World Craft Week - 3rd - 9th April 2017

When World Craft Week popped up on my Instagram feed I thought 'Finally! A week I can really get involved in!" I have been experimenting with my embroidery recently through my stitched pictures and I was keen to get as many examples finished so I can see what works well, what needs to be developed and what may possibly sell.

These designs have all been created using a simple backstitch using a mix of fonts and decorative elements. They all fit in a standard frame and I haven't really strayed too far from this shape whilst I have started.

For my next step I wanted to combine a few more elements so I added a blanket stitched heart with wooden button to act as the 'O' for 'LOVE', I had never appliquéd with blanket stitch before, but instead of catching a small piece of fabric and coming up very close on the other side, I went down through the fabric and ensured the needle was in a straight line so the stitch didn't bend.

I wanted to try another stitch and chose 'Chain stitch' as my next option. I liked the rounded and slightly chunky look of the stitch and thought it would work well on a simple line based design.

I was also reading up about how you should start and finish your threads when embroidering. I always use a knot, but apparently this can make your embroidery lumpy and isn't a very good technique. As a result I decided to use a waste knot which is where you knot your thread through the fabric a distance for your design and then continue with your stitching as normal.

When you reach the end of your thread, on the reverse side weave the last of the thread in and out of your last few stitches...

...and then snip the end to leave a nice neat finish.

After this go back to your waste knot...

...trim the end and weave this thread in and out of the stitches on the reverse side to secure it before trimming. Make sure that you leave yourself plenty of thread at the beginning as I most certainly did not, and it took me a long time to tease the thread in and out with the use of a pin. The thread may have been red but the air was certainly blue!

And here's the finished piece! I was pretty pleased with my first attempt at a chain stitch. It curves very well and f you made a slight error with your pencil line it is a lot more forgiving than straight backstitch and you can achieve a lovely line. 

I've got lots more designs that I want to try, so keep your eyes peeled for new stitches!

A Weekend of Sugarcraft - Red roses

April is turning out to be a busy month of cakes! There's an Easter cake for Easter Sunday, cupcakes for my colleagues, a Diamond Wedding Anniversary Cake, more cake for colleagues, my fiancees birthday cake and then the finale of a wedding cake on the first weekend of May, phew! After that I get a bit of a break until my birthday, for which I am currently dreaming up a design to practice new skills and techniques.

So I made a start on the first cake a couple of weekends ago and made all of the sugar roses for my grandparent's Diamond Wedding Anniversary cake. I looked for inspiration for traditional cakes, but they were all very dull, so I decided to go for something a little more like a wedding cake to make more of the occasion. My Nan had long stemmed red roses and ferns in her bouquet and lace on her ballerina length wedding dress, so I decided to combine all of these elements together on the cake.

I used my trusty Peggy Porschen sugar flowers cake book to help me make the roses, and I started with Poppy Red Renshaw sugar paste mixed with Tylose powder to ensure they set. I made a range of different sizes to make 12 roses in total.

3 rose buds, 3 small roses, 3 medium roses, 2 large roses and one full rose in progress. This is the drying stage before the scary bit of the next layer of petals when you have to turn them upside down to dry!

However unfortunately as the roses dried they lost their lovely deep rose colour and became light and powdery-looking. It wasn't the colour I was looking for at all, so I got out my paintbrush and colours and painted all of the roses until they were the correct shade, all the time singing "Painting the roses red" from Alice in Wonderland! Whatever gets you through the day...!

I used a mixture of three colours to achieve the right shade for the roses.

When wet the roses looked almost like they were made from porcelain! Luckily they are still edible!

You can see the difference in colour between the ones at the front and at the back and I was much happier with the colour as they dried.

Luckily the roses have kept their deeper hue as they have dried which is brilliant. I think next to the dark green of the ferns, the snowy white of the cake and the pearl sheen of the cake lace they will look very impressive and hopefully be a fitting centrepiece to a brilliant day.

Kelmarsh Hall Wedding Fair

A couple of weekends ago we visited the Silver Linings Wedding fair at Kelmarsh Hall, a stunning wedding venue. I was captivated by the romance of the place the first time that we visited so I was really excited to go back to see some lovely wedding suppliers.

First I wanted to take some detail shots of the gorgeous rooms. The above is the chandelier in The Great Hall. The ceiling is beautiful and I love the bird-cage effect.

This is the chandelier in The Saloon. It hasn't shown up very well on this photo but the walls are painted a beautiful vintage sage green / duck egg blue that is so difficult to capture, but which looks beautiful against white and crystal.

The black and white corridor was the perfect place to show gorgeous dresses from a variety of companies. They looked stunning against the backdrop of the various period features and it was really lovely to see them in various lights.

The corridor behind the great hall leads to a sweeping staircase along with another chandelier, and with the light pouring in through the window, it highlighted the lovely pink / salmon colour of the walls.

There was a fantastic mix of suppliers, some I had heard of and some I hadn't, and below are a selection of some of my favourites

Carriages are an Asian wedding planning company, and I loved the photographs they had used on their flyer. The car and the backs of the outfits in a sepia tone looked lovely. The flyer from Gemma Willis really caught my eye for the different style of the image used. It wasn't a traditional posed shot and seemed to sum up the couple nicely.

Star Paws are a company specialising in getting your pooch primped, primed and ready for its moment in the spotlight on your big day. They had an adorable little doggy dressed up in an a cute outfit to show what they could do, so sweet!

Courtyard Bridal Boutique is on my list of places to visit to start my dress search and it was lovely to meet some of the ladies from the shop. They really know their stuff and I really enjoyed talking to them about different fabrics and their new store. I'm really looking forward to visiting them to see what lovely things they have in stock.

Wedding cake tasting - Cupcakes and Afternoon Tea

This year I am making the wedding cake of a friend I used to work with. Their theme is bright and colourful, and they have asked me to use classic 100's and 1000's on their cake to fit in with this. Two tiers will be completely covered in buttercream with the 100's and 1000's attached, and the other two will be covered in white fondant with circles of fondant with 100's and 1000's. They are having a different flavour for each of the four tiers so I wanted to have a tasting for them to show them what the decoration would look like and also to check they were happy with the flavours.

I started by making the fondant circles, leaving enough time for them to dry. I made different sizes so we could see how the sizes would differ when they were covered with the decorations.

I then covered each circle with a layer of edible glue...

...and pressed them gently into a plate of 100's and 1000's.

This is the result of one dip and as you can see they look a little thin. It worked well on the smaller circles, but with the larger ones I found a better way was to place the disc with the glue upwards and pour the 100's and 1000's over the top, pressing them down as I went.

I wasn't sure the glue was going to hold them on, however when I checked they were holding firm! There were a few that had escaped (mainly all over the kitchen floor when I was trying to decorate them) but I think that's just their prerogative!

As well as the circles I also wanted to emulate the buttercream tiers, so I used the carrot cake cupcakes that had risen well to be my guinea pigs.

I covered the domes with a layer of butter cream...

...smoothed it a little...

...and then dunked the cake straight into the plate of 100's and 1000's, moving it around to the edges so I made sure all of the butter cream was covered.

These stuck in a much thicker layer than the edible glue, and actually felt fairly sturdy.

Once they were dry I tried shaking the cakes to see if they would all fall off, however to my surprise again they all stuck firm! I imaging in transport I may loose a few, however with that many, I'm hoping the effect will still be lovely.

Lemon drizzle on the left and vanilla on the right. I hate it when cupcake cases fold in on themselves, grrr!

Vanilla buttercream was piped on to all of the cupcakes to prevent a transfer of flavour. When the cake is stacked all of the flavours are so unique I don't want them to merge into one. We decided that vanilla butter cream was the best way to do this and to keep a consistent look across everything.

I filled the Victoria sponge cakes with strawberry jam before replacing the top and piping over it.

I then added three fondant decorations to the Victoria sponge cakes...

...a medium disc to the coffee and walnut...

...and a large disc to the lemon drizzle.

All together they looked really pretty, but I still had to label them to make sure that I remembered what was what.

To make the cake tasting extra special I put on a little afternoon tea spread on our coffee table with a nice flowery tablecloth and baked some sultana scones as well. You really can't beat a freshly baked scone, and it was lovely to have them as a tasty extra for the cake tasting as well.

We went through all of the details of the sketches that I had done previously and checked that they were happy with all of the flavours. We confirmed the cake topper and I was delighted to hear that the only amends they wanted to make was to change the carrot cake for the largest tier as they liked it so much and more coffee in the coffee and walnut cake. I'm feeling a lot more confident about the design now I have practiced some of the elements, and I'm looking forward to the first week in May when I can get started!