Baking, succulents, and parties

Hello! I realised recently that I have an awful lot of photos of little things I have made/ baked, but I haven't shared them with you! You may have seen some of these on Instagram, but here we can talk about them a little more without having to make those huuugggeeee comments that end up looking like a really dense wall of text ~___^

First up: ugly cake! Scott and I recently celebrated our sixth wedding anniversary for which the traditional gift is salt. I thought that sounded a little boring so instead I decided to make a salted caramel cake. I wanted to make a layered cake, but I also didn't want it to be huge so I made a rectangle shaped upside down cake, and cut it into smaller circles. The caramel part of the upside down cake means that I didn't have to put anything between the layers.

However, cutting nice looking circles from cake is actually a lot harder than I expected it to be! When I layered them up, I realised how wonky my cake was! >___<

I thought about covering the entire thing in buttercream icing to try and make it look nicer, but ultimately decided that salted caramel layers and a salted caramel sauce poured over the entire thing was probably enough forms of sugar for one small cake so I left it naked and ugly ~___^ We ate it anyway, and it tasted pretty good!

I also made a simple card for Scott. I used a black and white chevron paper to cover a blank card, glued on a square of gold heart patterned paper, and stuck a black and gold embellishment in the middle. I messily scribbled a border around the heart paper with my silver metallic pen and it was done!

Bunnings had a heap of tiny succulents for sale recently, so I brought, ummm, way too many of them. I put one in a tiny teacup to give to a friend for her housewarming, and put two more in two empty tins I kept because they're cute. I added dinosaurs because dinosaurs are awesome.

I put the rest in a bigger pot, and added more dinosaurs and some pretty little rocks. I'm not sure how well that one in the middle is going; I brought it because I thought it was a cool colour, but I'm now thinking that perhaps I brought a dying succulent. Hmm.

I designed a badge to give to some of my derby pals, and recently two of my buddies from skating star classes had their birthday so I used two of the leftover pins to decorate some hair bows. The fabric I used is the same design as the badges, which I got printed from my Spoonflower store.

For my birthday I had an Adventure Time themed party - I didn't take many photos but I did remember to photograph some of the food (the most important part, right! ~___^)

I made Lumpy Space Crackles with using this recipe ... except I didn't put in any cocoa and I used honey instead of maple syrup. I also added some blue and red food colouring which didn't mix in that well. I was hoping for it to make purple, but it mostly didn't. I also put on some star shaped sprinkles to make them more space like ^___^

I brought some Adventure Time cookies, but they didn't taste that great so I made them into chocolate bark, with the addition of salted pretzels and pop rocks. They were a big hit!

I also made a Tree Trunks apple pie; the fancy lattice top was trickier to make then I expected it to be! It tasted really great and even though it was huge, it got demolished really quickly.

These sunglasses were made for my friend Clare for Christmas. Clare has an adorable style and is a big fan of daisies, so I wanted to make her something to suit her look.

All I did to make these was glue little daisy cabochons around the frame of some round sunglasses. It was really easy, but they turned out really cute!

I also made these Wookiee cookies after seeing these super cute biscuits by Sugared Nerd.

I used a mini gingerbread person cutter, and melted chocolate for the details. I adore how they turned out!

I made this chocolate bark for my dad for Christmas - I added almonds, pepitas, pistachios, dried cranberries, and white chocolate chips to melted dark chocolate. I also made Dad some coconut ice using this recipe (except I used Stevia instead of rice malt syrup), a trail mix, and more gingerbread. I added twice the amount of ginger into Dad's batch than I used for the Wookiee cookies because both of us like our gingerbread really spicy (not that he wanted to share! ~___^)

Inspired by Messy Nessy Chic, I made this cheese platter Christmas Tree for after our family lunch. Honestly, we were all a bit too full for this, but we did our best anyway! ^___^

Lastly, I've been working on the Death Star blanket. If you've been a long time reader of this blog, you may remember that I started this project in, oh, 2011. It's been in the WIP box for a long time, but the new movie inspired me to get it back out. I've started joining the squares, which makes the whole project a little more inspiring - I've almost finished the rows with the laser! (Baby steps!) ^___^

- Lisa xx

Rainbow cloud ribbon hairbow holder

Hello! As you probably know, I really like hair bows. I like wearing them, and I like making them and this has resulted in me having *a lot* of them! I was keeping all of my hair things in a plastic cauldron on my dressing table but it was really getting much too full and so I decided to make some hair bow storage.

I've had clouds on the brain for some reason lately so I pretty quickly settled on a cloud shape with rainbow ribbons to attach the bows to. I went and visited my dad a couple of weeks ago and while we were doing some shed work (this is code for mainly drinking cups of tea while looking at blue prints and throwing the ball for the dog) I explained to him my idea. Despite seeming somewhat confused why a grown woman would want, let alone need, a hair bow holder, dad dug out a scrap piece of wood for me to use.

I drew out a cloud shape with a pencil, and then used my jigsaw to cut it out. It looked a bit rough though, so dad and I used some small files to shape the puffy bits (that's the technical term) a bit better and then I sanded down the whole thing so it was nice and smooth.

 

I gave the cloud a coat of flat white spray paint, added a smiley face, and then used a staple gun to attach ribbons to the back of it. I also added a hanging wire by hammering in two small nails and wrapping picture wire around them. 

I used about a metre of ribbon for each colour; my collection has definitely got room to grow now! Please excuse my small bookcase butting into the photo here; it's made of jarrah and is therefore waayyy too heavy to move. 

I made most of the bows on here; but the clover and cupcake clips at the bottom are made by Twinkie Chan, the Catbug, BMO, Bee and Puppycat, and LSP bows I brought from Oz Comic Con, and the white and black polka dot bow was made for me by Bec ^___^

 

It looks good next to my hoop wall, and now I can actually see all my bows at once which I think will make choosing them to match outfits much easier ^___^ I will admit that this project would also look pretty at home in a little kid's room but, hey, there's no reason why grown ups can't have rainbow clouds too, right? ~___^

I'm so excited for Halloween this year, I've got a project planned for each week of October and I can't wait to get started on them and share them with you! I'm thinking zombies, witches, vampires, monsters, bats, skulls ... no wonder this is my favourite holiday! ~___^

Until then!

- Lisa xx

Alien, bee, and WTNV hair clips

Hi! Have you noticed that the 90s are totally back? I went to a 90s themed ice-skating night last week that was totally fun (albeit very very cold and we didn't actually end up skating since it was so overbooked) and while researching what people wore back then I started really regretting getting rid of my massive butterfly clip collection realising that so much of the clothes in the store right now are very 90s inspired! This is probably not a revelation to most of you, but I'm usually pretty out of the fashion loop so it was for me ~___^ I wanted to make something to go with my grunge-inspired outfit, but the only 90s crafts I could find were scrunchies and elastic chokers. And then I remembered how all the cool teenagers in my town had alien jewellery. I was both too young and too uncool to keep up with the trends as they actually happened, but now I finally have some extraterrestrial hair clips. And only 15 years after the nineties ended! ~___^

I made these little guys with white fimo, but if you already had a light green shade of clay then that would save you some painting time later on. Even better would be if you had glow in the dark fimo! I didn't know this existed until just now, and I desperately want some. Anyway, I rolled the fimo into spheres, squished them flat with my palm, and then pinched in the sides to give these aliens some Cumberbatch worthy cheekbones. I squeezed a plastic straw into a more oval shape and pressed it into the clay to create the outlines of the eyes and then baked them in the oven.

 

I painted the heads with Kaisercolour acrylic paint in lime, the eyes with black acrylic, and then gave them a couple of coats of glow in the dark paint. I used Tarzan's Grip to adhere them to the hair clips and then they were done!

 

They do glow, but they have a bit of a streaky look so I think the glowing clay would work much better if you were to make these yourself ^___^

For my 90s outfit, I did my hair in what I seem to remember being called "alien buns" (this is probably entirely wrong though); basically two small buns on the top of your head with the rest of your hair out. My clips weren't dry by the time we left though, so I didn't get to wear them that night. Still, I think they're pretty cute (in a creepy kind of way) so I think I'll still get some wear out of them ^___^

 

I had two hair clip bases left over, so I also made these tiny bee clips. They were ridiculously easy to make! The wooden bees are from the scrap booking section of my local craft store; I just spray painted them silver and glued them to the clip backings.

 

I really like how these look against my hair, they're so pretty and delicate which is a bit different to my normal creations ~___^ These pictures have also reminded me that I need to redye my hair soon! The red that turned my blue into purple has faded out quite quickly ...

 

 

While I do still have purple hair though, this next craft seems especially appropriate!

 

I wear *a lot* of hair bows (that, and the baby face, probably explains why a lot of people assume I'm still a high schooler) and I hadn't yet made a single piece of WTNV fancraft; two birds, one stone, you know?

I made this by crocheting two tubes, one large and one small. I placed the small tube on top of the larger one, and then pinched and sewed them together. I wrapped some yarn around the middle to make it look a bit neater and then sewed on the little Night Vale moon/eye/thing that I made from felt.

 

I sewed this hair snap onto the back and it was done! It makes a rather oversized hair clip ...

But it also functions as a smashing bow tie! ^___^ I can really only wear it this way with button up shirts, but basically it just clips in between the buttons.

 

Scott and I were brainstorming ideas for more WTNV crafts last night, so you may see more of this fandom here soon. I'd recommend listening to the podcast, if you haven't already! And that's it for me tonight, dear readers, so ...

Goodnight, Night Vale. Goodnight.

- Lisa xx