Seriously Behind...

My fibre art group, Group of Eight, has our next group challenge due November 12th. The challenge is "behind" and I am seriously there! Although I have ideas floating around, one after another is not panning out. And to make it worse, I've been finding lots of things to keep me busy and out of the studio (read procrastination...).

However, yesterday's distraction turned out very well so I thought I'd share these cupcake creations. I took them to our family Thanksgiving dinner and they were a hit.

There were two dozen, so I made two each of the various mums, nine pumpkins and the rest were the ones with the leave piles.

 

Happy Thanksgiving to all my Canadian friends and family!

100 Down and Lots More to Make...

A while ago I shared a post about making royal icing flowers to be used for cupcake decorating.  Well, the first of the anniversary parties is behind us and the cupcakes were a huge success.

It's so great to be able to have a reason to make so many cupcakes...I love making them, but you can only eat so many!

I forgot to get a shot of all the ones with the white icing background, but here's a close up of one.

Today I'm baking for the next event, my sister-in-law and her husband's 50th anniversary!

Off to the kitchen...

I'm Seeing Flowers In My Dreams...

I'm so honoured to have been asked to make cupcakes for two 50th wedding anniversaries in July, the first for dear friends, and the second for my husband's sister and her husband, and a wedding for the daughter of some other fabulous friends, which is taking place in August.

To get a bit of a head start, I've been making royal icing flowers. They're wonderful because you can make them ahead, let them dry and then store them for a very long time!  That means that when it comes to decorating all of the cupcakes (100, 40, and 75 respectfully) some of the fussy work will already be done.

 

 

It's nice to have an excuse to play with icing.  Without all these events for which to make cupcakes, my husband and I would either have to eat cupcakes for every meal (not with every meal...FOR every meal) or I just wouldn't be able to make them!  I'll take some photos of the finished cupcakes to show you how they turn out.

As always, thanks for stopping by!

Edible Art...

On Saturday I went to the second of my cupcake decorating classes.  This class was all about working with fondant.  Here are the cupcakes I finished.  Working with fondant is a lot slower and fussier than piping buttercream icing.  I'm starting to understand why bakeries can charge so much for their fancy wedding cakes, etc.!

We looked at a lot of amazing ideas in books and magazines and then worked on learning some basic techniques from which we'd basically be able to tackle any number of ideas or themes. We used various cutters, texture mats, moulds, stencils, etc. By the end of the afternoon, I was getting tired and hungry when Maria, the instructor was showing me how to use the extruder.  I happened to use yellow fondant, and the resulting strands looked like spaghetti to me so in addition to some 'pretty' cupcakes, I ended up making a plate of spaghetti and meatballs for one of my cupcakes.

Although it's a lot of fun (much like playing with plasticene!) and can result in some very pretty and creative cupcakes, my husband and I decided that we both prefer the taste and texture of the buttercream iced cupcakes (If you've never had it, fondant is sort of a chewy, tasteless but sweet candy).

I think for my purposes, piping buttercream gives me enough opportunity for creative and attractive cupcakes (you can see some of my earlier cupcakes here and here).  I did experiment with putting some of the fondant flowers on top of the piped cupcakes and I though that looked pretty, but again I'm not sure it's worth the time involved to create them.

Cupcakes and a Puppy...What Could Be Sweeter!

I had a great time creating this page...with adorable inspiration like Dime, it's nothing but fun!  It makes us laugh every time we see him sit on the steps like the lower image shows. He's such a fun and funny little character!

I've also been making more cupcakes.  I love how these little snowmen turned out.

And the monsters were a lot of fun too!

I'm not sure how or why, but Google added snow to this image of my snowman cupcake. It's cute...but I don't know how they knew it was an image of a snowman. Do they have some software that analyzes images or is there some person scanning all images and adding snowfall to any that are winter related?  

Another Media in My Art Arsenal...

Last weekend, Dime and I went to a cupcake decorating class.  It is the first of two that were part of my birthday present from my wonderful husband.










Dime was wonderful!  It turns out I was the only one who had packed a Kong with peanut butter into my decorating 'kit'!  Of course I was also the only one of the 6 participants who brought a dog. ;o)

After he enjoyed his Kong treat/play, he just curled up on his blanket and slept.







I've discovered that I love decorating cupcakes...who knew!  It is just another wonderful artistic outlet, and a tasty one at that!  Here are close ups of my first creations:

A simple rose...

I couldn't resist adding some of my little swirls and dots!

How adorable is this for Easter?

Is it just me, or should this one have another 'flower' in this top right area?

The 'balloon strings' were an after thought, better positioning of the little hearts would make them look more like balloons...next time.

 Yup, there are those swirls again!

I love how elegant this one looks.  It would be perfect for a wedding don't you think? 

And of course I had to play with some text...

We'll have to hurry up and eat these so I can make more!  Thank goodness my husband and I like our dessert!