April Crafty Round-Up

You know how some people go M.I.A. around Christmas?  Not that they mean to, but somehow, they just get so busy and caught up in the season that they fall of the face of the planet and awaken around MLK day stunned, wondering where the time went.  Somehow I usually manage to stay in tune during Christmas, but spring time is always like that for me.  Easter was always one of my favorite Holidays growing up, and I love the thought of summer around the corner.  Then, my daughter’s birthday is mid-April, and I have an annual state sorority meeting that falls around this time also.  Did I mention that my wedding anniversary is April also?  So basically, here is my excuse, between two weekends out of town, getting ready for house guests, party prep, and Easter, birthday, and anniversary festivities, I have neglected you, dear readers.
 

This does NOT mean I have been too busy for crafting.  On the contrary, I have been too busy WITH crafting!  Yeeee-haw!  So here is a round-up of the crafty happenin’s from my neck of the woods. 

 
New Jewel in the Crown Card
 

This is a card I made to be attached to a gift basket for the newest collegiate chapter in my sorority.  The focal point of the card is a large chipboard crown that I inked turquoise and used pearl bling embellishments on.  The chapter name is just alpha stickers, the lambda is an upside down letter “V.” The background is some gorgeous magenta glitter cardstock I found in the clearance aisle for only seven cents a sheet!  I really love the contrasting color combo used in this card.  Here is the coordinated inside of the card:

The writing was done in a word file and printed in turquoise to match.  It was printed on white card stock, trimmed, and inked turquoise also.
 

Bunny Cake

 

This is a special Easter cake that my mother used to make when my sister and I were kids.  I know she got the recipe out of a magazine years and years ago, but I do not remember which one.  She would sprinkle flake coconut on hers as well to make the bunny fuzzier, but none of my crew much likes it, so it was skipped.  This cake is NOT done with a special pan.  It is two 9” circle cakes.  One is left whole.  The other has two concave semicircular cuts made in it to make the three pieces that form the ears and bow tie.  They are arranged closely on the board together, and iced to look like a solid cake.  After he was iced in white buttercream, I went back over the surface and tapped with a fork to form peaks in the icing to give him a fluffy look.  The border and piping detail are simply pink buttercream.  The simply Hello Kitty-esque face and bow tie polka dots are Brach’s jelly beans.  It’s always a hit with little kids and big kids both! 

Birthday Treat Bags

 

If you saw my daughter’s birthday party invitations in this post: http://phenomenallycrafty.blogspot.com/2012/03/berry-nice-party-invitations.html  you know she picked Strawberry Shortcake as her theme.  Here are the treat bags that I whipped up for her class:

These are plain red paper bad that I dressed up with a sweet printed "thank you" message tucked behind a simple strip of a coordinating decorative paper (strawberry print of course!).  I’m not the biggest fan of those little plastic junk toys that most party bags come filled with.  Our classmates left with a pencil and strawberry shaped erasers, small bag of homemade strawberry shaped candy, and a homemade cake pop dipped in red with green piping.  This was not my first attempt at cake pops, and one day I do want to share my tips and method for them with you all, but first I need to FIND the tips and PERFECT the method.  At least they were so darn tasty, it really made up for the sheer ugliness of the little red lumps on a stick.  Cake pops usually leave me frustrated, being a perfectionist and all.  I think I am going to stick to cupcakes in the future.    
 

The other new trick I tried was make homemade shaped candies using Wilton melts and a strawberry shaped plastic candy mold sheet.  This was my first go at these as well, but was very pleased with the results.  You simply melt the melts, (wonder how they got that name?), and then pipe them in the mold using a plastic piping bag with the end snipped off.  Tap them on the counter to release any air bubbles, and then pop them in the freezer for a few seconds.  Once they are cooled and hardened you turn the mold over and they fall right out!  Next time I make a run of these I will make a full post with recipes, instructions, and detail photos.  Easy on time and skill and big on wow factor.  Just how I like it!

All of this birthday kitchen crafting led up to the pièce de résistance, a strawberry shortcake themed birthday sheet cake.  I have to admit I had cake anxiety with this cake.  It was exactly a year ago, during a botched attempt a Mickey Mouse cupcake tower for birthday number two that I decided I needed professional cake help and haven’t looked back.  Taking the Wilton basics class at my local Michael’s was one of the best crafting moves I ever made!

 This cake is a Duncan Hines Strawberry Supreme mix using my same old recipe seen in my other cake posts (http://phenomenallycrafty.blogspot.com/2012/01/beer-cake.html) and vanilla pudding.  My daughter loves strawberry cake because it’s pink!  This cake was baked in my basic half sheet pan, the same one used for the beer cake.  It was base iced in light green butter cream. 

The strawberry patch is made using fat piped lines of brown butter cream with crushed chocolate graham crackers on top for dirt. Real strawberries nestle in to give a whimsical touch.   A darker green was used with the grass tip along the edge of the patch.  In addition to the floral and vine corner detail, it also has side piping in yellow and a dark green dot border.  Do the hot pink lettering and flowers look familiar?  They should, this color was left over from the bunny cake.  It truly was a perfect sized patch for her Strawberry Shortcake dolls to pick and play!  I even found coordinating candles in my super market baked good aisle.      

 Just when I thought I was all baked out, a there was a note in my church bulletin requesting cookies for the local chapter of Kairos Prison Ministry.  It may not surprise any of you, but I like to do my giving back with baked goods.  Down at my local Sam’s club I found this bad boy:

Yes, a 4 1/2 POUND bag of chocolate chips.  I already buy sugar and lots of other dry goods in bulk so why not?  I set out on a mission to wave my wand and turn that bag into a bazillion cookies.  It only took about 6 hours of baking with one three year old "helper", and a few “broken” ones were saved for us, but I pumped out over a 12 dozen cookies (yes, a full gross!), out of that bag.  And with that great feat, my kitchen is closed for a while. 
 
I think we've hearded all of the craft dogies into the blog corral for now!!

I promise I will try not to desert you all for so long again!  Of course, if you have questions about these projects, or would like additional details, don’t ever hesitate to contact me!