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Pink and green butterfly cards

Annie — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 08:05:00 -0800

You probably remember the Fall butterfly card I made last year with the butterflies "flying" off the card? Well, if you haven't seen it, click here.
I have been asked to make similar card for a special event and I came up with 3 designs.

1. Butterfly card in pink and green with 3 ribbons.

I cut by hand the butterflies ( except the smallest one) and hand paint them one by one. It takes a lot of time, since one card has 6 butterflies at least each with 3 layers, that makes 18 butterflies per card. That's a lot of work!

I used pink vellum on top of the patterned paper.

2. Butterfly pink and green card with silver sparkle

I've painted by hand green sparkles on the patterned paper and used white vellum on top.

This time the spiral in the middle is silver with little cuts to look like a Christmas tree.

If you want to see more pictures, click here.

3. Butterfly card with green patterned paper.

This butterfly is made out of 4 layers.

I have hand painted silver sparkles on the green patterned paper and used white vellum on top.

Here is the spiral in the card, made out of green paper, to look even more like Christmas Tree. That's why this time I've made the layers of the spiral a little bit thicker, do you see the little cuts at the edges?

I took a lot of pictures, so if you want to see the details, click here.

And here is the last thing, the envelope!
I made a silver stamp image and decorated with pink and green butterfly.

Would there be someone to sing a song for you?

Annie — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 09:16:00 -0800

I have been putting off the writing of this post for a month.
Today I just felt this is going to be the day I am going to talk about it.

It's not going to be funny, or witty or entertaining, so if you are in for that, skip that post! But if you want to read something from the hearth, I think you'll like this.

I am going to talk about a special person, who I never knew or met, but who's death affected me greatly for the past month.

You all remember that I did a huge article on the Native American Festival in Saratoga, and after I finished it, I promised that I am going to talk about the dancers, but this never happened right?

Well, it didn't happen sooner even though I have been thinking about it pretty much every day since visited the festival, because I never knew how exactly to explain what happened there.

Meet Don Barnaby( Micmac), the Head Male Dancer of the Saratoga Festival.

I have seen him dancing at the same festival in 2007 and he struck me as very lively, very fun and outgoing person, very friendly.
This time, when we went to see the dancers, I couldn't believe how he danced! It was like he wasn't there, like he wasn't human at all, he was just dancing in the rhythm and the rhythm was him.
It was striking to see such a personal experience shared with so many people on the dance arena, like it was a private moment that we were not supposed to see.

After the break, they've announced that Don Barnaby wants to sing a song that is not in the schedule, a song for his cousin Grace ( I think her last name was Condo) who passed away the previous night.

He could have left.
He could have refused to dance and just head back for the funeral.
But he didn't.
He started talking, you could see how hard this moment was for him, because of the connection he had with his relative, he spoke about her, very briefly, explaining what a valued member of her community she was, one of the elders in her tribe, how she helped people and what a nice person she was.
He couldn't talk very much, apparently distraught, so he just asked us to stand up, to put the cameras down and to give her a silent minute while he was singing for her and to think about all the people we have lost.

I have no idea what song he sang. He didn't say the name, the song wasn't even in English, so nobody could understand the exact words he was saying but he just mesmerized us!

Nobody was moving, you couldn't hear even birds.
It was completely quiet and only his voice was breaking the silence with this very beautiful and sad song.

He said that he was thinking if he should go back or not, and he decided to stay and honor her memory in front of all the people here, who would honor her, think about her, talk about her and remember her on the day of her death!

What a beautiful way to show somebody respect!

I was completely speechless.
I wanted to go and talk to him, but I just couldn't. I was just standing there, listening to him, seeing his pain and feeling it through his voice.

At this exact moment you could feel Grace's presence there with us. You could see all the people who stood still around us, bowing their heads, some of them embracing each other, some of them with tears in their eyes, and you could feel the presence of all the people they have lost.

The air was heavy with love and sorrow!

Thinking about the people who are not between us is never easy, talking about them even less easier.
But singing a song about them is something different.

I hope there would be at least one person who would honor my memory with a song the way Don did for his cousin Grace, God bless her soul and God bless his big heart!

My October Cake Challenge Cake- The Witch's Workshop

Annie — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 22:19:00 -0800

I've promised you that this cake would be "sweet" and you know I keep my promises! :-)
I made it for the Harvest Hoedown bake sale at my son's school. It was really funny, because I mentioned to the PTO what I'm making but I guess they didn't quite understand what I meant. I mean, it's not every day you see a fondant cake at a school bake sale, right? :-) So when I brought the cake to the sale, they had no idea what to do with it, because it was a 50 cent bake sale.LoL
Now, this is my first school bake sale, so I had no idea how it works, but I am so happy that everything turned out to be fine, since the PTO people acted quickly and they did a raffle for the cake as a prize and it was a huge success!

There was a little girl admiring the cake pretty much the whole time it was on display and I was very happy for her, when she won it!
Her mom told her something like " What are we going to do with it, how are we going to cut it" and the girl immediately protested "Oh, no!! We are NOT cutting it!". LoL

It was great fun that night, I hope I can participate next year too. After all, it's just on time for the October cake Challenge, so it works out perfectly! :-)

If there is enough interest I'll post soon the tutorial how to make the witch, so if you want to see it, leave me a comment that you do. The witch is so small, she can fit in my palm, can you believe how difficult it was to make it? :-)

I have used Devil's food recipe for the basic cake, the filling was an improvisation, because the night before I was supposed to make it I found out that I don't have whipping cream, so I had to use something else.
I combined cream cheese, butter, condensed milk and chocolate and it came out really, really yummy! Especially since I added walnuts.
If anybody wants the recipe, leave me a comment and I'll post it!

I didn't have as much fun as I did with this cake in a really long time! I mean, imagine how cool was to make the little books, and the little potions, and the broom! I sure had fun!!!

Tell me this doesn't look like cast iron ;-)!

And the thing is that I've used pearl dust only on one spot, otherwise the whole cauldron is black :-)

I am thrilled!

Annie — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 05:23:00 -0800

Yes, I am!
Do you know why? Because yesterday I received an e-mail from a reader that had used my Buzz Lightyear tutorial to make a cake!

I am so happy that I finally received some feedback on how people use the website that I asked Jennifer Spiller ( that's the name of the lady who made the cake) to send me pictures so I can upload them and show you what a amazing cake she did!

This is the cake Jen made:

If you want to see more pictures, click here.

She used this cake tutorial ( click)

She says that she is relatively new at fondant, but it doesn't show at all!

Fantastic job, Jen, I am so proud of you! I hope the kid that it was for liked it! :-)

I've opened a new album called " Annie's Art Book Readers give it a try". If you've tried my recipes and you want your work to be shown on my website let me know!

Cake Challenge October 2009

Annie — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 13:16:00 -0700

I can't believe it's already November 1st and I definitely can't believe it's time for the discussion of the October Cake challenge cakes!

Time just flies indeed!
It's like yesterday we had the Ikebana cake challenge and we had these amazing cakes with beautiful flowers!

The theme for the challenge this time is 3D cakes or cakes, that in other words are made in the shape of something.

You can see the full album with cakes of course!(click here)

Some of the albums are still not uploaded, but I'll update this posting as soon as they are. Also I hope soon 'll have the permission of the cake ladies participating to upload some of their pictures on my site, so you can enjoy them here as well.

So much talent! Everybody liked the theme very much, a lot of ladies made 2 even 3 cakes!

Of course as always I'll have a separate posting about my own cake called " Witch's Workshop". I have a bonus for you as well - I made a small tutorial how I made the witch's figure. It's pretty cool to see how it started taking shape from a simple ball of dough, check it out in a couple of days!

Speaking of cool, I was looking recently for futuristic and extraordinary cake pedestals and serving plates and I stumbled upon a fabulous site with the most amazing kitchen gadgets and accessories that I just couldn't but share with you, since I know many cake folks are reading here!

Now, you probably have noticed that I like nice things but it's one thing to have a nice thing, completely another to have unique thing. Let me tell you, after I saw this cake pedestal at Alessi I fell in love! This would have been the perfect cake pedestal for my Cake challenge cake and I was sooooo disappointed that I didn't find it earlier, when I made the cake! Just imagine my Witch's workshop on this thing!I would have been perfect!

Well, next time I'll know where to look for something like that when I need it and truth be told I really do need a cake pedestal. I mean really, it's about time! We already have had 5 cake challenges and I continue to show my cakes on a simple board.
(Honey, Christmas is coming hint, hint ;-) )

Anyway, enjoy the fabulous cake view and tell me what you think!

Ta-ta for now!