Cake Challenge #2

 

Welcome back to my month long series on cake decorating using the eBosser from Craftwell & Photo Frost frosting sheets.  If you remember, my friend Jennifer Carreno who can make cake into works of art is helping me because when it comes to cake decorating, I am a complete mess….no really I mean it…disastrous.  So when we left you last week, I showed you this cake which Jennifer brought over for us to decorate.

So from here, we started to experiment with cutting and embossing the Photo Frost sheets.  We decided to start with cutting.  I decided to try to cut without adding any kind of vegetable oil or anything and see what happens…well it cuts like butter!  Getting the Photo Frost out of the die can be a bit of challenge, but once you get a small section up, it comes out easily.  A small pin or pick can help if you are having trouble.

We also decided to go ahead and try out embossing…take a look at how amazing this emobssing looks.  Jennifer was so excited to be able to add a little dimension this way!

From here, Jennifer put me to work cutting and embossing.  For example, on the cake we have some flower accents.  We decided to emboss some of the layers and leave some of the others flat. 

Jennifer used some frosting under the petals to get them to stand a little.  The above picture shows that in the top flower.  She also added a dot to the center of the flowers.  I am guessing by now, you have noticed something else in this picture….can you guess what it is?  No?  Well be sure to stop back next week…

 

Jennifer was ECSTATIC to cut out letters!  I guess that letters in the cake decorating field is tricky and a lot of people free hand them.  Jennifer had just the solution to “adhere” the letters onto the fondant…vanilla extract.  I never would have thought of that!  Here is a little peek of the letters that we cut out…

How amazing is that? 

 

Still not convinced that you can do this…well come back next week and you will see what Jennifer and I did.  If I can do this, you can do this!

Cake Challenge #1

Confession Time…this month’s challenge scared me to death!  Craftwell challenged us this month to use our eBosser along with Photo Frost sheets (this month’s sponsor) and create a cake.  Me….create a cake?  Now, I am not saying that I cannot bake a cake, because I can.  I can put frosting on a cake, but as far as decorating a cake…  Let’s just say that I have never decorated a cake that didn’t look like my kids did it.

 

So when I found out about this challenge, I asked Craftwell if it would be OK for me to bring in a cake goddess to help me with this, and I breathed a great sigh of relief when they said yes.  So to get this month long series started, I would like to introduce you to Jennifer Carreno!

Jennifer has been making and decorating cakes for quite awhile and I always find myself amazed at what she has been able to do…like this…

or how about this one…

YES…that is a life size flamingo and the body is made out of cake!  Don’t even ask me how someone would start to make something like this!

 

So, Jennifer had never used the eBosser or Photo Frost sheets before, so she was excited to try it out.  After a lot of debate between us, we decided to make a cake that showcases Jennifer’s other love…we will fill you in on that later.  We decided that we shouldn’t do anything too fancy because the whole point of this is to show how easy all of this is.  So we decided that we would work with a cake that had a relatively flat surface.  I told Jennifer to pick whatever shape she wanted to work with.  I thought she would do a simple square, rectangle, or circle….how silly of me!  Here is what she showed up to my house with on Decorating Day!

A pillow shaped cake covered one half in white and the other in black.  I was ready to dig a fork in, but we had to decorate it first.  Be sure to come back next week and I will show you where we went from here. 

Paint Resist Technique

 

Since our sponsor this month (Crafter’s Companion) has these wonderful new embossing folders, I decided for my last project of the month, I would show you a really fun technique using an embossing folder and of course your eBosser!

I have done this technique before and I am always impressed with the results.  The first step is to emboss your paper (or in my case a tag) and then take a sponge and a little craft paint.  I usually dab my sponge into the paint and then dab the excess off.  Then swipe it across the embossed paper.  If you want a more polished look, you can take some care and make sure to get it only on the embossing, but in my case, I wanted a more distressed look.  Let your paint dry and then get out some Distress Inks.  In most cases it is best to pick colors that can provide a high contrast between them and your paint colors.

Using your ink blending tools, blend the inks onto your tags.  You can also spritz with water to let the colors meld together.  Once you have added all the inks and you are happy with them, take a cloth and buff the painted areas.  They will resist the inks.

 

This beautiful tag is now in need of a gift!

A “Rabble” of Butterflies

 

Hey Crafters!  How many of you are loving all the great creations that the Design Team is coming up with using their eBossers and Crafter’s Companion stamps and embossing folders?  I decided for my project today to highlight two stamps in the Party with Bamboo stamp set.  It is these two cute little butterflies!  The size of these butterflies is great to create a group of butterflies (which is called a rabble…I didn’t actually know this off the top of my head, I had to look it up ).

I stamped the butterflies on watercolor paper with Black Archival Ink and then using some Distress markers and my waterbrush, colored them in and created their trails.  I added the sentiment (also from Party with Bamboo) on a strip of vellum and adhered it to the middle with some white adhesive.  I only added the adhesive onto the white part of the watercolor paper.  Then I cut the whole thing out with a Spellbinders Label #8 die.  I then couldn’t resist this pattern paper from Echo Park’s Everyday Eclectic as a larger layer with the same die set underneath it.  To top it off, I had to use a bright cardbase. to really bring out the vibrant colors of the butterflies.

Hope you all have a great day!

Craftwell Joins Forces with Teresa Collins!

 

Craftwell and Teresa Collins have just announced that they are working together to create some new and exciting Teresa Collins designs to work with Craftwell products like the eBosser!

Read the whole announcement HERE!

Circles, Circles, and More Circles

Last week, I used the chandelier stamp from the Love Letters stamp set by Crafter’s Companion in a way that is unlike it’s original intent.  I had so much fun creating in that “out of the box” way, that I decided to challenge myself to use that exact same stamp again and in another way.  As I was looking at my Crafter’s Companion supplies, I was inspired by their Die’sire Embossing Folder called Grande Dots.  The large dots on the embossing folder, made me want to create a card with a circle theme.  So, I started with the focal point.  I decided to stamp the chandeliers in a circle.  To make it even more interesting, I decided to color directly on the stamps with my Distress Markers and stamped them around in a circle.

For the bottom layer, I stamped around a cardstock circle with the “stem” of the chandelier facing outward and for the top layer, I stamped where the stems connected in the middle.  I colored the stamp using one color palette for two impressions and then changed up the color palette.  I stamped all of this onto Specialty Stamping Paper and then after dried all the stamped images with my heat tool and then applied some Pumice Stone ink on top and flicked a little water to get those lighter spots.  After I was done with these, I cut them out with different sizes of circle dies in my trusty eBosser.  A little foam adhesive and some more circles made the perfect centerpiece for my sentiment from the Party with Bamboo stamp set also by Crafter’s Companion.

I of course had to use the Die’sire Embossing folder that inspired the circles, so I grabbed a piece of Core’dinations cardstock in purple.  Decided on purple since it was the only color of the rainbow that I did not use in my stamping.  Running these embossing folders through the eBosser is so easy.  They are 8” square which means you can run the embossing folder in either direction in the eBosser! Love that!  After embossing, I decided to highlight the embossing by sanding it which is one of the advantages to the Core’dinations cardstock.  It really brings out the embossing and completes the distressed look.

Crafty Fun with Crafter’s Companion

Can you believe that it is May already?  Since it is May, that means that we have a new sponsor that we are highlighting this month and this month we have….Crafter’s Companion!  For my card today, I used their Love Letters stamp set and one of their brand new Die’sire Embossing Folder. 

 

I have to tell you that on the day that I sat down to do this card, nothing seems to be speaking to me.  So, when that happens, I push myself to think outside the box and to look at alternative things that I can do with the supplies on hand.

To get started, I grabbed a piece of watercolor paper and started spritizing it with all sorts of spray inks in shades of yellow, orange, and green.  Once that was all dry, I tapped the paper in some of the pooled ink that was sitting on my non stick craft sheet and dried those too to get a splotchy effect.  Then I started stamping.

Do you see this stamping that I did….well that was with a chandelier stamp from the Love Letters stamp set.  I did some generational stamping by inking once for every 3 times that I stamped and created these kind of crazy borders that make me think of the ikat trend happening right now.

 

After stamping both of the border, I took my Regal Damask embossing folder and inked it up with some Olive ink and ran it through my eBosser.  The achieved look is very subtle, but really adds some dimension at the same time.

 

Since this background that I created was so unique, I did not want to put a lot of top of it, so I added a small label die and added the sentiment from the Love Letters stamp set with a few black rhinestones and I was done.

 

Even though this card did not come easy for me, I have to say that I love it and can definitely see myself making this again switching up the colors and having so much fun doing it!