Decide to make a full size replica of the Guitar Hero II guitar in cake form. Spend the next few weeks freaking out and searching for instructions on fondant icing and cake decorating!

Pick up bits and pieces for making the cake over the course of the month… spending over $100 just on “stuff”. For me this meant buying icing, a rolling pin, a rolling mat, palette knives, an icing smoother, cake board. Luckily I already had bowls, a mixer and a few bottles of wine in the cupboard.

Cut out templates for the cake (I used the actual guitar to make my template) and start making the “extra” pieces by rolling out coloured icing and cutting to size. Put these in an airtight container to harden.

Because the guitar is so long and my oven was so small I ordered a sheet cake from a bakery. Its likely that the first person you speak to won’t know what you’re talking about so ask to speak to the baker and get a full sheet of 1″ butter cake, un-iced and leveled. Or you could make a bunch of cakes and join them together. Sheet cake is easier!

Look at the sheet cake and wonder how you will cut all the pieces out, use wax paper to make templates (make sure you have right side up and wrong side up layers so you have a flat surface on the bottom of your bottom layer and top of your top layer) and then cut with a sharp knife!

Put all the cut off pieces of cake in a bowl to snack on.

You will need to cut a piece of cake board to fit into box that the actual guitar came in (this is super handy for transporting the finished cake!) then you can put cake in box and go to bed. It will rest and settle and you can get some much needed sleep in readiness for the icing excitement to come!

 
When you wake up, freak out a little about how this is all going to come together since you’re going to a gig and have a house guest for the weekend.

Before the gig, start making icing (white chocolate butter cream), filling (dark chocolate ganache) and drinking wine (brown brothers, dolchetto and syrah). The wine will relax you some what and make the nerves go away for an hour or so.

Put the filling in the fridge/freezer to cool and thicken while you set up the next part.

Spread a thin layer of icing on the cake board (under where the cake will sit) and lay the first layer on the board with the right side up. you do not want the cake sliding off when you move it around! Put the icing in the fridge now to cool while you do the filling.

Once the filling has cooled in the freezer to make it solid enough to spread without running down the edges cover the first layer liberally. dont go to close to the edges (it will discolour the outer icing if it bleeds out).

Brush away all the crumbs from the cake and using the icing which has now been cooled in the fridge cover entire cake in a thin layer. This is to seal in the crumbs as well as adding some moisture.

Now its time to get rolling! Kneed the fondant icing till it is softened and then roll out, using the wax paper template to check the size. dont forget you need overhang to cover the sides. If you have any icing remaining make sure you wrap it in clear film or it will harden and be unusable.

FREAK OUT about how to get the massive flat icing onto the cake, request assistance from someone if you can or roll the sheet over a rolling pin and then roll back over the cake. GENTLY! You do not want the fondant to tear.

Lay the icing flat on the cake and gently pull the rolling sheet back without stretching the icing. Smooth the corners and press the icing to the cake firmly but not roughly. Use a fondant smoother to remove finger marks and any weird lines.

Cut the excess icing from the board and press the icing under the cake, smoothing as you go.

Kneed the black icing with 1/3 white icing to get a better consistency to work with (it doesnt ruin the colour at all! thats how much colour is in the icing!) and cover the parts of the cake iced with white fondant with clear/cling film to ensure you don’t stain it with the black icing.

Roll out the black icing, lay on cake and shape as for the white icing.

Stand back and rock out to the awesomeness that is the cake.

At this point I put the cake away in its box and went to go see YOU AM I! ROCK ON!

Now that the cake is done you can get to finishing the fiddly bits!

Bend a cable knitting needle to make wahwah wand and put black icing on end to harden. Cut out details from the hardened flats of icing you make earlier. Put together on cake with royal icing.

Drizzle royal icing on the back of edging ribbon and press to the bottom edge of cake. hide joins in the join of icing.

Stand back and marvel in amazement at the finished cake!

The entire set of photos are in my flickr.

I’m not known for my cleaning prowess, in fact when the email arrived asking if I could share some of my cleaning wisdom I actually had a go at my husband for trying to wind me up. But, as much as I don’t love it, with five of us now living in our dinky little house, unfortunately, sometimes I need to suck it up and clean! And I’m sure you can imagine, between looking after the boys, blogging here and running both The Bib Chick and Aisling Milis, any free time I do have, I’m not so keen on spending cleaning, so I’ve developed a few techniques to speed up the process and get the maximum result for a minimum amount of effort!

About The Great Cleaning Debate
The debate was inspired from complaints, comments, stories and suggestions posted by our loyal Facebook fans. As the majority of our fans are women, it was no surprise that for many, their share of housework was more than their partners. They took to venting about how they have to do it all. However, we soon discovered that sometimes, they prefer to do the work themselves, because it means that they’ll get it done right. Upon further investigation we found that these women have particular ways of doing the chores. Some say bowls MUST go on the top of the dishwasher tray and others simply MUST keep bowls down the bottom. Some admit they are useless at the ironing but others say they are meticulous about how their iron. The Great Chux Cleaning Debate looks at how people clean – why are they the chore champion of their household. What way do they clean, that means it’s cleaned right!

This video on the Chux Channel struck a definite cord with me! Whilst my mum was staying with us in the first few weeks after Ronan was born she took over a lot of the cleaning duties so that I had one less thing on my plate, including the stacking of the dishwasher. On unloading it one day I mentioned to her that she’d stacked it incorrectly, with the plates angles upwards instead of downwards, she insisted upwards was correct, I said otherwise, and so our own cleaning debate  was born! We would sneak in to the kitchen to “correct” each other’s loaded plates, we googled “correct dishwasher loading” and even referred to the manual, and still couldn’t find a way to settle the debate… and even if we did, I don’t think either of us would have conceded defeat and changed our habits!

So come and join me tomorrow morning to share some of my cleaning “wisdom”, we can chat aboout cleaning habits, parenting, and maybe someone could settle the dishwasher debate for my mum and me!

Click here to visit Chux’s Facebook page, join in The Great Cleaning Debate and have a chance to win $500!

And stay tuned over the next week or so to win an awesome hamper of Chux cleaning goodies!

I finally got around to getting the sunshine print I made for Ronan’s nursery printed out at ArtsCow and realised that I’d made a silly error in my original print, and hadn’t left enough of a border for framing.

Yeah, not my smartest move.

I’ve uploaded the new files, with the space for framing to the original post, so please download them there. I’ve also added an additional version of the “Happy” print with the US spelling of “gray”, so there are now three prints contained in the zip file.

You can see clearer how close the lettering is to the frame – I’ve already re-ordered it so I should be able to show you the finished version some time in the next week or two. It’s framed in a 50c frame from the Salvos, spray painted with black gloss. You’ll also notice that I’ve removed the glass – I do with all of the frames hanging on the wall, with the kids around I just don’t like risking having a stray ball catch a frame and possibly hurt one of the boys. My husband thinks I’m crazy.

These prints have been a big hit on Pinterest and Facebook, thank you everyone who’s linked and pinned them!

This is one of those projects that I’ve had in my head for months now and it just feels so good to finally get it done! This was originally destined for the glider that lives in my sewing room, but the boys have fallen in love with the texture on the chenille and I keep on finding that it’s made its way into their room.

The chenille is quick to sew up, but takes a while to fluff – it’s the kind of project you need to set yourself up in front of the telly with, so allow yourself 1-2 hours to complete the entire project.

You Will Need

• Red, Yellow, Orange, Green, Blue, Indigo and Violet cottons, I’ve used a combination of homespun and kona solids – the kona solids fluffed up a lot quicker than the homespun did. You will need about a fat eighth of each, but when you get down to the lower colours (blue/indigo/violet) you can get by with even less OR pre-bought chenille strips, such as Blooming Bias, in the same colours.
• Background fabric – enough to cover your cushion, I used seeded homespun from Lincraft. My cushion cover was 15x15inches, so the envelope cushion cover was made using a 15×15 square, and two 11×15 rectangles.
• A wire brush
• Cutting the fabric will be made a LOT easier by using a rotary cutter, ruler and cutting mat, but they’re not essential.

Full instructions behind the jump…

Creating The Chenille Strips

If you have pre-bought chenille then skip ahead to Creating The Rainbow

1. Cut 3/4inch strips along the bias. You will need enough to make about 3-4 layers, but this doesn’t have to be exact so you can just guesstimate, the strips don’t need to be the full length of your rainbow curve – I’ll cover that later.

2. Keep going until you’ve cut all of your colours, remember that you’ll need less strips as you progress further down the spectrum. I’d advise ironing your fabric better than I did

3. Place your longest strip of each colour on the fabric for the front of your cushion, work out the length of the curve for each colour and trim, keep these separate from your other strips.

4. Using those strips as a guide layer your other strips on top. If there are any that are too short, just overlap them, as circled above. Once they’re fluffed up it won’t be noticeable at all.

5. Stitch down the middle of the strip, the edges don’t need to be perfectly lined up so don’t be too precious with it. I used white thread but if I made it again I would use thread that corresponded to the colour of fabric, as sometimes you still see the white stitches peeking through occasionally.

6. And continue for your remaining colours.

Creating The Rainbow

1. Pin your red strip to your cushion front. Once you’re happy with its placement, attach it to your cushion front by sewing a line straight down the middle, as close as possible to your previous stitches.

2. Repeat for the following colours. The placement now with affect how your finished rainbow looks. I wanted a clear gap in between my arches, but if you want it closer then butt the strips up as close as possible to each other, even overlapping.

3. Once all your strips are attached, you will end up with something like this. Trim the excess chenille strips from the sides.

4. Sew your cushion as you would normally. I’ve used an envelope style, if you’re unsure how to do this please follow my envelope cushion tutorial.

5. Start distressing! To create the chenille you need to dampen the strips and then  distress them. I rubbed a wet flannel over them and then started scrubbing with a metal hairbrush from the dollar store. I did that for about fifteen minutes, then put the cushion cover in the washing machine on a hot wash and fast spin, once that had finished I rubbed it for another ten minutes or so and then put it in the dryer to fluff up. This photo is the end result of all of that, and I’m planning on doing it all again to fluff it up even more. It feels like you’re rubbing at it for ages, but I promise the effect and texture is well worth it.

A-mah-zing. Seriously, who’s sofa doesn’t need a little hit of rainbow?

Linking up to Tip Junkie this week, click through to see more awesome projects!

Rebecca from Simple As That created a rainbow themed printable for St. Patricks day last year featuring words from 20th Century author Gilbert Chesterton, “Without the rain, there would be no rainbow”. Words to remember, and a print that you can display all year round – it would look awesome in a rainbow themed nursery!

Yesterday I was searching Pinterest in search of new rainbow themed tutorials to link up to and stumbled on to this beautiful little rainbow sunshine soft toy from Holly at Chez Beeper. As soon as Ronan fell asleep this afternoon (which took a while because this kid has got some serious grumps going on!) I stitched together a sunshiney version with yellow minky and orange and yellow ribbons.

No face to speak of yet. I’m hoping to grab half an hour to do it sometime this evening, but until then it’s still pretty cute.

Apparently not cute enough to break the boy out of his grumps though

If anyone has a tutorial for that, it would be super appreciated right now.

Continuing the rainbow love with this beautiful crochet coin purse tutorial created by SparklePetal.

If you’ve never added a zip or lined a crochet project before this is the one to start with, the tutorial is super detailed with loads of photos – perfect for beginners, or crocheters like me who haven’t picked up a hook in months!

Not long before Christmas I picked up a small ironing board at a garage sale for the grand total of $1, it was the perfect size for bringing into the kitchen and ironing on the worktop whilst I watch the kids (Or more truthfully, for when I’ve piled fabric on top of the full size ironing board in my sewing room and I’m forced to start moving stuff into the rest of the house to have space to actually create, but if anyone asks, I’m sticking with the kids excuse!).

It took me about fifteen minutes to make, and totally transformed my cheap little ironing board, from a stained, burnt mess with no padding to speak of, to an awesome feature of my sewing room – and the themed fabric totally makes it for me!

You Will Need

• Your ironing board – this same method can work for both small and full size ironing boards.
• Elastic – enough to reach two thirds of the way around your ironing board.
• Cotton fabric.
• If you need to replace the padding as well then you’ll need either cotton batting or a replacement felt padding – they’re about $15 at Bunnings or another home store.

Full tutorial behind the jump…

1. Flip your ironing board over and trace around the outside onto your batting or replacement felt. I’m using remnants of a felt pad that I zig zagged together after using the majority of it for a full size ironing board. If you’re using batting I would recommend 3-4 layers.

2. Create the shape for your cotton cover using your cut batting as a template, just add an extra 8cm all the way around – it doesn’t have to be exact! Cut along your drawn line.

3.Zig zag or overlock around the edge of your cover. Fold over 1cm and stitch to create a channel for your elastic. Don’t forget to leave a few centimetres gap to thread the elastic.

4. Using a safety pin thread your elastic all the way around the cover. Knot securely and stitch the hole closed.

5. Slip your cover on and stand back and bask in your awesomeness. The fit should be nice and close with no movement as you iron – if there is any then unpick the channel and tighten the elastic slightly.

The world is your oyster, so long as it’s 100% cotton you can use any fabric you like to cover your ironing board so you can perfectly co-ordinate your cover with your sewing room or (heaven forbid!) laundry.

I now need to update my iron to go with my sweet new cover, but this one has served me so well for so many years now that I’d feel guilty getting rid of her. Does anyone have any recommendations for awesome irons for quilters?

Wendy from Ramblings From The Sunshine State created this rainbow themed wreath as part of the decorations for her daughter’s birthday party. All it took was a wreath form (use a pool noodle taped in a circle if you struggle to find them in your local craft store!), some yarn and some felt. I know flower wreaths are all the rage right now (or they were last year? I don’t know, I’m so unhip…) but I love the addition of the miniature felt bunting – too cute!

Wendy didn’t give detailed instructions for making her flowers, but if you need some held there’s picture tutorials on how to make several different styles of flower on Here In The Waiting Place.

In a jar.

Within each of those stars are a blessing for her life as an adult, there are eighteen stars, and they cover everything from job interview success to never dating idiots, some are funny (May your armpits always remain miraculously hair free during the summer months) and some are serious (May you and those around you always know your worth), each star is a blessing, and she can either chose to leave them as is within their jar, or open them up and see everything that I wish for her. These are great for milestone birthdays (or anniversaries) but I think would be especially awesome for a baby shower, with each attendee writing a blessing, and the resulting stars being displayed in a jar in the nursery.

You Will Need

• Coloured paper. I’ve used a pad of scrapbook paper, but coloured printer paper is fine. DO NOT use scrapbooking card, the stars will not be able to be smushed into shape when it comes to the final step.
• A rotary cutter, ruler and mat.

Full tutorial after the jump…

1. Cut your paper into 1.5cmx 30cm strips. When cutting from a pad of scrapbook paper I like to insert my cutting mat between the sheets. This way I don’t have to pull them out and risk losing what’s left over or it getting crumpled.

2. Write your blessings inside each of the strips making sure to leave an couple of centimetres clearance at each end.

3. Tie a knot in the strip, near one end, press the folds.

4. Tuck the flap on the bottom of the pentagon into the envelope of paper above it. Tear or cut some off if it’s too long (that’s why you leave some space before and after the writing).

5. Fold the long strip around the pentagon, keep on wrapping until you near the end.

6. Tuck that flap into the star, again, cut any excess off if it doesn’t fit.

7. Pinch the edges of the pentagons together to form the points of the star. This should cause it to puff up and become three dimensional.

And you’re done! It’s likely to take a few tries to perfect it, but once you’ve got it you can make these with your eyes shut. It took me about fifteen minutes to make the eighteen stars I needed.