled from far and wide to be with Dad to celebrate his special birthday.

 Happy Birthday Dad.

Thanks for looking.

Lynn x

Belated birthday Celebrations

My birthday was back in May, but we had our monthly crop at Cardinal Colours last Saturday, and it was the first time we had all been together since our trip to Debden in April. I wanted to thank all my lovely friends there for my birthday gifts and cards, and the super cake too. I will share photos here of some of the hand made goodies I received. I have included some that I received from other lovely crafty friends too.

Karen

Linda

Sue

Wendy

Zoe

Sandra

Jill

 Alison

 

Anita

Lesley

Sharon

Thank you all for these lovely cards xxx

Anita made me this lovely, chocolate cake covered with Fluff and fruity sprinkles.

This is what it looked like before she left home:

As the day went on the Fluff decided it would ice the whole cake not just the top. Didn't stop it tasting delicious though. Thanks so much Anita xxx

Cake CSI #72

The famous 21st birthday cake needs to be recorded! - so it now features on two layouts (one in black and white which I can't show you yet, but will be revealed in June), and this one I have created for this week's CSI challenge (#72).

 

Here is what was required to crack solve the mystery this time (more details on the site):

This is what I chose to include:

The Scheme - I used all the colours
Krafted - Kraft Bazzill as by background
Bottle Green - in the Scenic Route and My Mind's Eye papers, Chalk Mist on background and the flowers (which were grey - an old Prima purchase which was gathering dust!), also the distress stain and ink used on letters (Basic Grey Chipboard alphabets stickers, painted with acrylic paint and sprayed, then inked) and numbers (American Crafts Foam Thickers).
Yellowed Pages - from the MME papers.
Olive Oil -  Also from the same papers and the leaves.
Toasted Baguette - From the papers.

Evidence - I have used:
A doily.
Book page print on the Tim Holtz paper used to create the heart.
Labels cut from the MME (The Sweetest Thing - Tangerine) Event / Place / Date details and used for hidden journalling.
Leafy vines - the Prima vine.
Drawing - I drew in white gel pen round a lacy border I made with a Martha Stewart Punch Around the Page punch set and an sheet of spare 12" x 12" paper. I also used this as a template to draw the same pattern around the heart. I drew in some black lines free hand around the border and the heart.
Metal - Book plate Tim Holtz for the '21'.
Kraft Background - Kraft Bazzill - spritzed (chalk mists) and splats (distress stains) and doodled on.rote my journalling on a series of stacked labels, cut from 'Tangello' Greetings Paper MME. They are tucked under the photo and can be pulled out to read.

Testimony - Write your journalling on a series of stacked labels.
My journalling (written on the labels and tucked under the photo) tells of the day we celebrated the triplet's 21st birthday - 31.03.13. The photo only shows the girls as Andrew is away in America.  We were at my brother's flat and he made a lovely lunch for us all (he is also waiting for his lovely Elaine to get home from Brazil). The cake I made was in 7 layers, each one a different colour of the rainbow, so it was very tall, and covered in a white icing. I also made a second lactose free cake for Emily.

Thanks for looking.
Lynn x

Early Happy Birthday to Anita

The lovely Anita has a birthday later this month and so we celebrated at our crop yesterday.

I made her a cake. I saw this cake on Facebook and several people have had a go - here is my attempt:

 

Bottoms up!

I made daisies with white and yellow fondant and a little green sugar for grass.

 

 Anita with her cake

 

Catherine and I had an afternoon baking (we made another cake too, but can't share that until next weekend!). 

 Thanks for looking.
Lynn x

The Boy Who Bakes

Andrew enjoys baking and my Mum gave him a cookery book for his recent birthday, called The Boy Who Bakes by Edd Kimber. My sister was looking through it with him and said she liked the Apple Pie Cake, so he agreed to make it for her birthday just two weeks later. He made the cake in advance but had to make the filling and topping at the last minute. The cake looked great when complete and we set of to her birthday lunch. After a few sudden stops in the car the cake started to look rather sorry for itself! He almost had to rebuild it at Sylvia's house. However it tasted lovely. I thought it deserved a layout of it's own.

I saw a great layout by Kelly Goree a while ago called 'Life is a Beach', created for Basic Grey's new PB&J papers. I have used her layout as a basis for this one of Andrew and his cake.

I used the Basic Grey Periphery collection - papers and letter stickers.

I trimmed the Syrah paper panels with a Martha Stewart border punch. The Big 3 3/4" letters spelling 'BAKES' were cut using my Cricut and the 'Sure Cuts A Lot' programme, the font is Cafe Rojo. I have added some stickles in dots to these letters.

For the geometric design at the bottom, I played around with different sizes until I worked out what would make up the block to fit along the bottom of the layout. The circles are 2 1/2" and the squares inside them are 1 3/4". I inked the circles added the squares to the centre of the back of each one and folded the sides in. so the pattern on the front shows around the square.these were then stuck onto a base piece of paper  cut to 3 1/2" x 10 1/2" before being mounted onto the layout. If making these shapes with double sided papers, you would not need to cut the squares.

The journaling was written on strips of patterned paper and added over the circles/squares.

This was a good fun layout to create, thanks for looking.

Lynn x

Cake Pops

I have had a play at making cake pops, this is my first attempt! I'm really pleased with how the cakes turned out, but want to find a better way of doing the covering. I felt the Melts were too heavy, but there are lots of other ways of doing this so I will read more and find a lighter recipe.

They taste good and there are so many great ideas for decorating them. I'm looking forward to trying this out again. Maybe I will make a batch to take to the next crop!

Kit Kat, Smarties and Cake!

I was thinking of making a cake with M&M's and googled the topic - I found this fun idea on Paige's Pantry Blog. I just had to try this! It was just the thing for our crop yesterday when we were celebrating Wendy's 50th birthday. It's called a barrel cake.

You make a Victoria sponge cake, and sandwich it together with jam and butter cream in the normal way. Then cover the sides and top in butter cream. Then create the barrel with 21 x 2 finger Kit Kats! I couldn't get chocolate M&M's so I poured 2 1/2 bags of smarties into the top of the barrel. I added 50th birthday candles and her is Wendy about to blow out her candles.

We had a good crop as always. Hope you enjoyed the cake Wendy. xxx

Chocolate Fudge Muffins, Banana Loaf and Christmas Cake

Andrew and I did some baking at the weekend. He wanted to make a Christmas cake while home for the summer as he doesn't get back from University until a few days before Christmas. He thought it would be a good idea to start the process. While he was working his way through Delia Smith's recipe I made Chocolate Fudge Muffins and Banana loaf.

I drizzled some melted chocolate on top of the muffins.

No complaints and they have all gone!

The cake has been squirreled away for now.

Cup Cakes on Three Levels

I recently found this tree tier cake stand in a shop in Woodbridge. It is antique style but I'm not sure if it is a genuine antique or not, I just liked it!

Yesterday I made some cakes, to try it out! We had tea in the garden - it was such a lovely day.

The closest thin I have seen anywhere else is a two tier stand in Lakeland.

Thanks for looking,

Lynn x