Crafty Friday: Fake Cakes

My kids have more fun preparing meals of fake food for me, mixing concoctions of grass, leaves and water to make “Trixie food,” and even cooking pots of stew consisting of fabric and felt scraps. Needless to say, fake food is big in our household. Thus, we’re using up the collection of cylindrical containers we’ve amassed in our pantry and creating beautiful, tiered fake cakes.

Here’s what you need:

-small boxes or cylindrical containers (i.e. salt or oatmeal containers) in different sizes
-construction or scrapbook paper or felt
-scissors
-glue and tape
embellishments:
-stickers
-buttons
-ribbon
-lace
-old jewelry or beads

Step 1: Gather your boxes or cylinders and figure out the order in which you want them to be stacked. If you need to, cut them to a size suitable for the cake. For example, our oatmeal containers were too tall, so we cut them in half to get a proportionate layer for the tiered cake.

Step 2: Wrap each cake layer with paper or felt and secure with glue. For the tops of each layer, trace the shape of your cake onto the paper, cut out the shape, and attach it with glue.

Step 3: Start embellishing each layer. You can use ribbon or lace to wrap the layers and mimic decorative icing techniques. Buttons can act as candies, or the cherry on top. Just a side note, Finn carried his cake off to go play with it before it was embellished. It took an act of congress to get him to bring it back and decorate it. I’d say that’s a good sign for this project.

Step 4: Once you’re finished embellishing your cake, stack the layers, grab a plate, and start “eating.” You can create extra layers to let the kids mix and match the cake layers.

Happy Crafting!

nessa dee

IF: Modify

With the home improvement craze hitting the nation, Mr. Snail decided that he needed to modify his own abode.

xo

nessa dee

Glow

My mom found a container full of those glow in the dark bracelets you buy at carnivals or fairs and gave them to me a few weeks ago. My kids have been begging me ever since then to play with them, but it’s usually past their bedtime when they do so. Well last night, about 9:30 [an hour past bedtime] I finally gave in, and we had a little glow in the dark experimentation with long camera exposures. It made bedtime even later and was followed by tears and a small tantrum when we had to put the glow sticks up. Oh well, it was fun nonetheless.

xo

nessa dee

New Prints!

Well, I just had to let you know [in case you hadn’t heard me talking about it enough already] that there are new prints available in the shop. Several designs are in the shop already, and a couple more will be listed later on.

And this little guy will be in the shop as soon as I get some more prints made:

xo

nessa dee

Crafty Friday: Silhouette Opposites

I thought I was going to have to cancel Crafty Friday this week because with all of the madness trying to prepare my art for the show at Blues on the Green, I forgot to plan a craft for this week. But lo and behold, my daughter shows up with this little project that she made:

It doesn’t require a lot of supplies, the steps are easy, and the results are striking. So Crafty Friday’s back on!

Here’s what you need:

[I apologize for the picture quality…it was a cloudy and much needed rainy day. Amen, Hallelujah!]

3 pieces of paper…2 of the same color [background] and 1 contrasting color [silhouette] This is a great opportunity to teach your child about complimentary colors [colors opposite each other on the color wheel].

scissors

tape or glue

a pencil

a stencil [optional]

Step 1: Choose a shape that you want to use for your silhouette and draw it on the 1 piece of paper of a different color [in our case it was yellow]. You can trace a shape if you like, but make sure that whatever shape you use will translate well as a silhouette.

Step 2: Cut out your shape. Begin by first folding the paper to snip a slit that will allow you to cut into the shape without cutting the edges of the paper, like so:

Then continue to cut out the rest of the shape.

Step 3: Tape or glue the shape to one piece of the contrasting paper. Then tape or glue the paper you cut the shape out of to the other piece of contrasting paper.

And that’s it, you’re done! If you want, you can frame the silhouettes and hang them to create a beautiful and striking piece of wall art.

Happy Crafting!

nessa dee

Oh, and by the way, I didn’t do as well as I would have liked at Blues on the Green, which was kind of a bummer, but the good news is that there is more art to put in my shop! So, keep checking back for original art, plus prints that will appear in the shop soon!

New Paintings

Clever title, huh? Well, as promised, here’s some of my newest additions to my collection of paintings. As I mentioned yesterday, I will be selling these paintings at Blues on the Green, a summer concert series here in Austin, TX. I will be joining a group of other talented crafters that are part of the Etsy Austin team [if you’re in the area…come out and see us!] Any paintings I don’t sell will join the other paintings in my shop. If you read yesterday’s post, I probably sound like a broken record, so I’ll shut up now and just get to the pictures.

Here they are, my new babies:

AND, to repeat myself again [because I know you want to hear it], I have some new prints of my illustrations. They’ll be making their way to the shop, as well!

xo

nessa dee

IF: Idle

 

With new and improved helper robots hitting the market, this Dot Bot model # 67 was quickly replaced.  And because he was idle, this little robot rusted.

This little guy is part of my effort to create enough inventory to sell tomorrow at Blues on the Green with other talented Etsy Austin members.   He is a combination of book pages, scrapbook paper, acrylic paint, buttons and hand stitching.  I’ve been in a mad dash here at the end to get a lot of paintings finished before the big day tomorrow.  I’ll be posting pictures of more of the new stuff soon, so check back!  And anything that doesn’t sell at Blues on the Green will go into my little shop.  Plus, I’ve got some new prints of some of my illustrations that will be making their way to the shop as well!

xo

Nessa Dee