Saturday 31 December 2011

christmas pops

some more late Christmas diy.. 
i have only had one go at making cake pops in the past. those were pretty basic. being my first attempt i didn't try anything too fancy. just some white and pastel pink one's for my sister-in-law's baby shower following my friend Amy's recipe which you can find here
Santa's Reindeer Pops


my step-brother turned up after the shower eneded and ate all the left-over cake pops. since he loved them so much i promised to make them again for our family christmas lunch.


given the success of the shower themed cake pops i thought i'd put a festive spin on the cake pop, and so the research began. after much googling i decided to go with  reindeer inspired christmas cake pops.  
here's a pic of the real deal.pictures via: bakerella and mason cupcake.

mine turned out looking slightly less professional than these. practice makes perfect though and with the number of family events i attend each month i'm sure there'll be plenty of opportuity to practice.  
bakerella also has step-by-step instructions on how to make the raindeer cake pops, plus christmas tree cake-pops and santa hat cake-pops with links to suppliers (mostly amazaon.com). if you're based in Oz like me i've found Amy's recommendation of cakes around town to be the easiest place to source ingredients.

diy: fringe

so i know Christmas is over but i thought i'd share some Christmas creativity which might inspire you all for Christmas 2012 ...

i think i’ve mentioned before that my new addiction is pinterest. during one of my daily searches recently i came across a pic of some wedding decorations which had been sourced from martha stewart weddings which had used a craft technique called fringing. the texture created by all the tiny pieces of paper looks amazing. after further searching i came across a “how to” fringed save the date on green wedding shoes wedding blog. each year i like to add a little hand-made touch to all the Christmas gifts i give and this year i decided to adapt the fringing idea from wedding to festive. i ordered myself a pair of fringing scissors from here and came up with the idea to use the fringing idea as gift tags. as it was my first attempt and I had to have them done early to fit in with my big blended family’s quasi christmas on 17 december i opted for a simple bauble shaped gift tag (I had originally planned to use the initial of the gift recipient but ran out of time). here’s how i made them…
what you’ll need:
1. fringing scissors
2. scissors
2. cardstock (for the bauble)
3. tissue paper (in various colours – i used red and green)
4. a template of your chosen shape
5. glue
instructions..
1. take your cardstock and the template and cut the number of gift tags you need (alternatively, if you have a good printer, print your shape directly onto the cardstock).
2. take one sheet of tissue paper, fold it in half and make 4 concertina folds (back and forth continuous parallel folding - like an accordion) with each fold approximately 1.5cm in width (depending on size of your shape). then cut off that strip.
3. repeat step 2 until you have 4 strips of fringe (more if you need to make more than ½ doz baubles).
4.  overlap each fringe strip and hold the template to check you have made enough fringe to cover the whole shape.
5. now, glue each strip of fringe to the one below.
6. next, place glue on the template and stick the template behind the fringe.
7. finally, cut all the excess fringe away from the template.
here’s some step-by-step pics and the finished product!




i made a quick one from patterned card stock for my sister's birthday card too