Art, Craft and Needlework, August, 2013

[helia]

They look great! Are you going to do anything with the cupcakes as well? Just set the flowers on them? Clever - swiffer container.

[Harriet]

Thanks, helia. The icing is a smooth, dipped icing so that the flowers stand out against a plain surface. The recipe says that if you are planning to add decorations, work quickly before the icing sets. Hope I can! We'll put two blossoms on each cupcake so they sort of lean back against each other. I have a purchased cupcake tower of simple glossy white cardboard, and might try setting that on top of a covered box to give a little more height.

Dd enjoyed painting these in a variety of ways and I eventually joined her for some. Some of hers are pretty detailed, but hard to see that. Of course, we know they will be gone in one bite, lol. But fun.

[Dove]

Harriet & dd, these are so pretty. I love all the different colors. Thanks for posting pictures for us to see. Wish I could taste the finished product .

[Norma]

These are gorgeous! Thanks for showing them. Can we see the finished cupcakes?

[Sunny]

Harriet, these turned out so pretty. You always have great ideas! Thanks for showing them to us.

[Nancy]

I've been working on de-cluttering craft room a box of "I might need this some day" items were tossed and in the trash now and I vacuumed the sewing zone it sure looks better in there now!

[Ivy]

I'm working on dgd's single large Granny square afghan in lavender, pink, and deep purple, for Christmas, today. Need to complete 3 by Christmas.

[Ivy]

I completed a scrapbook page on my childhood scrapbook. I started the project in 2004, but got "side-tracked! With the boys being busy here with their own projects, electronics, etc... It's giving me some time to do a page here and there. Also, their Dmom scrapbooks, using her own creative method to do it, so while browsing one she'd made for me, with the first 3 grsons (now they have 6 of our grsons PLUS a dgd!) it gave me ideas, too.

[Nancy]

Washer is having probs. so am focusing on changes that will bring when the new one comes in so I need to clear off the counter space to create a work zone in there for tools and such. Glad I've made progress on it this week. I've been in this zone but not doing much creating but this is a part of the the over all plan I suppose.

[Harriet]

Nancy, I am right there with you having appliance troubles. Having to give up some usual counter space for draining dishes, plus having to quickly wash and dry rather than having the dishwasher as a "hiding place" during preparation made creativity in the kitchen more difficult this morning.

Ivy, lavender in that granny square afghan sounds lovely - one of my favorite colors. A girlfriend of dd15's gave her a scrapbook of photos of them together over years. Scrapbooks are so thoughtful.

Thanks so much for all the kind remarks about those photos. Yes, Norma, I will post photos of the cupcakes.

If anyone is interested, the recipe for the dipped icing and the method of making the little blossoms were from the cover story of the April issue of Southern Living magazine. I do have to say we had some frustration that the icing recipe ended up too thin and I had to add confectioner's sugar, but it did eventually work. (You dip the cupcakes into the still-warm icing so that it is smooth and simple for the decorations to look their best.) The cutter shape is "hydrangea". Again I was reminded that a big part of enjoying the creativity of cake decorating is getting the iced cake(s) into the fridge right away to set! Whew! (especially in hot weather!)

Another little bit of creativity was our bows for the edges of the table, as far as I know an idea of dd and mine that we haven't seen before. We took one of the rectangularly shaped napkins that matched the table (in this case blue with polka-dots), opened once and cut in half (so that it was the same shape, just less bulky). We fashioned a contrasting color puffy tissue paper bow shape that would let the napkin behind peek out. We put it directly on top of the napkin and squeezed at the middle, securing around with a piece of tape. Then we covered the tape with the same width piece of napkin. We trailed two pieces of matching crepe paper behind the new bow and taped it to the edge of the table with double-sided tape.

table bow.JPG