Baked Today - Lemon and White Chocolate Cupcakes

Its Sunday, a day to stay at home, get some chores done, potter about, craft and ooh... maybe bake some cakes!

Today I made some lemon and white chocolate cupcakes from the latest Cupcake Heaven magazine, decorated very simply with some piped white chocolate buttercream and grated lemon zest and white chocolate. Yum!

Magazine: Cupcake Heaven Summer 2012 Volume 1 - lemon and white chocolate cupcakes and white chocolate buttercream
Wilton - 1M piping nozzle

I Love London

I fell in love with this Penny Black stamp as soon as I saw it and just had to have it!  Took a while as everywhere seemed to sell out as soon as they got it, but eventually I was able to add one to my stash! Along with the New York and Paris stamps from the same range :-)

I am entering this card into the Simon Says Stamp and Show - Anything Goes challenge

Materials Used:
Penny Black - London stamp
Hero Arts - small open flower stamp
Promarkers - Poppy
JosyRose - red satin ribbon
Spellbinders - Reverse Wonky Rectangle
Martha Stewart - border punch
Craftwork Cards - A5 white card blank
HOTP - red paper

Red, White and Blue Cupcakes

There are lots of red, white and blue challenges in blogland at the moment, and although I was tempted to do another Union Jack themed card, I decided to do something different to make a change.  A new Debbi Moore CD "Tea and Cakes" arrived in the post which has lots of very pretty cake images in a range of colours including red and blue - perfect!

I would like to enter this card in the following challenges:
The Secret Crafter Saturday Challenge - #190 Red, White and Blue
Cupcake Craft Challenges - 196 Red, White and Blue
The Poodles Parlour - Red, White and Blue
Sarah Hurley Challenges - 68 Red, White and blue

Materials Used:
Debbi Moore - Tea and Cakes CD (cupcakes and background papers)
Craftwork Cards - A5 card blank, Birthday sentiment
Waco - Pearl Maker pen in cream
Blue mirror card from stash

Kraftyhands Vintage Motors CD

Kraftyhands is releasing a new double CD set "Vintage Motors" on the 16th July, and the design team has been busy making samples for you all to see.

Here are mine

And if you'd like to see some more, pop on over to the Kraftyhands Blog to take a look, and why not enter the Red, White and Blue card challenge while you are there!

Materials Used:
Kraftyhands - Vintage Motors CD set
Craftwork Cards - white card
Blue card from stash

Picking Flowers

I love this Milly stamp from Lili of The Valley, and thought it made a pretty card for their In The Garden Challenge  

Materials Used:
LOTV - Milly Just for You stamp
DoCrafts - Tulip linen paper
Promarkers - various colours
Letraset - fine line drawing pen
Spellbinders - circles, scalloped circles
Core'dinations - purple card
Craftwork Cards - white card blank

Polkadoodles Challenge - 3rd Place!

Yay!  I got 3rd place in the Polkadoodles Regal Colours Diamond Jubilee challenge for my "Keep Calm & Reign On " card! Imagine very excited 'happy dance' going on here :-)

Thank you Nikky and team for picking my card as one of the winners!

Bella

I'm in love with all things Polkadoodle at the moment, and have made this card for their Week 23 Lots of Flowers Challenge

Materials Used:
Polkadoodles Pretty Sweet CD - Bella on swing, papers, sentiment
Polkadoodles Candy Doodles CD - flowers
Spellbinders - Labels One (grand)
Craftwork Cards - 8" x 8" white card blank
Letraset - Fine Line drawing marker
Kanban - irridescent gems

Keep Calm & Reign On

Continuing with the celebrations over the weekend, I made this card for the Polkadoodles Week 22 Regal Colours Diamond Jubilee Challenge

Materials Used:
Polkadoodles - Pretty Sweet CD: Amelia
Nikky Hall - Brittania digi papers that Nikky generously gave us on the Polkadoodles Facebook page: Union Jack and Crown
Serif Craft Artist Professional - to size the Union Jack background, and make sentiment panel
Promarkers- Lipstick Red, Ruby, Crimson, Tea Green, Grey Green, Ice Grey 1, Ice Grey 2, Blender
Flexmarkers- Tea Rose, Linen, Light Fawn, Dusky Pink, Cappucino, Saddle Brown
Craftwork Cards- white card blank
Kanban - irridescent gem
Silver mirror card and black ribbon- from stash
Cocktail stick - from the kitchen! :-)

Queen's Diamond Jubilee Parade

How lucky were we - a place right at the front along Whitehall!  I really didn't expect to find a spot where we would see very much at all, and it was pure luck where we ended up really as after The Queen passed us in her car on the way to Westminster for lunch the people in front of us left - so hey presto there we were at the front ready for the procession!  And only a couple of hours to wait...

There were military bands on foot and horseback and troops marching by to help the time pass by

A little more waiting...

Then we heard the 60 gun salute start and before you knew it we could hear cheering from further down the road, and there she was - our Queen!

Quickly followed by The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge with Prince Harry

Sadly it was all over very quickly, BUT, we saw The Queen!

Happy Diamond Jubilee Your Majesty!

I hope you've all enjoyed the Jubilee weekend, its a pleasure to share some photos from my day with you on here

Jubilee Bunting

Ready to bring a little bit of the Diamond Jubilee celebrations into our flat I made some Union Jack Bunting for the balcony doors and a mirror, so now the country is in full swing celebrating, I thought it was time to share it with you. I spent a couple of hours printing, sticking, and tying ribbons, the difficult bit was attaching it to the rail above the windows (and rather frustrating it was too!)

Materials used:
Stamps Away - Bunting Stamp and Ink Board
Serif Craft Artist Professional - Cool Brittania digikit
JosyRose - white, navy and red ribbon

Thank You to Emma

On Friday I went to the DoCrafts Creativity Club Members Event held at the DoCrafts HQ in Dorset.  The day went very quickly, with demos from Jo Austin and Sheila Halliwell, lots of crafty stash on the craft tables for us to play with, lovely crafters to chat with and a very warm welcome from the whole team.

I came back inspired to get my watercolour pencils out and try some new techniques, and also to make more of the DoCrafts Digital Designer. So here is a card that I have made for Emma Collins at DoCrafts to say thank you for organising the event using some paper and images printed from the Digital Designer.

Materials Used:

DoCrafts Digital Designer - Me To You Spring Chic discs for the background paper, sentiment and Tatty Teddy image

DoCrafts - pink Papermania solid cardstock

Spellbinders - classic circles, picot edge circles, ribbon tag trio three

Kanban - irridescent gems

Craftwork Cards - white card blank

Letraset - fine line drawing marker for the dashed lines

  

Kraftyhands Red, White & Blue Challenge

The Kraftyhands Red, White and Blue Challenge is now live on the Kraftyhands Blog, and you have until noon on Friday 6th July to add your entry for a chance to win a £10 voucher to spend at Kraftyhands

There is a card from each Design Team member for inspiration, I used one of the lovely Strawberry Kisses kitty stamps for mine - isn't she sweet!

Materials Used:
Crafters Companion - Strawberry Kisses Little Miss stamp
Craftwork Cards - white card blank
Promarkers - Poppy, Denim Blue, Blossom, Ice Grey 1, Ice Grey 2, Blender
Flexmarkers - Cloud Blue
Kanban - self adhesive gems
Blue card, red card, red and white spotty paper from stash

Kraftyhands Blog Monthly Challenges

Exciting news! Kraftyhands is starting monthly challenges on their blog this Saturday 2nd June!  So come and join in over at http://kraftyhands.blogspot.co.uk/, create a project using Kraftyhands or Crafters Companion products available from Kraftyhands and be in with a chance of winning a £10 voucher to spend at http://www.kraftyhandsonline.co.uk/

There will be a different theme for each challenge, and you'll see plenty of inspiration from the Kraftyhands Design Team every month, so check out the blog at the weekend and share all your fabulous projects with us - we are all looking forward to seeing them!

Happy Crafting!
Mandy

Kraftyhands Vintage Motors Tag

Kraftyhands will be releasing their new Vintage Motors double CD set very soon, and us lucky girls on the Kraftyhands Design Team have the opportunity to have a play and make some samples for you to see ready for when its available in the online shop.

As well as making some cards, we were set a challenge to make a tag for the Kraftyhands Blog, so here is mine, along with some details of how I made it.

Getting all my bits n bobs together I realised that I didn't have any tags. No tags in a crafty stash - how can that be I hear you ask? Am I the only crafter in the land that a) has no tags and b) has never made a tag before???!!!  Not one to be put off, I cut a piece of card 10cm x 18cm and marked in pencil 2cm in from each side on one end, and then 5cm down from this edge, joined the marks,  cut the triangular pieces off and punched a hole in the top.



I then printed some sheets off from the CD, printing them out 2 to an A4 page to reduce the size to be suitable for a tag.

I covered the tag with the map background paper, cut out one of the main car images, inked it with Rusty Hinge Distress Ink and added that to the tag.

I tore some of the car parts background papers in two different colours, inked the torn edges and added them over the car image, trimmed and inked up all round the tag with the Distress Ink.

I cut out one of the car decoupage layers and put that on top of the tag with some dimensional glue.

I then added some torn and inked map background paper  and an inked Happy Birthday sentiment. And with a piece of ribbon, there you have it one tag!

Materials Used:

Kraftyhands - Vintage Motors double CD
Craftwork Cards - A4 white card, ribbon
Ranger Distress Ink - Rusty Hinge
Pinflair - dimensional glue gel

Happy Birthday PolkaDoodles

It's PolkaDoodles 3rd birthday!  So my card for their birthday challenge has 3 girls from the Pretty Sweet CD (which is yummy!) sitting on a cake from the Paper Boutique 1 CD.  I hope Nikky and team like it!

Materials used:
PolkaDoodles - Paper Boutique 1 CD (cake and background paper), Pretty Sweet CD (3 girls)
Spellbinders - Labels 4
Craftwork Cards - A5 white card blank
Kanban - irridescent gems
Letraset - fine line drawing pen (for the border around the card and sentiment)
Printed Sentiment - Chocolate Box font

Practice Makes Perfect...

... though I still have some practising to do, I was pretty pleased with the results with my buttercream piping using a new piping nozzle that I had seen recommended in several books and blogs.  Much better than previous attempts, and to me it looks like Mr Whippy ice cream!

Magazine: Squires Kitchen Bake School - vanilla cupcakes, vanilla buttercream
Tracey's Cakes - white chocolate sugar paste, orange chocolate sugarpaste (very yummy)
Blossom SugarArt - petunia cutter and mould, edible dusts and paintbrush
Wilton - 1M piping nozzle

Great Britain

Loving all things Red, White and Blue I've enjoyed being able to get hold of various stamps and papers with a Great Britain/London/Keep Calm/Union Jack theme that have become very popular in the crafty world this year.  This card was made for a friend of my OH's, and I am sure he will like it when he sees it in a few days time.

Materials Used:
IndigoBlu - Jack A6 stamp, Pomp & Pageantry stamp set (using the smaller Union Jack and the Great Britain logo stamps)
Artistic Outpost - London Underground stamp set (using the Keep Calm and Carry On stamp)
Craftwork Cards - white A5 card blank
Claritystamp - white double sided coated paper
Ranger Adirondack due inks - Denim, Cranberry
Gold mirror card from stash

DIY Birthday

Its my OH's Dad's birthday next weekend, and he loves woodwork, so I thought the toolbox stamps from Joanna Sheen would fit the bill, so with some promarkers and a little bit of time last night whilst the football was on I set to work... :-)

Materials used:
Joanna Sheen stamps - Old Tool Box, Elegance Satin card
Promarkers - various colours
Craftwork Cards - A5 white card blank
Spellbinders - Labels 25
Mirri card from stash

Tea and cake anyone?

Cakes not cards today :-)  Strawberry cupcakes with white chocolate frosting, and chocolate paste flowers.

Having been to the Cake Decorating and Baking Show at the Excel Centre last weekend I felt inspired to have a go at making some chocolate paste flowers to decorate cupcakes, which obviously means you need to make cupcakes too! How is that for an excuse!

Recipe Book: Cupcakes from the Primrose Bakery - strawberries & cream cupcakes
Magazine: Cupcake Heaven 2 - white chocolate frosting
Tracey's Cakes - white chocolate paste, milk chocolate paste
Blossom SugarArt - petunia cutter and mould, edible dusts and paintbrush
PME - edible red pearlescent spray

Walk Like An Egyptian

Materials Used:
Debbi Moore CD - Egyptian Promise
Craftwork Cards - white A5 card blank
Joanna Sheen - Gentle Gloss Photo Gloss paper
Mirror card and gems - from stash