The cake...

The cake didn't turn out as well as I had hoped.

I had grand plans of creating a stencil and spray-painting the cake with Wilton aerosol food colouring spray (= poor man's airbrush). Unfortunately, the colour is water-based, so when you spray a lot of it on butter-cream frosting, it just tends to bead up, and because the black in particular was so ... weak... I was spraying a lot. I emptied the whole can on that climber, and still managed - at best - a middling grey colour. So disappointing. The red and the yellow went on a lot better. A few caveats if you ever want to use this stuff yourself:

1. Don't use the black. It sucks rocks.
2. Have a big plastic proctective sheet (drop sheet, old shower curtain, cheap $1 tablecloth from the rama) under your cake to catch the over-spray.
3. Work in a well ventilated area. You end up with an atomized fog of food colouring floating in the air where you're working. I thought I had protected everything quite well, but when I mopped the kitchen floor afterwards, my bucket water was red! Like cleaning up after a murder. Not that I have any experience with that sort of thing.

Anywho. All things considered, it's at least recognizable. Just not as good as I was hoping for. Oh, and I splurged and bought a tube of proper black frosting for the border. What a great idea that was. I'd never have managed to mix anything darker than charcoal grey myself.

More fun with climbers

For my son's climbing party, I decided I didn't want to do the tired loot bags. Yes, kids love them, but they're such junk! It just burns me that I'm spending my hard-earned cash on crap toys and sugar bombs. This year I decided to try something different. I'm making custom t-shirts for the kids. It'll cost me about the same when all is said and done, and the kids get a party souvenir that lasts. But best of all: no more candy in the house. 

The shirts are actually yellow - just in case you're wondering if they're white shirts in bad light. I'm feeling terribly clever for making them match his invites. 

On Saturday I'm going to try to duplicate the image in cake form. Let's cross our fingers that I don't end up with a wreck!

Rock climbing!

We're taking the kids rock climbing at an indoor gym for my son's 9th birthday this year. I figure any party that requires a waiver has to be a good one, no?

Here's what I put together for his invitations:

The cardbase is Dusty Durango; kind of an orangey rust colour. The sky is sponged on glossy cardstock using yoyo yellow, dusty durango, and riding-hood red. The You're Invited sentiment is from Hugs and Wishes. The climber dude was a fortuitous find amongst my downloaded images for my Silhouette. Oh, how I loves my silhouette. How perfect is that?

ciao,
C