Hippie Cupcakes on World Baking Day!

May19

Hippie Cupcakes

Today on World Baking Day, it is the perfect opportunity to say thank you to all those cupcake lovers who continue to support us bakers with their orders  and ideas for their different celebrations.  Without you we would not be inspired to bake as we do!  I baked these Hippie Cupcakes for Denese’s birthday and her friend Lisa asked me to do Hippie Themed cupcakes.  I made these funky peace signs and yellow and purple daisies and the cupcakes were a ‘tie-dye’ cupcake in yellow, orange and green.  The yellow, I flavoured passion fruit, the orange, orange and the green, apple so they were truly an explosion of taste and colour as you bit into them.

Denese sent me this thank you message today: “Lisa, I just want to thank you for the cupcakes you made for my birthday yesterday.  Firstly the flowers and peace signs were perfect reflections of me and the delight when I saw the insides… I can only describe it as ‘you captured the essence of me in a cupcake’ wow!!! Thanks again lots of love Denese”

This message was such a brilliant thank you Denese and I am delighted to be able to make people smile when they see my cupcakes and touch them in some small way in each celebration!  So to all my cupcake clients a huge thank you on World Baking Day!

Garden Fairy Cake for Sue’s Birthday!

Apr20
Green Fairy

Just resting before I have to do the cake thing!

Green Fairy Cake

Doing the Fairy Cake Thing!

We love school holidays on a Wednesday at scrapbooking as we get to see our friends who can’t usually make it as they are dedicated teachers during term time.  Jan’s daughter, Sue, celebrated her birthday last week and we thought we would spoil her a bit with an extra celebration with the Wacky Wednesday Scrappers.  True to all our celebrations we had party packs, presents, plenty coffee, our usual photo shoot and thanks to Grace Stevens’ workshop I was able to make a naughty little lime green fairy for Sue’s birthday cake.  As Sue loves anything pretty, this little fairy was perfect for her cake and as Sue also loves her garden I added her resting on a pink picnic blanket in a garden of flowers.

Green Fairy Cake

Fairy Dreams!

When we did this workshop with Grace, she said to us the inspiration for her fairy came from watching her young daughter resting in this position with her feet up and seeing this little green garden fairy here captures that feeling of not having a care in the world!  I made some over-sized flowers and daisies with pearly centres to add to the garden cake and iced the top of the cake with lime green icing using a grass icing nozzle.  I know you loved your fairy Sue and I hope that every time you look at her she makes you smile and brings a tiny bit of her peace into your life.  We loved celebrating your birthday with you and we are delighted you have a few more Wednesday’s free to scrapbook with us.  May all your fairy wishes come true this year!

Green Fairy Cake

Feeling right at home at the Memory Shed!

Pink Flower Cupcakes for Tracey’s Birthday

Apr20

Pink Flower CupcakesPink Flower CupcakesWendy was so excited to have her daughter, Tracey, home last weekend and as it was not only a family reunion but also Tracey’s birthday celebration Wendy asked me to make cupcakes for her.  Tracey loves pink so I iced vanilla cupcakes with a tickled pink icing and added pink flowers which I dusted first before adding a dusting of lustre powder for a hint of glamour.  It was wonderful to meet your beautiful daughter and thank you once again for the incredible enthusiasm you always great my cupcakes with Wendy.

Fairy on a Cushion Cake Workshop with Grace Stevens

Apr18

Fairy On a Cushion Cak

The Fairy on a Cushion Cake was the workshop Grace Stevens of Cupcakes By Design gave on her second day here in Johannesburg.  After doing the Filler Flowers and Teddy Workshop I couldn’t wait to do the 3rd workshop.  Once again we were hosted by Vicci in Northcliff and it  was brilliant to spend time again with these 2 extremely talented ladies and meet new people who were just as keen to learn from Grace as I was.  The pictures below show our work in progress, from top left all the dusting colours and gel colours we had to decide on for our fairies and their flowers, bottom left my fairy with her feet up waiting patiently for a pretty hairdo and wings and finally Grace’s swift hands deftly demo how she covers her cushion cake ready for her fairy to rest on.

Fairy on a Cushion Cake in Progress

Fairies at Play!

Once again Grace taught us one of her beautiful cake designs and allowed us to express ourselves and bring out the character in our individual fairies.  Here they are below with their cute but naughty faces happily resting without a care in the world on their cushions.

Fairy on a Cushion Cake

Showing off our work!

I was so delighted with my cake that no one was left alone until they had seen it or at least seen a picture of it!  I do have a great group of family, friends and clients who were so supportive and shared in my excitement and thanks everyone for your facebook likes and comments they mean the world to me! When your 19 year old son shares this on his facebook page you know you are going up in the sugar craft rankings…. thanks Teigh!

Fairy on a Cushion Cake

Fairy & Cushion Detail

Thank you Grace for such amazing workshops and I will treasure your book and practise and practise more till your next workshop in Johannesburg. Cape Town is certainly blessed to have your talent!  A huge thank you to Vicci for introducing me to Grace and for all the laughs and the inspiration you share in your work.

Fairy on a Cushion Cake

Away with the Fairies!

Teddy & Flower Fillers Workshops with Grace Stevens

Apr18

Teddy & Flower Fillers Workshop

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.

Teddy Workshop

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.

Pink & Yellow Flower Cupcakes

Apr17

Pink & Yellow Flower Cupcakes

 

Cupcakes have become synonymous with birthdays at the Memory Shed and this time Lisa and the girls were celebrating Glyn’s birthday.  Lisa left the design and colour of the cupcake decorations up to me on this order for Glyn and I chose a combination of this soft pretty pink contrasted with the sunny yellow.  I added smaller yellow veined flowers to the centres of the pink veined flowers and then topped the combination with pink pearls.  I made pink and yellow smaller flowers with my quick frangipani cutter and added pearls to their centres in their matching colours.  As Glyn likes a bit of bling I dusted all the flowers with a lustre powder before popping them onto the strawberry pink iced cupcakes.  Happy birthday Glyn and hope you had a brilliant day celebrating with your scrapbooking friends.  May your year be filled with great scrapbooking days, loads of bling and a sprinkling of cupcakes for good measure!

Pink & Yellow Flower Cupcakes