It was so exciting to finally meet Grace Stevens of Cupcakes by Design and take part in 3 of her Johannesburg workshops while she was in our busy city.  I had bought her book, Celebration Cakes, at the National Sugar Craft Show in Pretoria and after many hours looking at each exquisitely crafted cake I was apprehensive about being able to manage the workshops.  Well I needn’t have been at all as Grace is a brilliant, funny and patient teacher who has a unique gift in being able to humbly share her amazing knowledge in a fun environment.  We started with the dainty Filler Flowers Workshop and the collage above shows Grace tenderly dusting colour onto her completed flowers on the left and our groups of completed flowers opposite.

In the afternoon we moved onto doing the Teddy Workshop and as you can see by our completed Teddies, we had loads of fun with these cute sugar craft creations.  It was my first time making something this size out of sugar paste and I was so happy with my completed teddy and her cute patches, buttons and stitching details.  Once again Grace’s way of teaching in carefully planned out steps made it a really fun class to follow.  Grace is an inspiration to all those who have a passion for sugar craft as her designs are not only fun to follow but she teaches in a way that allowed us to bring out the unique character in each piece we crafted. The picture above right shows three teddies, Grace’s teddy being a little coy, Vicci’s yellow teddy, a little shy and sad and then mine looking at me in amazement as if to say “I didn’t know you could do this!” Thanks Grace for sharing your time and knowledge with us.