Tiered, Blossoms and Christmas cakes

Since my last entry I've made afew more cakes and alot more cards. Here are some of the cakes that I made including adding two more layers to my display cake, a birthday cake for my Mum decorated with cherry blossoms, and our fun family Christmas cake decorated with a cute snow family scene.

Striking New Display Cake

I have lots of ideas for new cakes I want to try and I don't always want to have to eat them, so I decided to make one using a polystyrene 'dummy' cake, so that I can keep my little work of art for a while and save on a few hundred calories too!

I started by covering the 6 inch cake dummy with red fondant. I've just started to use the buttercream fondant made by Ace of Cakes as it is great to work with a tastes really good too. Once the cake was covered and smoothed, I rolled out some black fondant and used 4 different flower cutters to cut out 90 flowers in assorted sizes and shapes.

Using a ball tool and sponge I bagan to shape the flowers by thining out the petals and placing the flowers into curved flower former trays to dry. Once dry I gave them a quick dusting with some sparkle powder and piped a small dot of white icing in the center of each flower.

Using a pair of tweezers I place between one and four pearlescent sugar beads in the middle of each flower and allowed them to dry. To decorate the base of the cake I rolled white fondant into balls and cut in half, placed them in a ziploc pot with some shimmer powder and rolled them around until all coated, then used ising to adhere each to the base of the cake.

To fix the flowers to the cake I used white icing and placed a small dot on each flower, starting with the largest flowers first and working through the other sizes, filling in the gaps on the cake. I ended up using 84 flowers on the cake!

Now I get to enjoy looking at my piece of art!

New Website featuring all of my Custom Cakes!

I began making and decorating cakes in September 2009 after attending a Wilton class at Michaels. I got the bug and have been baking ever since!

I've created a website to showcase all of my edible art pieces that I have made since then to share with everyone. I have lots of ideas for more cakes so new photos will be added frequently!

If you would like a custom cake for your next special occassion, then just let me know as I'd love to bake it or you!

Check out all my cakes at http://www.lizfelgatecrafts.webs.com/ and leave me some feedback!

New Handy Note Pads

I love making things, cards, cakes, etc, etc. and so when I picked up a pack of 5 mini notepads in Staples last week, my brain starting thinking of what I could do with them to make them more fun!

I used some colored cardstock to cover the fronts of the cards, and then mounted a cute cut out verse on the front of each! I think I'll be making lots more of these as they'll be perfect stocking fillers for the holidays!

Celebrating 10 years living in the USA

Ten years ago I moved to the US to start a new job, and here we are still living the American dream! To celebrate I made a special cake that encompasses both my home in the US and my home back in England.

This was a fun two tier cake, made of delicious vanilla and chocolate layered between peach buttercream! It was all covered in fondant to look like the Union Jack and the Star Spangled Banner, and was so much fun to make.

Getting ready for a Fall Craft Festival

This coming weekend (Oct 16t) I'll be driving down to Owings, Maryland to take part in the Fall Festival which I'm really excited about. I have been busy making up lots more cards for birthdays, babies, weddings, get well, sympathy, Christmas, holidays, Thanksgiving, Halloween and note cards for all occasions.

I'm hoping that its going to be a great success for everyone there and I'm looking forward to meeting the other crafters that will be there too. I'd like to do lots more craft fairs as getting out and meeting people is such fun and also showing them my cards.

Here is a selection of some of the cards that I will be taking to the Festival with me this weekend.

Look forward to seeing you here. 10-4pm, Shore Living, 8015 Southern Maryland Blvd, Owings, MD.

Giant Cup Cakes and Cheese Burgers!

I've been busy in the kitchen this past couple of weeks and everythings turned out giant size! First I made a fun giant cupcake cake for a friend and then this week I made a giant cheese burger cake for my husbands birthday.

The cupcake cake was made of vanilla sponge and I used my new silicon cupcake cake mold to bake it in, which was so easy. No sculpting needed.

Once the cake had cooled I sliced the bottom part into three and layered it with vanilla buttercream and resticked to form the base. I did the same with the top part and then put everything back together and crumb coated everything with a layer of chocolate buttercream.

To create the paper case I rolled out white fondant into a large circle and then placed the cake in the center of it and carefully pulled up the sides to adhere to the cake. I tied a pretty gold ribbon around the cake to help keep the fondant from falling down.

For the topping I piped chocolate buttercream around the cake and added giant sprinkles made of different colored fondant pieces.

Looks like I need a bigger mug of tea to go with this cupcake!

Next up was to create a birthday cake for my husband. For this cake I divided my carrot cake mixture into three cake pans., two nine inch pans and one 8 inch pan. Once cooled I covered the two nine inch cakes with vanilla cream cheese buttercream and a layer of light brown fondant to resemble the buns!

I rolled out some green, yellow and red fondant and cut them into shapes to represent the cheese, lettuce and tomato and layed them on top of the bottom burger bun.

For the burger, I covered the remaining 8 inch carrot cake with chocolate buttercream as I wanted it to have a rought texture like a burger. This was stacked on top of the bottom layer, with some additional cream cheese butter cream in between each layer to hold everything together. The top 'bun' is added and decorated with little dark brown sesame seeds made of brown fondant.

Lastly I cut out some letters from green fondant to decorate the board. Now all Clive needs is a giant side of french fries and a hearty appetite!

Its been a while since I blogged but here goes!

I knew this year had flown by but didn't realise just how fast until I logged on here to update my Blog and noticed that it was April when I last posted something! It seems that I must have left my head in the clouds after my skydiving adventure in April.

Well the summer went by in a hot humid flash and I was kept busy working a new job. I was also kept busy making a wedding cake, wedding invitations and decorations for a family wedding back in England.

Here is the cake that I made and transported over the Atlantic for the special day!

I also made a special cake for a friends 60th suprise birthday and had so much fun making it. The birthday boy loved it and was ready to sit down and play a game of Roulette there and then!

When I've not been making cakes, I've made two lots of wedding invitations, both custom made and designed to meet the requests of the Brides and Grooms.

I love to make custom cards and invitations, no matter how small or large an event, I can create something unique that matches your theme perfectly and that no-one else is going to have.

Skydiving for the first time!

Well today was the day that I was going to be able to cross something off my Bucket List, and that was to go Skydiving! It was an early start getting up at 5.45am, to get on the road just after 6am for the 2 hour drive down to Orange, Virginia.

It was a lovely drive down, nice and quiet and I felt completely relaxed and ready for my first jump.

We arrived at the Orange Skydiving center and Airfield about 8.30am and we weren't the only ones there. There were quiet afew other people, alot of seasoned jumpers and some first timers like me. First thing I had to sit and read and sign the biggest waiver I've ever seen, that must have stated about a dozen times, how dangerous Skydiving was and that I could die! After signing my life away and went and paid my fee, (I guess they get that out of the way first incase you don't make it down!).

I was on the 3rd group and so got to hang out in the hanger and watch the first two groups go off for their jumps. The aircraft was a 22 Jumper, aptly named as you can get 22 jumpers in it and I'm not talking the wooly knitted variety!

We sat awestruck watching as the tiny dots leaving the aircraft suddenly burst into color when the parachutes opened and the drifted down to the landing area. Some of the more experienced ones came in pretty fast too.

Then the 25 minute time call was made for my flight. I met my instructor Chuck and got kitted out for the jump. I was given a lovely purple jumpsuit to wear and a equally lovely leather pink helmet and goggles. I got told three key things! The position to get in when we left the aircraft, the position to be in when we were freefalling and what to do with my feet when we came into land. That was it!

We set off towards the plane with the other crazy people and there were only 8 of us onboard for my flight. 4 of them got out at about 6000ft to do low level jumps, and we continued up to 13000 before the others got out. That left me, Chuck and the camera/video guy! (and the pilot).

Chuck and I made our way towards the door of the plane, where the camera man was already hanging out waiting for us. I really had no fear or nerves at all as I stood at the doorway with my toes hanging over the edge. Chuck said after three, one, two, threeeeeeeeeeeeee and we were off!

I had no idea which was we went, but looking at the video after I discovered we went out upside down before ending up the right way around. We freefell for about 60 seconds at 120 mph, which was the most exhilirating thing ever, even better than on a motorbike! The air wooshed past us and the cameraman stayed with us taking shots and filming my crazy experience.

Before I knew it, it was time to delpoy the shoot and all of a sudden it felt like the brakes had gone on. The wooshing sound stopped and the ground slowed befow us and I could focus again! I took off my googles and enjoyed the view. Chuck made some adjustments to the harness while I took the controls and guided us for a few thousand feet.

The view from up there was amazing. I'd seen it before from planes but to be floating underneath and canopy of fabric and take it all in was truely amazing. After about 7 minutes Chuck began to make our descent to the airfield below us. We swerved left and right on the air currents, dropping altitude with every turn aiming for our landing mark. Last instructions to get my feet up and smile for the camera and we landed!

What a rush, I was eurphoric when I landed and just threw my arms around Chuck to give him a grateful hug and a kiss on the cheek for taking me on such an amazing journey! This was the most exciting, amazing, thrilling thing I have ever done......YET!

Now, whats next on my Bucket List?

Working my way through my Bucket List!

I don't know about you, but when I watched the movie, The Bucket List with the greats Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freman in, I was inspired! I began to pen my very own Bucket List of all the things I'd like to do. My theory was to start early (I was only 33 at the time) as why wait till its too late, and also my list is very long!

My list included things like complete a marathon, learn to ride a motor bike, go skydiving, visit Australia, Hike the Manchu Pichu Trail and many more! I've been getting some things crossed off the list already starting with the Marine Corp Marathon that I did in Oct 2008, all 26.2 miles of it! Following that I got my motorcycle license and a bike in Nov 2008. In May 2009 I did a mini Triathlon! and also went White water rafting.

2010 is the year for skydiving, so I'm counting the days until Saturday 3rd April when I'll make my first jump, or should I say when my jump instructor will push me out of the plane! I'm really looking forward to it and can'y even imagine how I'll feel when I'm in the actual plane, let along falling through the air with some strange man attached to me.

Hoping that all goes well this weekend, next on the list is to get a tatoo! Nothing big or flashy and I'm not going to be getting any skulls or anchors either. Its actually been quiet frustrating trying to decide what to get! I have a few ideas, but nothings decided yet.

I have some more sane items on my list which include entering a cake decorating competition! I've been doing some classes and just love making and decorating cakes (as you'll see from my other posts) so I figured it would be fun to enter a competition so I'm I've signed up for one in early May! Gonna be a busy weekend as I'm also doing the Frederick 1/2 marathon on the 2nd so will go from there back to the cake show!

My list just keeps on growing with so many things to try, places to go, and people to meet, but I don't intend to arrive in heaven in a perfectly kept body, I plan to skid in sideways, cheering Yahoo, what a ride!

Cakes, Cakes and More Cakes

Its been a while since my last blog and I don't know where the time has gone! I've been busy making cards and cakes and all the other mundane stuff that we have to do.

I've just finished my third Wilton cake class and I'm really pleased with the new skills I have learned. In this latest class we worked with royal icing and learned to make beautiful flowers for decoarting cakes with. Over the last three weeks I've been making lots of flowers for my 'homework' and so last night on the final evening of my class I had a nice selection to choose from to decorate my cake with.

Last week I met up with some friends for lunch and I brought the dessert! I used some of the pretty violets I'd made to cover a little oval cake. It didn't last long and was all gone by the end of lunch so I guess it must have tasted pretty good too.

For a friends 50th Birthday I made her a present cake! It was a chocolate and vanilla sponge layered cake with vanilla buttercream and strawberry preserve. Covered in yellow fondant and decorated with fondant polka dots and lovely big bow.

I'm entering my first cake competition in May so I'll be making a few more cakes for that and then I also have some requests for cakes for birthdays including a roulette wheel cake and also a wedding cake in July! pics to follow.

My first wedding cake!

The finale of my cakes is my first two tiered cake! I was really excited about making this as a test run for a wedding I'll be doing in July. This cake was made using tasty pound cake, filled with delicious peach filling, covered in rolled fondant icing and decorated with beautiful handmade fondant roses!

It tasted pretty good too and it was a good we had it with being snowed in for so many days during the recent 'snowmageddon' storms that came through here.

If you'd like a beautiful cake for your special occasion, I'd love to make it for you!

New Cards too

I've been busy getting creative with new cards too. I love making all kinds of cards and I'm working on Valentine's cards, UK Mothers Day cards and also some wedding invitations for the summer.

More Cakes

Its been a while since my last entry. Its flown by since then with a fab trip to Mexico, Thanksgiving, Christmas and the start of a new year.

I've started 2010 with another cake class to continue learning new skills. This course has focused more on fondant work which I really enjoy.

Here are afew pics of cakes I've made with fondant.