crafty goodness

Friday, March 11, 2011

marshmallow cupcakes

I volunteered to make 2 dozen cupcakes for my child's school fundraiser tomorrow night. Since I'm looking soooo forward to warmer weather, I decided to make some fun flower cupcakes that are sure to be a hit. I copied the idea from a Family Fun magazine a while back. They are so simple to make. Here's what you'll need:

Make a batch of cupcakes and frost them with white icing when completely cooled. You can go all gourmet and make some fancy cupcakes from scratch or use a good ol' box mix. I'll never tell which method I used. Although, I will say that this was done on a Friday night after working all week, so you can just guess. You'll also need a big bag of marshmallows and some gumdrops.

Stand a marshmallow on end and use freshly washed scissors or kitchen shears to snip off a layer across the top of the marshmallow. The scissors squish the marshmallow just enough to make a nice petal shape. How thick you cut the layer of marshmallow will also determine how much the petal curls up. I got 4-5 petals from each marshmallow. Don't worry, any deformed petals can be quickly snarfed up by your little munchkins. I found that I needed to wash the gooey marshmallow off of my scissors after every 3 to 4 marshmallows to make clean cuts.

Next, take five "petals" and arrange them atop a freshly iced cuppycake. This should be done while the icing is still sticky, before it sets up, so that the marshmallows stick to the cupcake.

Then add a dab of icing to the bottom of a gumdrop and stick it in the center of the flower.

Voila! Now you have a beautiful flower cupcake that is good enough to eat (and impress a bunch of elementary school kids at the cake walk)!

These would also look great using the strawberry flavored pink marshmallows or the pastel rainbow hues. I also think these flower cupcakes would look super cute arranged on a fancy cupcake stand! Thanks for looking!

Sunday, March 6, 2011

Weekly Challenge #32

Here is my take on this week's Scrapbook Steals sketch, courtesy of a great guest sketcher, Brittany Perry. I love that it is a 2 page layout, since I always prefer to include multiple pictures. The photos in this layout were nearly 2 years old, but I recently bought this great My Mind's Eye Confetti collection from the Scrapbook Steals archives and I was dying to use the great red and blue papers that matched so well. I tried a new technique for the title. I wrote the word "smile" with a pencil and then poked holes in the paper which I later stitched over with embroidery floss. I learned the hard way that I should have written the word a bit bigger or left more space between my poked holes, because some of them tore due to being too close to another hole. For the rest of the stitching, I used my sew easy to make a pierced line and stitched the rest. Thanks for looking!

Sunday, February 27, 2011

Weekly Challenge #31

This week's challenge was based on a one page sketch. Since I had so many pictures from our day in Chicago, I had to stretch it into a two pager. The paper is bright and colorful and just makes me happy, since it's dreary, cold and snowy for the umpteenth day in a row here.

It's hard to believe I'm already doing my 31st Scrapbook Steals layout! I am so happy that I started joining the weekly competition. I've managed to get way more pages done than I'd ever imagined and it keeps me motivated. The people I've met through this site have been so great and really have become friends to me. I used to scrap at weekend crops and show my work to a few scrappy friends, but now that I'm putting them out there for all to see (gasp!) I am way more into detail and the quality of my work has grown significantly. I just wish I had found these girls sooner, or that they lived closer to Indiana! As always, thanks for looking and supporting my scrappy habit!

Monday, February 21, 2011

On-line crop challenges

Scrapbook Steals issued three bonus challenges this week for their on-line crop/chat with chances to win some great product. Since I was home all weekend with a sickly little one, I managed to complete all three challenges, but just barely. Challenge #1 was the same as MWM #30, which is featured here.

Challenge #2 was to do a "secret" page, sharing something about yourself. This one was especially difficult, since I have very few pictures of myself, and even fewer that I'm willing to put on a layout. I also struggle with doing "girly" pages, since I'm always scrapping boy stuff. I pulled out some fancy papers and started blindly assembling my layout, with no plan in mind. This is where it got dangerous. I wanted to try out my new i-rock tool and add some bling, but I kind of got carried away. The final product is very busy, and is nothing like my "typical" layouts, but I'm just proud that I pulled it off.

Challenge #3 is to do a page about something you're LUCKY to have. The layout also had to include 3 pictures and the color green. This layout was an easy one for me. I am blessed in so many ways, but being a mom has to be my greatest joy. I used favorite papers from Fancy Pants Like Father, Like Son collection.

Challenge #4 was by far the most time consuming. Melodee at Scrapbook Steals challenged us with a countdown of sorts. For this layout we had to use the following:

10 Metal Embellishments (brads, eyelets, paperclips etc)

9 Inches of Ribbon

8 Letters (chipboard, stickers etc)
7 Non Metal Embellishment (buttons, die cuts etc)
6 Sentences in your journaling
5 Patterned Paper Pieces
4 Solid Paper Pieces
3 Photos
2 Rub On Images
1 Stamped Image

This is what I managed to put together, although I'm ashamed to admit it took me nearly 3 hours to complete this layout:

Now I'm crossing my fingers, hoping that I'll be randomly chosen as a winner. Winning scrappy prizes always justifies me spending more time and $$ doing what I love!