Safari Cake

This was my first attempt at using Fondant and I decided to make it as well. So a little back story. It is my amazing boyfriend Corey's sisters Sweet Sixteen and we were throwing her a surprise party. We were in charge of a safari cake with a blue to match her streamers. The picture below is Corey rolling out the fondant. For the cakes I just used box cake because we had to make 3 separate cakes and I made them all double layered. It helps to make these a day early, ice them, and then place them in the fridge to set.

Fondant is 1 package of mini marshmallows + a ton of powdered sugar. I have a fondant mat i purchased from Walmart for $10. I suggest you invest in one if you plan on doing fondant cakes because it made my life so easy. Take about 3/4 of your powdered sugar and make a volcano like mound with a large hole in the middle. Mini marshmallows are microwaved for 30 seconds at a time stirring every 30 seconds until it is creamy. This is when you add the food coloring. I made several batches on fondant so what ever color you want add how ever many drops you need, and stir!!! Now for the very hot and sticky part. You can choose to use Crisco on your hands and the mat to help with the sticking but honestly it still sticks to you. i just used it mostly on my spatula. So you keep folding in the powdered sugar into the marshmallow until it basically becomes like play-d'oh. That's when the handsome helpful boy friend comes into play with the fondant mat.

Now my 2nd layer cake was 9" So all he had to do was roll the fondant out to the marker on my mat but really you just want the fondant as thin as possible so you can do without the measurements. I then laid the mat over my cake. I peeled the mat off and smoothed down my fondant starting from the middle of the cake and going in a circular motion toward the edge. Don't force the fondant it will go itself. I watched about 25 videos on this before I attempted it, and since i don't do video posts I highly recommend you do the same. So once my fondant got toward the bottom you just cut along the edge of the cake and push it in toward the cake to give it a finish.

As you can see her name is Kemlyn. I made some black fondant, rolled out and used cookie cutters to spell out her name. Add a little water to the back and they stick right onto the other fondant.

Layer 1 was Zebra. This is a 12" cake triple layered. I rolled out the black fondant and used a pizza roller to cut thick squiggly lines. You don't want them to go all the way to the center because it will make the middle layer cake uneven.

As I placed on the middle layer i cut the excess of the zebra stripe off to make it seem like it goes right into the cake.

Top layer was giraffe! Corey was not home at this point so I had to do the picture taking by myself so not many shots of this. Basically it is yellow fondant with brown fondant cut into odd shapes and placed all around.

I used a black icing piper to add some finishing touches around the layers.

Here it is with the candles!

And the proud big brother and the birthday girl with the cake!

Fun With Wooden Letters

Another stolen Pinterest idea. Wooden Wreath from Michaels $4.99, Giant Wooden 'S' $3.99, Flowers $2.99. I had the paint and blue striped ribbon already from a pervious craft so I did not have to purchase any for this craft. I started off using painters tape on my big wooden letter. And by big wooden letter I mean the biggest they had. This letter was not in the section with all the other wooden letters it was across the store by these wooden wreaths. I placed the painters tape on my letter in a stripe design and painted the blue between the tape. After two coats of paint I let it dry for an hour. The problem I encountered was when i peeled the tape off. The original white paint (at least I thought it was paint) peeled off with the tape leaving these odd brown patched behind. Luckily I had white paint handy as well and simply painted over these brown spots. Next time I will be priming the letters myself prior to painting. After that problem was solved I took a yellow Sharpie Paint Marker and outlined my blue stripes and the entire letter around the edges.

I wrapped my blue striped ribbon around the top part of my wreath. Then i took a hot glue gun and glued the S to the wooden wreath. I took the fake flowers I purchased and just pulled them off the stems. You can choose to leave the stems and just fish them through the wreath, I did that prior to borrowing a hot glue gun to make them stick. Once I had the hot glue gun I just put a lot of glue on the stem of the flowers and pushed them through the sticks and held them til they stuck and the glue dried.

And wha-la! this is my summer wreath hanging on my door. :)

Below is a cute little decoration I made for our bedroom. Originally we had a large painting of a purple flower, but we were tired of it being on this wall so we moved it to another and my boyfriend left me to do what I pleased to make the wall look nice. Now, my first attempt at the above wreath a purchased and painted the S shown below. I realized it was way to small to fit on the wreath but I had already painted it and was sure i could find another use for it. So I went back to Michaels and bought a few wooden cut outs: C, heart, and a frame with hearts carved into the edges.

I painted the frame black, the heart red, and striped the C to match the S and just used blue paint for Corey. I rent my house so I use Command strips to hang everything so I don't put holes in my walls. Hanging this was easy-peasy. 3 .5lb Command strips on the sides and top of the frame and stuck it to my wall. 2 1lb Command strips on the tops and bottoms of each letter, and I stuck them to the wall in the frame. Last, 1 .5lb Command strip on the back of the heart stuck between the letters. I was more than pleased with my new 3D wooden art as was my boyfriend.

Corey <3 Suzie

Table Make Over

So I am currently renting a house that came with a decent dining room table in a not so nice color. I have two dogs, so a white table is no good in my house. Every time one of the dogs leaned against it they would leave dirt marks on the legs of the table and chairs. While browsing around on Pinterest one day i noticed a lot of people painting their furniture to make it look new again. My boyfriend and I went to Lowes and bought Velspar Black Gloss spray paint. In the picture below you can see we brought the table outside and laid it upside down on an old sheet. We then tapped the sheet with painters tape around the table (sorry no picture of that)

After it was all taped off it took about 2 cans of spray paint to cover the table and 1 can of spray paint to cover the chairs. We also taped off the chairs and used old pillow cases to cover the seats. This was the most tedious part, taping around the posts in the chair. We let them sit outside for an hour, un-taped it all and brought them inside.

This is the finished product and I can tell you it looks great in the house. The black we chose matched our entertainment center, couch, and picture frames in the room. No more nasty white table and we spent a total of $12 on 3 cans of spray paint. Way cheaper than buying a new table.