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Sunday, March 31

New Blog Awaits You!

Hey everyone...
My new blog Hello Lemming was released today!

So this will be my last post here. But never fear - all the fun will continue over there! 

So change your RSS feeds now - and I look forward to hearing what you think

x

Saturday, March 30

2 sleeps until my new blog!

via.
That's right! From Monday onwards I'm shifting over to hellolemming - my brand new lifestyle magazine blog :)

Get excited :D

xo

Tuesday, March 12

Felt Toast

For Charlie's birthday I also made him this adorable felt toast mini cushion.

It is small and smily, and it went with the original toastie machie I got him too. Yum.
Who doesn't like an original toastie? Mmm now I'm hungry...




Only 19 days until the new blog is released! I'm very excited - aren't you?

x




Wednesday, February 27

Around The Table - A Bloggers Conference

Via.


In April there is a very exciting event coming up - a bloggers conference in little old Christchurch.
The conference is on the 12-14th and will involve meet and greet with other NZ bloggers and well as a market, workshops, craft sessions and leisurely lazing about.

I'm pretty excited about meeting other bloggers - as I don't know many. I heard about the conference through my friend and work colleague Rachel. I'm glad I will already know someone there and I think she is too!

Also my new blog should be up and running by then so it will be good to get a chance to show it off a little :)

x

So where do we go from here: A new adventure awaits!

Iceberg - Hermitage, Mt Cook.  Via.



Have you ever started something that turned out to be a lot bigger than expected? One things leads to another and you find yourself brimming full of ideas, not knowing where to stop? It has happened to me I'm afraid. And it is extremely exciting. The sceret is that I'm working on a new flashy-blog (at least I hope it will be). It will combine my SewLaTea blog, the beginnings of my HelloLemming opinion blog and a splash of everything else. This is the reason things have been a bit quiet here lately.

Expect more of a magazine style blog - which opinion pieces, handy DIY tips, beautiful photography and hopefully some profiles on amazing people. As always I'm keen for your input. So if you'd like to contribute or suggest a friendly face to grace the blog, please do get in touch. It is just as much about what you'd like to read as what I'd like to post! 

Release date is planned for the 1st of April (And that's no April fools joke!). So don't be a slacker and put it in your virtual dairy now.

x




Sunday, February 17

Arsenal Cake

Charlie's favourite football club is Arsenal. So it was only fitting that I make an Arsenal related cake for his birthday.

After some research I decided upon recreating the club's badge in cake form - with a little fondant mascot for the side.



I made his favourite cake - banana, but also made it into a white chocolate mud cake at the same time. Yum.

This is the recipe I used - but per the reviews I only used 2 bananas. I also cooked it a bit longer than the 45 minutes that recipe stated - turning it down to about 150 degrees.



Using a printout as a guide, I coloured and cut out fondant in the right shapes. And painted some pieces with the edible gold.



Gunnersaurus! He is my first ever attempt at making a fondant creature. It's very fiddly work! I didn't quite master the tylo powder ratio - so I shall do some more research for future critter making.


I think he likes you.


I was happy to find little football candles for the cake.




Charlie loved it!



As you can see I cut the cake in half before icing and put a dark chocolate ganche in the middle. 

All in all it was a success - however I had trouble with the fondant cracking a bit. I will have to find some pros to ask me thinks!

Because I'm obsessed with cake decorating at the moment, I have set up a dedicated pinboard and I'm pinning like crazy. It's strange to think people have even more time and patience to make cakes than I. It's probably that they are just much faster I imagine. 

Also I must remember to take photos on my good camera not just my phone. What a bad blogger I am - apologies! 




Saturday, February 2

Fondant Roses

My friend Hannah had a birthday this week - and I know she loves cooking and baking, so I decided to make her some fondant roses that she can put on her cakes!

I hand coloured and painted them using colour gels and edible rainbow dust!




Here are the results - I think she really liked them!

Monday, January 28

Brush Embroidery

In my quest to get better at baking and decorating - I have been researching up a storm. In my travels I came across an interesting technique called Brush Embroidery. It was so stunning I had to give it a go.

So this weekend I whipped up some plain vanilla biscuits using a Martha Stewart recipe.

I then iced them with a beautiful royal blue tint royal icing. If you want your biscuit icing to be neat and tidy (and don't already know how) simply fill up your piping bag with the coloured icing (it can be relatively runny) and using a 2 tip (or similar) pipe around the edge of your biscuit to create an outline - then proceed to flood the centre of the biscuit with more icing (only a little at a time.) If you want you can slowly turn your biscuit to help evenly distribute the icing or use a toothpick to help. The icing should be liquid enough to create an even cover and fix any mistakes - but strong enough for the meniscus to hold. Leave the biscuits to fully dry (Overnight is best).



Then comes the hard part! The Brush Embroidery. To tell you the truth it took me forever to get the icing consistency right. Something I will have to work on. I followed this video to get the technique down. Also I had some pearl dust to paint on top for that fun sparkle.




I was very slow at the embroidery so I cheated a little and switched up the pattern.


I also made my first fondant roses - which I'm pretty happy with. Next I shall try adding color to them!


























The results!



Can't wait to try it on a cake!


Saturday, January 26

Cake class 101

The decorating begins.

Last week my fab sister-in-law and I went to a cake decorating class at the new Make Cafe in Christchurch. It was great fun and now I'm pretty much obsessed with decorating cakes etc. which is funny, because I'm on a strict diet and can't eat any of it. But that's okay! I just imagine it is molding clay, paint and stuff - all inedible. It's amazing how your brain can adjust for these things.

We learnt how to pipe a ruffle onto cakes with the 104 petal tip. We also got taught how to make fondant flowers and we played with colour gels - my new fav.

Here are the results!




Crumb coat


Mixing up the colours - ombre styles


The final result 


I am now obsessed and I've been watching all sorts of videos on youtube - I wanna be a pro now. 
I think I will join this class next. Chch people are more than welcome to join me :)

Watch this space for more of my decorating progress!



Friday, January 18

Bibs and bobs

Happy new year all!
I'm attempting to blog again. Hopefully I can try to juggle Uni, work, design and blogging a bit better this year.

Charlie's sister had a baby boy a few days before Christmas so I decided to make him some lovely things! It was difficult choosing the fabrics I tell you - there were so many gorgeous ones.

The tag blanket

The bibs



Little Albie and me

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