A long time and many changes!!!

I can't believe it, I haven't posted on this blog since July!! Isn't that shameful!
What's my excuse? Well, I blame the wedding. I just got married on 27 October 2012 and I guess the lead up to the 'big day' really took over more than I thought it would, but it was totally worth it.

Handbag cake - complete

I have completed my first 3D cake! And in this photo it looks quite good...but let me tell you, there were some issues along the way! And as usual, I get so caught up in the process that I forget to take photos along the way, so I only have one "progress" photo and this is of the pink fondant icing I had rolled out.

I didn't have too much trouble colouring this fondant, using Americolor "Deep Pink" and unlike the "Fuchsia" that I've used for other things, this didn't seem to fade as it dried. But I have to say that I'm not happy with this icing that I have been using. I meant to buy 3kg of white fondant, but accidentally ordered White Chocolate fondant! And I also used a different brand, this is Cake Art plastic icing and I have to say that I find it really hard to knead and roll out. I get so frustrated with it, and it ends up all over me!!

On the other hand, I use Bakels Pettinice fondant in black and it is just so nice to work with!

So here are some of the troubles that I had:

• The shape of the cake was just plain tricky, and I was lazy and I didn't ganache the cake, I just used regular icing. So when I laid the fondant on it, it was quite lumpy. Although my fiancé said that the lumps gave it a more 'real' look, like there was stuff in the bag.
• Smoothing the icing on the edges, the joins, was tricky. I think that instead of just laying one bit of icing over another, I should have squeezed the joins together and cut off the excess. That's what I did on the top of the sides, and it smoothed out a lot better.
• The criss-crossing - I only had a little ruler, and I have to admit I rushed it, so the crosses didn't match up as I would have liked them. I also may have rushed with the stitching tool a little bit.
• I used gold shimmer dust on the zip, and I think it looks good, but I had tried to mix it in with some water to make it more like paint, and that didn't happen. I also realised that I hadn't cleaned my paint brush from last time!
• The handles that I had painstakingly pre-made broke!! One broke when I was trying to move it out of the way. And the other broke after I had put it on the cake! It just fell off and left black marks on the icing!! Grrr!!
• And then there was the weight of the cake...it didn't seem too bad until the day after I iced it, when I opened the box to find it leaning back (thankfully in the right direction, so the decorations were still on the front). How annoying! But once again, fiancé to the rescue: He propped it up with an empty "Rock Star" energy drink can!! 

Thankfully it all worked out in the end. The cake survived until Jessie's birthday, and everyone who ate it said it was nice. Although the cutting of it was kind of confusing!!

But what I learnt from this cake was:

• Be very careful with the pre-made fondant stuff - maybe use some string or just hold things until you're sure that they're stuck
• Think about the shape of the cake and the weight, where it might lean and all of that
• Take your time with the decorations. Think things through and don't be so lazy.
• Think about all the tools you'll need before you start - so you don't get frustrated with the getting up to get more things so many times!
• When someone asks if you want help, just accept it!!
• Next handbag cake will be more of a clutch style :)

Handbag cake - preparations

For a very special person's birthday I have decided to make a handbag cake. Last night I baked the cake and today I started to prepare it.
First I had to cut the cake into sections and then put it back together in a handbag shape, using icing to stick it all together. I'm not 100% happy with how the shape has turned out but I show a friend a photo of it today, and she knew it was a handbag, so I guess that is a plus!!

The next lot of preparation I had to do was for the add-ons to go on the bag - such as the handles, and some letters. So I have used black fondant (I purchased it black, so I didn't have to worry about tinting it), rolled it out fairly thin (not too thin for the handles), and then used a cutter to cut out strips, and a stitching tool to put in stitch maks. I also used a great set of Snap-It letters to cut out my friend's name (and some other random letters to put in my little box of random fondant things).

So the next thing to do will be to cover the cake with pink fondant (which I prepared today) and add the decorations and details. I'm also going to add a zip, so I'll be trying out some gold shimmer paint out and I'm really looking forwad to testing it! Hopefully I'll have it ready for Thursday and hopefully it stays together and doesn't fall over - I have put skewers in to secure it.

Vintage Inspiration

I'm often inspired by vintage things - and we should clarify here what I consider to be vintage, which is anything before the 1970s. Maybe it's because my Mum and Dad were young adults in the 70s, or that my sister was born in the 70s, but I just get offended when I do a search for "vintage X" (usually sewing patterns) and ebay returns things from the 80s!! 80s isn't vintage!

Anyway, back to what I was saying. I'm often inspired by vintage things but tonight I am finding myself more so. I'm typing this with hot rollers in my hair in an attempt to create a vintage hairstyle, and I'm hanging out to wear a dress I just finished making from a vintage pattern. Maybe it's because I've been searching for images to use for bridal hair and make up, and searching for these images has motivated me to watch some old movies as well. Tonight I watched a new movie about an old movie...My Week With Marilyn...and I really enjoyed it. I did have to google straight away to see if Michelle Williams wore padding to get the Marilyn figure, and I was right, she did! I don't have to wear padding, well maybe for the top half, but I have a very obvious difference between my waist and hips, which the dress I made will emphasise. It takes seeing old movie stars to remember that it's ok to have hips and that they're actually attractive! You wouldn't think so looking at todays movie stars.

I'll be wearing a headpiece which has a vintage feel to it and so I've tried to find images of actresses wearing hats or headpieces - but they are so hard to find! So here are some of my vintage images for hair and make up inspiration:

Jane Russell and Ava Gardner. You have to love the brunette vixen from the silver screen. Jane has the honour of having said one of my favourite lines in a movie: "I like a man who can run faster than I can!" (from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. And Ava just has such superb grace.

Ginger Rogers and Marilyn Monroe. Not only did Ginger do everything Fred did but backwards and in high heels, she also always lookd glamorous. I love this movie, Shall We Dance for many reasons: Fred is so funny in it, great songs (They Can't Take That Away From Me and Lets Call The Whole Thing Off), they tap dance on roller skates, and the final dance scene (minus the ballet) is just lovely. I also love her hair in this shot and she is wearing a kind of skull cap head piece that may be similar to mine.

And what can you say about Marilyn, especially before the Kennedy's got to her! She is just lovely.

I have saved the best till last. I kept scouring the internet, doing dozens of google image searches, and getting so frustrated because I just knew that I had seen a photo of what I want to look like on my wedding day but I couldn't track it down. Then I realised why I couldn't find it on the website. The photo I had in my mind was one of my maternal Grandmother, Nanna (Marie) Thompson, that my Mum has up in her house. So I took a photo of it the other day, and considering I do take after my Grandmother to a certain extent, I'm hoping that I might look something like this on my wedding day:

I'm hoping to get a photo of me in my new vintage dress soon (it's been -5 degrees in the mornings at the moment, so I haven't been able to bring myself to frock up) and I will definitely be posting it. And if I work out some perfect roller placement for perfect vintage hair I will post photos of that as well shortly.

In the meantime, what is your vintage inspiration?

Winter Gardening

During summer I posted about my snap dragons and how proud I was of them. Well since then they have died, and it has gotten very cold here in Canberra! But never fear, I have been speaking to some of the green-thumbs at my work and have been told that bulbs can be planted. So I purchased a range of bulbs from some kind of fundraising program and I have been meaning to plant them for about a month now!

I have purchased some bulb potting mix - because I had two pots to put bulbs in - and some 'blood and bone' which is apparently put on top of the bulbs.

This is how my garden has been looking:

Pretty dismal. But since the sun was out this Sunday, and I'm finally recovered from the chest infection which has been preventing my bulb planting, I went wild!

Ok, so my idea of wild is probably not as wild as what other people may do, but it's wild for me. I got a little confused with how I had to plant the bulbs, so I'm a bit worried that I have planted some bulbs upside down!

I also filled up the two pots, and I have spread the 'blood and bone' on top. Now I'm a bit unsure of how often I'm meant to water them, and when I should expect to see any action. I think I'll probably aim for watering on the weekend at the very least and maybe once more during the week if I remember and it isn't too cold.

Stay tuned for some growth photos!

Making an 18th Birthday Cake

Recently I volunteered myself to make a cake for a boys 18th birthday. It was a bit of a struggle to think of what to make since I don't really know a lot of 18 year old boys and I didn't really have a lot to go on. I could have made a football team cake, but he isn't a football fan. So I decided to settle for something kind of basic, but fun. Then I bought the "Planet Cake" book and found my inspiration.

So here is my step by step for making a cake.

First I prepared some of the decorations - blue and green stars.

Then I covered the board in the blue fondant.

For the cakes I made two chocolate mud cakes and then stacked them together. I was watchin some clips of 'Cake Boss" and it looks as though each of their tiers is actually three cakes stacked...it's the only way to get the heght, and so next time I'm going to try doing three cakes.

Once the cake was stacked and covered with chocolate icing (to try and even out some of the bumps) I cut out two circles of blue fondant and put them in the middle of the cake - this is to make the explosion type thing in the middle.

In between the last photo and the next photo I got a little bit "in the zone" and forgot to take photos of each step!
So what I did inbetween the photos was:

1. Cover the cake with White Chocolate fondant icing (which was actually a little difficult to work with, it wasn't as pliable as the other fondant I've used before)


2. Trim the excess fondant and smooth out the icing


3. Cut some slits on the top of the cake and peel back for the 'explosion'. This was definitely easier said than done. It didn't work as it was supposed to, but I fixed it by cutting out some blue triangles so that it looked ok


4. Put the fondant ribbon on the cake


5. Put the star decorations on the cake

And viola!

Next I had to insert the "18" candles in the middle and fill it in so that it looked better. I added a couple of those edible metallic beads and some luster dust to make it look a little bit more celebratory. This is the finished product: what do you think?

A couple of cakes

Sincce completeing my Cake Decorating course a couple of months ago (has it really been that long!), I've been trying out some new techniques and practiceing some techniques I learnt in my class.

One technique I didn't get to try out in my class was using moulds. There were moulds available and a couple of students used them (monopolised them!), so I heard about how to use them. But I also watched a few tutorials on You Tube, which has to be the ameture cake decorators best friend!!

Here I was practicing making buttons using a mould. I wasn't sure what I was going to use the buttons for, but you can keep them for ages so I figured I'd use them eventually. This is a Wilton mould - I bought a couple of them from Style Emporium in Gold Creek. I probably could have gotten them cheaper online, but I'm an impulse purchaser sometimes!

This is a six inch cake that was decorated with another Wilton mould set. When working with the moulds I find I have to do a lot of trial and error, but I usually get there eventuall. I took this cake with me to one of my sewing days, it was much appreciated!

Yet another Wilton mould set. I promised a cake for a morning tea at work one week, and so I decided to do something a little bit random. But I think the lime with fuschia works really well.

One of the first techniques that I learnt in my cake decorating class was to use flood icing to fill in letters. So when the opportunity arose to make a cake for my friends baby shower, I had a look at the Wilton cake designs and found this design that was sewing inspired as well. The main part of the cake were the letters on top, created with flood icing. I then brushed them with some new shimmer dust I had purchased (so much fun). Once combined with the buttons I had made previously the cake ended up looking like this:

And to keep the fuschia and teal theme going:

This was a definite success. One of the best cakes I've made. I used a better version of Ready to Roll fondant icing than the one I've been buying from Woolworths and it is so much nicer to work with.

I continued on with the flood icing to create a Betty Boop cake for a girl at work - she ordered it for her friend's 30th and actually paid me for it!

The cake was a hit at the party and I'm really glad I did it. I'm making another birthday cake this week and will post some photos of that process.

I buy most of my cake decorating supplies and tools from Baking Pleasures which has a great range and has really quick delivery. A cake decorating store opened up in Canberra but when I went in to have a look I found that a lot of the products are twice the price of Baking Pleasures. So even when you factor in postage costs, it's still cheaper to shop online. I'll use the Canberra store for some things, like the cake boards, or if I'm desperate, but I won't be shopping there regularly.

Stay tuned for more cake decorating fun, or follow me on Instagram - egeoghegan - where I regularly post cake decorating photos.