Day #21 Art Every Day Month – Further Evidence of My Artistic Affliction

Well, as promised, I want to start with an update with a picture of the finished cake! Note the trim along the sleeve and little pretties along the edge. I don’t know what it is about that edging that adds so much, but I think it adds a real finished look.

As long as I’m showing birthday cakes, I thought I’d show you pictures of the ones I did for my other two grandchildren earlier in the year…

This is Bea’s. Her real name is Abigail, but she prefers Bea, because she likes bees. And, lavender is her favorite color, so she ordered a lavender bee cake for her third birthday. And since the birthday kids get what they order, here’s her lavender bee cake…

Joshua also turned three this year. He Likes monster trucks and heavy equipment, and opted for a tractor cake. It turned out pretty cool!

Further evidence of my artistic affliction comes in the form of the “treats” for birthday party guests. Hannah’s mom decided that this year she wanted to give gift cards for a “Jamba Juice” instead of a bag full of the crummy little “stuff” usually found in goodie bags. But, I couldn’t just give a plain little gift card, so I wanted to at least put them in a fancy little envelope. I got plain old envelopes, and we lined them in pretty paper, then stamped the fronts with sparkly flourishes, a “Tangled” sticker (Rapunzel for the girls, Flynn Rider for the boys) and curly ribbon.

I’m sorry. I can’t help it. I just can’t do plain.

Day #20 Art Every Day Month – Cake Day!

Today, almost the WHOLE day, was spent getting the birthday cake done for my granddaughter! I didn’t realize it would be such a project. It seemed pretty manageable, but wow, it took a long time to get all those little dots on there!

As of this writing it isn’t QUITE done, but I’ll show you where I am, as it is about time to publish. I’ll follow tomorrow with the completed cake. Really it just needs a bit of finish work – a ruffle around the sleeve and the trim around the bottom of the cake – you may not even be able to tell the difference.

I don’t know that decorating a child’s birthday cake can truly be classified as art, but I’ll tell you taking this:

and this:

and turning it into this:

is pretty rewarding, even if it can’t be called artistic. I can hardly wait for Hannah to see it. I think she will love!

Day #19 Art Every Day Month – A Different Kinda Day

Today I was in “support services” mode, not much time for myself!

I dabbled just a bit, a few minutes of scrapbooking and knitting here and there between family projects, and watched another section of my “she Art” class, but it was a pretty weak “art” day for me!

Sunday is Hannah’s 7th birthday party, so my big project of the day was coming up with an idea for her birthday cake. She is into Rapunzel (from the Disney movie “Tangled”) this year, but the cake -making industry hasn’t caught on yet, so whatever I do has to come out of my head. My first idea was to recreate the scene with the tower on a sheet cake, and I figured out how I could do it using a variety of shapes of ice cream comes as the base. But her party is going to be at a gymnastics studio, and I really didn’t want to be assembling a cake there. So what is a Gaga to do? I almost succumbed to the temptation to just do a Costco cake, but my pride wouldn’t let me. I just HAD to come up with something.

As I combed the rows of supplies at Michael’s, the idea hit me! I could take the Ariel head, mount it on a 14″ circle, change the eye color, and give her a puffy-sleeved dress instead of a bikini top, and change the hair color and extend it to drape around the circle…

I think it will work! It should be a pretty easy transformation! But, I’ve never done a face before, so if you don’t see a picture tomorrow night or Sunday, you’ll know it didn’t turn out so good! Hahahaha!

This afternoon I went with Mr. Tattered to the “Mandarin Orange Festival.” Seriously, a festival built around mandarin oranges. Now, there are lots of orchards up in the hills, and we LOVE them, but a whole festival? And to make matters worse, it was raining. I felt bad for the vendors that worked so hard to get their wares ready and to have the weather be so crummy. Anyway, hardly anyone showed up and we grabbed about 40lbs. of them and left.

But, we stopped for margaritas and Mexican food on the way home, so it was a successful outing. Except that I’m a cheap drunk, and I’m loopy after one drink and won’t be getting to the studio this evening. Oh, well, we all need a goof off day every now and then!

Hope you have a good, productive day!