Cheese platter cake

I made a cheese platter cake for my dad's birthday a while back.
Everything is cake and all are different flavors.

Lawyer cake

I made this cake for a friend who is a lawyer.
She sent me pictures of the law books she uses and I made those. I also added some judge hammer cake pops.
The cake is chocolate with raspberry jam. The pops are vanilla.

Pink Floyd The Wall cake

I made this Pink Floyd The Wall cake for my hubby's birthday.

I painted the picture of the Professor on the cake. I started with the background colors and let them dry overnight. The next day I painted all the details and lines over the top making for a pretty accurate Professor!

I added vinyl record cake pops and some tiny music details to make it look just that bit better :)

On the inside it was a chocolate cake with Dulce de Leche and lemon curd filling. Yummy!

Starting a decorated cake shop

Ok so it won't really be a shop. I'm just starting a business in decorated cakes, and just plain yummy pies. I've made quite a lot and since I can't seem to find a decent (or any) job, this is a good time to start my own business :)

I haven't quite figured out what it is going to look like but I do know I am not including the color pink in my name, logo or website. All cake stores here seem to be pink, and not a little pink, very very pink! Any guy wishing to make a nice cake (and lets face it, with Buddy on tv I'm sure there are a lot of men out there), is never going to want to go into a store that is so extremely frilly.

Well I have thought of the name, which is translated is Cake and Art. Though in English it doesn't sound wonderful, in Dutch it is nice and it makes for a nice logo because the word art is part of the Dutch word for cake (huh?? you say...: taART)

So I'm hoping to get the business going sometime soon and then I'll happily link you to it. In the mean time check out this fabulous fabric I got for the nursery (yes I said it, I'm pregnant woohoo!): World of Susy Bee

How to make a raincoat

Ok it's been a while. But good news: I finished the raincoat and it works! So here is the rest of the how to. Read the first raincoat entry to see my original idea.
Btw, this is not for the novice sewer! Though it is quite easy to sew the coat, pinning it is not and you cannot rectify mistakes.

First find a coat pattern you are familiar with to use. I took the pattern for this coat which I already made twice. It's very important to take a pattern you know because you do not want to make a mistake while making a raincoat. It leaves a nice row of holes which do not vanish as you can see in the picture below and you want to keep the amount of holes to a minimum in a raincoat! Also, when choosing your pattern, try to keep the pieces it consists of to a minimum and no tiers. The fabric is very sturdy so it doesn't hang down the way other fabric does. This is especially important to note when you're thinking about making a tiered bottom like me. THAT DOES NOT WORK!! It will look weird, trust me I tried it! To make a skirt like bottom for your coat, just take one piece of fabric and make flat pleats. Because the fabric is so sturdy it will poof out with just a few.

I would recommend a coat pattern which contains a hood (obviously), mine didn't so I added one myself. As I wasn't quite sure what I was doing I ended up getting this nice row of holes right under the hood, oops.

  

Second, find the thinnest needle you are comfortable using and some polyester thread. To me it seemed logical that the raincoat would be most watertight (watertighter..?) if I kept the thread holes tiny. You need polyester thread because it repels water, so no cotton! Because that will soak up the water and pull it through those tiny holes. I tested this first (so you don't have to ;)) and the picture proves it works! (amazing my own ideas actually turned out right ha!)

Third, read these tips before you start:
- Make some tea and get some cookies, making a raincoat can be horribly frustrating (though not super hard) so you need some comfort food near you. Not too near though, you don't want to test the watertightness (?? these are not the right words hahaha) of your coat with tea.

- Get acquainted with your pattern. Know what your doing, it's very important.

-  Always keep in mind that every hole you make in your coat is there to stay. This means that I do not recommend putting ornamental stitching on your coat or any amount of stitching that is not absolutely necessary.

- Use a short stitch so everything is stitched strongly together with the least amount of space in between when you open up seams.


So are you ready to start?

Place your pattern on your fabric and scotch-tape it on there. DO NOT PIN IT because that will leave holes where you do not want them. Trace your pattern and measure on the seams. Now pin around your patterns within the seams. This way you don't have to cut out all the pieces separately but you can fold the fabric.

Now you can sew the coat together as you're used to doing. You do not need any extra stuff to seal the seams. There is rubber tape you can tape over all the seams, but I didn't and my coat works fine. Do remember that you can only pin on the seams, not anywhere else!

To make the seams extra sturdy but not have a row of stitches on the outside of the coat, I double stitched all seams like you can see in the picture below left. I did flat-stitch the bodice seams because I figured the water would flow off easier if the coat was as flat as possible (right picture). I only did this for seams that I was afraid would catch and hold the water while being rubbed while walking. Rubbing the seams with water on them makes them take in water and makes you wet.
















All right, so your pinning your pieces together in the seams and sewing like your used to. Keep trying out your coat to see if it fits, either on a doll or on yourself. If it's too small, you have to start over, sorry. It happened to me too, if it's any consolation :)

 Below you can see the bodice which turned out just as I hoped. After that I spent quite a while fixing on the bottom half. As I said, I tried the tiered bottom first and it was a disaster! I'm sorry I don't have a picture of it, it looked awful hahaha. But after a few tries and a considerably shorter bodice I got the skirt-like bottom I wanted. To close the coat I used a plastic zipper. I really wanted one of those invisible zippers because it would have been just that, invisible, but I couldn't find one. Instead I used a pink zipper as an ornamental addition to the coat. I made sure the zipper was of good quality so it didn't leave holes when closed.

 

And here is the end result in use at Walt Disney World's Christmas Party. Where sadly it was pouring rain which made it the most expensive cocoa and cookies I've ever had :)

 I hope you find the tutorial at least partly useful. I might have forgotten to mention something so if you get confused or have any questions or comments just post them here and I'll answer as quick as I can.

Venting

I just spent a few hours working on my woodwork cake and am now totally discouraged. It has to be done the day after tomorrow and it's not going so well. I had to back the 4 layers separate because I don't have a square deep dish pan. I also had to make the batter from scratch which I never do. This resulted in two layers being ok, I hope and two being totally ruined because the batter didn't mix well and the cake sagged. Sigh. Now I have to bake more tomorrow. Also it has to become a box, with dove-tail joints and I just noticed that I already iced the bottom two layers without cutting the cake and it's corners are round.... aaaah! This is the last time I agree to make a cake with just 3 days to do it in.

DIY Mickey Mouse 2D plushie including free pattern

Have you ever looked at a Pook-a-looz and thought: "Geez those are big!" as well as "That looks easy enough to make" ? Well you won't have to google it because I'll show you how.

Here's the original by Disney which I secretly would have loved to buy if they had sold them outside of the USA, which they do not...



And here's my version:



I put him next to a Wii remote just to show the size. He's quite tiny, but very cute. He did turn out a little less wide than I would have liked, meaning he's kinda skinny :) I changed this in the pattern, as well as making his legs a little shorter.

I have never actually held a real Pook in my hands because, like I said, they do not sell them anywhere except the USA, not even Canada where I had the fortune of being three months of this year. But looking at the Disneystore.com page I found that they are made from stylized soft fleece, whatever that means. I decided to make mine from felt, because it's cheap, easy to work with and you don't have to buy it meters/yards at a time. The felt works well I think, but if you want to make this for a baby or small child I would recommend fleece as it's softer.

I sewed the entire thing by hand, which took a surprisingly short time. All in all I spent about 4 hours on Mickey, while watching television.

Making your Mickey

Needed:
- The pattern which you can print out below
- sheets of real woolfelt or pieces cuddle fleece, in colors: black, red, yellow, white
- needle and black thread (you will be hand sewing this)
- pins
- a printer


First you want to download and print the pattern:  2D Mickey Plushie pattern  It's free, so feel free to spread it around but I would appreciate it if you mentioned my blog.

The pattern is pretty easy. You can cut out all the pieces on the black lines and transfer them straight to the pieces of felt, I already took seams into account. The green lines are just to show where the different pieces go so do not cut on these!

UPDATE: It is easier to cut out a full black body and sew the pants onto it. To do this: cut out the pants first (keep all the seams because they will need to be a little bigger to cover the body), then just paste the parts of the pattern together overlapping the GREEN lines and cut out a full body piece.

You will also need felt, one sheet of each color. I bought  these at Michaels but you can get them at any store that sells craft stuff, like walmart. You will need the colors black, white, yellow and red.You might want to buy two pieces of black, just in case you mess up.

Update: I just learned from mmmcrafts (see links) that for plushies it's better to use real wool felt, not this synthetic stuff. When hugging the plush a lot it will shed and get pieces of fluff on it. Mmmcrafts can tell you where to buy these (see FAQ). You can also use cuddle fleece.

In the picture there's also pink because I'm planning on making a Minnie Mouse too, which I'll post when I have it.

Other needed supplies: Pins, a thin needle, a bit of plushie filling and sturdy black thread. I used thread for jeans because it's thicker and makes for a nice decorative seam.

So go ahead and cut out all your pieces. You will also need to cut a tail but I'll show you that later.

I assembled the pieces on another piece of felt. This way you don't lose anything and you know where everything goes.

Now take your needle and start sewing one side of Mickey (meaning either all the front or all the back pieces) together by whip stitch. (If you have no idea how to do this, here is a great tutorial.)  When joining these parts together I stitched back and forth as shown below to create a sturdier seam. You do not necessarily have to do this. After stitching together one half of Mickey, do the same with the other half. Leave the face, tail and buttons for later. Right now you should have two halves of Mickey that are mirror images of each other (though they'll look about the same).

Position the face, eyes and nose on one half of Mickey. When you are satisfied with the look, pin the nose and eyes on the face. Then stitch them on the face. I chose to do a decorative stitch because I think it looks cute but you can sew them on with a different stitch if you like. Beware though that if you used black thread for all the seams, you will see this after you turned mickey right side out and you'll have a decorative stitch along all the seams.

When you stitched on the nose and eyes, stitch the entire face on the head (beware you stitch it on the right side! You don't want to turn Mickey later, to find that the face is now on the inside of your plushie.)

Sew the buttons on the pants in the same way and on the same half of Mickey that also has a face.

Now you'll need to make a tail. This is really easy. Just cut out a long stumped triangle and sew it on the pants of the other half of Mickey. For a tail example see the picture below. I didn't put this in the pattern because you might want to make the tail smaller or bigger or wider or thinner, whatever meets your fancy. You can also stitch it on differently, pointing down or up, or diagonal. I kind of liked being able to see a piece of the tail from the front.



So now your Mickey is almost done except that he's laying in two pieces. Whip stitch these right side together with just one row of stitching (so do not go back and forth here) but leave one side of the pants open for turning.

Carefully turn Mickey right side out, taking care to shape his hands, shoes and especially his ears. The one row of stitching should be visible making it a nice decorative stitching. I think it looks really cute when it's not perfect stitching but again, that's up to you.

The only thing left to do now is fill Mickey with some fluff. Be careful not to fill him too much, because then he won't be 2D anymore. You'll want to keep him kind of flat. When you are satisfied close the pants seam with whip stitch. When you're done you can use a pin to push the felt under the stitches towards the inside so it will look the same as the other seams.



All done! Yay!

Did you make a Mickey? How did you do? I would love to hear about it!

Update: My niece really loved this Mickey. She carried it around Disney World for an entire day (until her mommy bought her a minnie mouse plush...:) )