Dancing Skellies

Last week I found this great video tutorial on Youtube for sewing a BJD dress. I wish I knew how to embed it into my blog bog, but for now you should go watch it HERE!  I had also been seeing a ton of cute Barbie sized hankie dresses on pinterest so I thought... hmm what if I used a bandana instead of a hankie since my BJD is bigger than a Barbie.  So I combined the 2 thought trains and came up with this fabulous Halloween  dress. :-)

This dress actually came together pretty quickly and I WILL definitely be making it more after as Lena looks amazing in it! I used a matching piece of Candy Corn ribbon for the wrap. It's perfect for a night out on Halloween, when one doesn't want to go in costume!

Christmas Cupcakes

Continuing on after yesterday's Halloween cupcakes, today I have for your viewing pleasure, Christmas cupcakes!!!

My customer requested an assortment of 2 dozen cupcakes.  In the end we decided on 5 style with 5 of each.  (She got a Baker's Double Dozen! ;-) )  Here are the inspiration real cupcakes and my miniature version.  These were also scented.

We started out with my versions of these Santa Hat Chocolate cupcakes.  The 2nd photo shows one of each in Barbie, 16" fashion doll (1/4 scale) and American Girl doll size.  My customer purchased the Barbie doll size.

Next up were these Snowman face cupcakes.  After a quick polling of my friends on Facebook, we decided that the chocolate chips looked better point down, and I preferred the carrot pointing off to the side rather than straight up.  My customer specifically asked if I could get the sugar look, and we were both very happy with the results! The Snowman cupcakes are scented with Gingerbread scent!


The next cupcake I recreated was a green version of these wonderful present cupcakes. These are Vanilla scented, and the green 'wrapping paper' has a slight iridescent shimmer to it.
These last 2 sets of cupcakes tuned out to be the hands down favorites. First up these elegant Poinsettia cupcakes. These are Red Velvet Cake scented. The poinsettia petals were done with paper punches and have the veins hand drawn on. The pearls are also polymer clay... I had extra from the star cake I did for this same customer, they worked perfectly!
And saving the favorites for last... POLAR BEARS!!!! I was so excited to try these in miniature, and SO happy with how they came out.  The polar bear cupcakes are Peppermint Crunch scented. I actually took some miniature peppermints I sculpted, chopped them up into teeny tiny bits and mixed it into the Peppermint scented clay!  I LOVE these so much! :-)

Tomorrow I'll share the last of her custom order and a cute Halloween dress I made! Y'all enjoy your Sunday!

Sorry y'all falling behind again.

So when last I left you I was showing off the neat Shooting Star cake I had made.  And I think I told you about the Halloween cupcakes I was working on.  So in this post I will show you all the finished Barbie scale cupcakes, as well as the real cupcakes that served as inspiration. OOOH the other cool thing about these cupcakes... they are SCENTED!!!  So they smell like the type of cake they are supposed to represent! :-)

 First up are these Mummy face cupcakes.  They are Red Velvet cake, and smelled amazing!


Next up were they fun Green Furry Monster Cakes. They turned out too cute, but I'll admit getting the frosting stiff enough to spike, but still soft enough to spread was a challenge.  The eyes crack me up!  These cupcakes are Vanilla scented and smell like the real deal!

Next up for inspiration was this photo.  We both LOVED the little bats on purple frosting.  In hindsight, I wish I hadn't glossed the frosting as it almost exactly matching the inspiration photo and the 'jelly' bats stood out more. BUT my custom was very happy with them as is, so we called it good. These are what I called Autumn Spice, and they have that rich heady Fall scent, you know that one that just screams cooling temps and changing leaves! ;-)

The green spiderweb cupcakes inspired us as well, but we found an even better cupcake for those.
See what I mean!!! These were a bit tricky to do, as these are Barbie sized cupcakes, so they are only about a third of an inch across, so getting the right amount of black icing was tough. But in the end my customer and I were really happy with these as well! They are Orange Cream flavored. And I will fully admit that they smelled so good I actually went out and bought the ingredients to make homemade Orange Cream cupcakes... you know like the filled ones that Hostess makes.. yeah those!

And last but certainly not least are from what we consider a Must-Watch movie in October. jack Skellington, the Pumpkin King from The Nightmare Before Christmas !!! These smelled like Chocolate Fudge Cake, My hubby said the clay smelled so good and looked like chocolate I better be careful not to leave it sitting out, someone might think it was the real thing! ;-)
I made 5 of each design for my customer. She is giving them out as tables gifts at an upcoming Barbie convention! :-)

Tomorrow I'll share the Christmas cupcakes I made for the same customer! 

Back in the Clay

After the sewing I did 2 weeks ago I got busy with a VERY large clay order.  A wonderful customer of mine will be attending a Barbie convention/event later this year and commissioned me to make 4 dozen Barbie sized cupcakes in both Halloween themed designs as well as Christmas ones. She also asked if I could remake this cake in Barbie scale.

I loved the design and couldn't wait to get started on it.  I started by making a bunch of tiny stars in both gold and white pearl.  (As a side note I LOVE that Luster Dusts exist in the culinary world!  I love being able to make shimmery foods! ;-) )

Then I made the larger gold star, and oh about a zillion tiny pearls for the star trails.  Each pearl is smaller than the head of a pin, oh and yeah I actually made THREE sizes of pearls!  Each white clay pearl was shaped, then stuck carefully onto a needle tool and dipped into white pearl powder and rerolled.  After I made the requisite zillion I baked them.  Thankfully the pearl powder kept them from sticking together.

After baking all of the decorations, I sculpted the large cake shape. My customer decided to go with a large banquet size cake.  I baked the inner core of the cake first after shaping it.  I also poked several holes in the base to prevent any trapped air bubbles from distorting the shape. (Thankfully that worked! LOL)

Next up came a pristine layer of white pearl clay, which after smoothing down carefully got a dusting of pearl powder.  I baked this layer as well to prevent any damage or discoloration when I added the red ribbon design.  The baked stars and pearls were added onto the raw red clay and then the whole cake was rebaked.

My customer loves it! :-)

I love to create my own designs, but there is something rewarding about recreating something that is 10 times larger in real life, in miniature.

Tomorrow I'll tell you about the cupcakes I've been making! =D