Paige's Cupcake Bouquet

Remember when your children's school projects were making a cardboard castle, or a paper mache volcano?  Well when they're in a high school marketing class... they make a Cupcake Bouquet.  They had to create a product, make a website, packaging, logo, advertisements and a whole marketing plan.  If you've followed my blog for a while, you'll know that Paige has had a fairly successful cupcake business since she was 13, so it only goes to follow that she'd try something in the same line.  Here's what she assembled at 7am this morning:

 Pretty awesome, huh?  I won't even tell you the fun we had transporting this to school in the rain!  I'll show you a few pictures of how we put it together, which are fairly self explanatory.  If you want to make one yourself, you'll find several tutorials on Youtube - and it actually went together pretty easily.

We took 3" squares of green tissue paper and poked it in between the cupcakes to hide the styrofoam ball:

Stay tuned to see more of what Paige was up to this year, her floral pillow for her fashion class was amazing.  Have a great day :o)

Coming up for air!

Happy Holidays!  I hope you've all had a wonderful Christmas, and some quality time with friends and family.  I didn't really intend to take things so slowly blog-wise over the last few weeks, but as with all of us, family and holiday commitments come first, and a computer in the shop for several weeks made the break happen whether I wanted it to or not!  I am excited to get back to crafting, trying out new things, and even getting going on next year's Christmas cards!  I still have all of my product sitting out in my craft room, and I intend to keep it going while I'm still in festive mode.  We have some wonderful colour stories coming up at Dynamic Duos... and of course the Close To My Heart spring 2013 catalogues should be in my hands shortly, so there are lots of fun things ahead.  If you like a good Boxing Day deal... surf the stamp and paper companies today - I've just placed a lovely Verve order, and may look at a few other products as well.  For now I have a couple of things to share... this was a Pinterest idea that I gave out to several friends, wonderful jars of a homemade hot chocolate mix.  They were very cute, and well received:

And here is another reason for my slow December blogging - my daughter, the Cupcake Diva had 3 fairly large orders this month (and I am her lovely assistant!) so we made over 350 mini cupcakes, and 3 dozen regular sized ones.  Needless to say, we're not looking to bake any more cupcakes in the near future.  Here is a chocolate fudge cupcake with a white chocolate buttercream icing done for a holiday baby shower:

Stay tuned for some serious papercrafting, I can hardly wait to get back into my room! 

Every Diva needs a cake

Seeing as my daughter Paige is a cake & cupcake baker/decorator... I needed to pull out my A-game today for her birthday cake.  I'm going to be generous and give myself a B- (smile).  I had fun doing it, but the execution was messy to say the least.  You may have seen these rosette cakes on Pinterest, or in a You Tube how-to video, where they take about a minute and a half to do a whole cake?  Well, it actually does go pretty quickly, but my icing started getting a bit too warm (white chocolate buttercream!) and I literally had icing up to my elbows, and had to refridgerate it several times.  Anyway, if you stand back about 5 feet it looks quite impressive... just don't sneak up close to see my shaky roses!

A Cupcake Diva birthday

If you follow my blog, you'll know that my daughter has a little cupcake business... well, my Cupcake Diva turns 15 tomorrow, so when I saw Laurel's gorgeous pastel pink inspiration photo on Inspired By - it got me thinking pink & girly for her card.  I've seen a few versions of this on the internet, and wanted to make a little cupcake store window, complete with striped awning.

Patterned papers are Hello Summer, Echo Park; Bazzil cardstock; Stamp set is The Sweetest Thing; Ink is Tuxedo Black, Memento; Copic markers; Verve dies.

 

Twenty Dozen Cupcakes

Luckily they were mini ones!  Knowing that my daughter has a little cupcake business, when my niece got engaged, she asked if she would make the cupcakes for her wedding!  So when we flew out to BC this past July, Paige packed all her icing bags & tips and a few random ingredients like meringue powder & clear vanilla.  She'd been researching recipes and making test batches for weeks in advance, and with a few days to go, and in an unfamiliar kitchen, she set out to make 240 chocolate and vanilla cupcakes.

The first day was making 250+ royal icing drop flowers... the second day was baking day...



And finally, icing them all with a swirl, and adding the drop flower to the top. Here's a picture of the tower at the wedding (this is only about 1/2 of what she baked), along with the proud baker. If she can do this at 14, just wait and see what she'll do a few years from now! (very proud Mom speaking!)