Saturday, August 11, 2012

Zebra Birthday Cake Fail!

I hate that word.
Fail.
yuck!

But we've all done it once in our lives and failing is not that bad, really. 
I was asked to make a birthday cake from my sister. She wanted it to have pretty pink hearts and an anchor. Simple right?

That's what I thought! I made all the fondant pieces ahead of time and had them all ready to go. Then I baked all the cakes ahead of time making them cool zebra print! I have always wanted to try the zebra cakes and I figured why not try now. Who wouldn't want to slice into their cake and have some crazy blue and pink zebra stripes jumping at them? I know I would!

So I get to the day where I need to assemble this cake. I'm pumped! I stack the cakes and I'm feeling really good about it. I had also baked some cupcakes that I was taking back home as well so my apartment was starting to get pretty roasty toasty if you know what I'm saying. 90 degree weather, and the AC kickin', my frosting was just a mess! I had piped on some pretty pink flowers around the cake and all of a sudden they just started melting.

I panicked! 

A few words were mumbled and needless to say, she didn't get her cake. I did slice into it though to give ya a look at how it did turn out.


 At least it was pretty! 

I still wanted her to have a special treat so I did make an extra special cupcake in her honor.

 You win some, you lose some. In this case, I fought the frosting and the frosting won. 

At least the cupcakes turned out great! Next time maybe I won't try baking so much at once. Sometimes I think I may go a bit overboard :)

Enjoy!

I partied @
Crazy Sweet Tuesday!
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Thursday, August 9, 2012

Sweet Felt Flower Wreath

Hello friends! 
Are you ready for some wreaths? 
I have been addicted to making wreaths lately and I cannot stop! First off, they are so much fun to make and secondly, you get done with one..then you browse around on Pinterest and find a new cute one to make. It is like a never ending wreath story. 
I'm sure everyone and their neighbor has seen the felt flower wreath and all those tutorials out there, so forgive me for showing all the steps but if your like me and have never tried to make something before, I like to see how it's done right away so I don't have to blog-hop to try and find a tutorial. 

So here goes nothing. Forgive me, the pictures were taken with my iPhone and for some reason I was not very good at taking photos that day.

So first off, I wrapped a styrofoam wreath with some linen I bought at Walmart for pretty cheap. To start this, cut your linen into long strips then just start at one point, using hot glue to secure the fabric onto the wreath, and start wrapping. 

Round and round you go...


Getting dizzy? :)

While wrapping the fabric, I glued here and there just to make sure the fabric would stay in place and glue once more and the end.
Okay, here is what your wreath will look like when you're all done.


I like how the fabric ravels a little so I didn't worry about the loose strings here and there.

Now we get to make the flowers! Best. Part. Ever.

I had so much fun making these flowers. I bet you will too!

I'll start off with an easy one. 

Take a piece of felt (I started with a piece that was about a foot long). Cut a strip the long way as wide as you would like.


Fold this piece in half and glue the open edge down using hot glue. 



On the folded edge, start cutting slits right up until just where you glued. Continue to cut slits the whole length of the felt. 


You can make these slits as far apart or as close as you like. I do random sizes to make different sized flowers. 
Starting at one end, roll the fabric and glue as you go like so:


Keep rolling and gluing until you get to the end and there it is! Simple as that. 
Flower one complete!


Ready for round two? Me too!

This one I'd say is probably as easy as the last one. First of all, cut a circle.
Yup, that's right, just cut a circle.


Next, cut a swirl into the circle.


Easy peeeeasy...told ya!

Are you ready to roll? Here we go again!

Starting at the outside edge, start rolling...


You don't have to glue along as you go because once you get to the end you will secure with glue.

So now your done rolling and you will have the end piece left. Fold down the end piece and secure with hot glue. This will hold it all together.


There you have it!! All done with flower #2.


Isn't it pretty!?

Okay onto the final flower and it's a doozy.

It is not really that hard but it is the one that takes the longest to make. 

Start by cutting out 5 big flowers and 1 smaller flower of the same shape.
I used a template so they would all actually resemble each other :)


You're thinking "Why does she have 2 smaller flowers?"
Well, I thought that I was going to use them both but I only used one so X that one out of there!
Also, I used 6 big ones, not 5 as pictured above....lessons learned I must say.

Now, one piece at a time, fold it in half and secure with a dot of hot glue. Then fold in half one more time and secure once again with a dot of glue. Do this to 5 of the 6 pieces.


Once they are all glued, take 4 of the big petals and glue them onto one petal that has not been folded so they are all touching in the center like so:


Next, take one more big petal and the smaller petal and glue them into the center of this.
Fluff them up and there you have it!
The final flower! So pretty! :)


Now that you have 3 flowers done, start making a bunch of them, as many as you want! Go crazy!
I made them in all different shapes and switched the colors up a bit.


With your hot glue gun fired up and ready to go, start gluing all your pretty little flowers on the wreath. I did just part of the wreath because I like this look, but you could go all out and cover the whole thing if you wanted to. Add a piece of ribbon (I wrapped mine around the back and up to the front and tied a cute bow).

Here is how mine turned out!


Totally in love with this thing!

Another peek? Why not!


And there you have it, one of thee cutest wreaths made by yours truly. :)

I think I could do this all day, not sure if there is enough felt in the world for this...


Here are some of the other wreaths I've been working on, let me know what you think!


 I absolutely fell in love with the American flag felt wreath when I saw it and instantly made one. I glittered my stars and hung it loud and proud for the 4th of July.

 Then I decided that football season was coming up so I better show my Packer pride and really get those colors showing. So there is my Green Bay Packer felt wreath!

 Then there's the music paper wreath that I just adore! I placed a cutout circle using glittered paper in the center which really added a special touch. The lace ribbon used to hang this makes it a whimsy piece that adds so much to any room.

 Boy oh boy, a little over board? Eh, I could keep doing this forever. Watch out blog friends, there will probably be more coming at ya!

Thanks for stoppin' by!
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