I had posted my experiments in cake decorating in another thread http://www.craftster.org/forum/index.php?topic=336785.0, but since I went a little picture-happy with the final cake (while still managing to take all the pics in bad lighting and in a horrible rush, resulting in poor pics!) so I thought I'd better give it its own thread...

This guy I already had:


But I made two more:


See them on the cake:


I love its little toes


I think he's the one who came out best


This one had a bit of a recipe problem and became too dry, so it kept breaking...


I had to both elevate its rear legs to follow the shape it had taken, and cover a missing bit of the cream cover.... that's how the little blanket came to life!







I am happy to report that my friends loved it! (and the interior I knew was yummy, my grandma's chocolate cake with raspberry filling never fails!!

So next week it's the birthday of a goof friend of mine, and since she's recently had quite a bad period another friend launched the idea of organizing a bit of semi-surprise party (she will expect to have a quiet dinner with a couple of friends, it will be a bigger thing). Of course, I got assigned to do the cake, as all my friends love my chocolate cake (grandma's recipe). The thing is, I am bored to death with that cake, because basically I always get asked to do that one and I can never experiment with other things, so I decided that if I can'y modify the base, I'll work on the exterior and have fun with that.
So I did some research on some Italian pastry forums, because I needed to find things I could do with ingredients I could actually find (and sometimes it's not possible with recipes I find here or on some blogs I read, because some things are easily available in the US are unknown here).

So I started with some plastic chocolate, simply made with chocolate, a little water and honey... it turned out much better than I expected
 I had done a little batch with some white chocolate, and I tinted a tiny bit pink and a little portion blue with some random food colouring I had at home (but I've found a store with this kind of supplies in Milan and I want to go there next week for some better stuff), and I made a little cat playing with some yarn (the cake will have a feline theme, so I had to experiment on that subject)...









I am quite satisfied with this, as it's the first time ever that I attempt it and it turned our cute. I have sketched a design for the cake with three little figurines, and I hope they will turn out nice!



I have a tiny bit left and I will later try to form it into something else to decorate a cake I'm baking tomorrow to continue with my experiment... which is, covering the cake with a sheet of marshmallow fondant!

I found one recipe, but I could find only pink&white marshmallows, so the ball that I have resting in my pantry right now is definitely pink (I'll find white ones for the real cake somewhere next week!) and tomorrow I'll try to roll it out and see how it goes covering a cake....



so I'll try to post more pics tomorrow, wish me luck!!!

oh, btw, I also made another little experiment, it's a caramel/cream sauce (like a toffee sauce? we call it another way in Italian, but I googled around and it seems the nearest thing)... and now someone has to hide this little jar from me because it's tooooooo good and it took no time to make!!!!

Frankly, I'm not really happy with most of them, but today I was waiting for some news and was sooooo anxious I just needed to do something. If I'd been a little more inspired, I'm sure I'd have done some things differently, but at least I spent a good afternoon...

This pendant I quite like. It's pearly fimo mixed with some eyeshadow pigment and glitter, wrapped around a clear glass and a couple of silver beads. The pearly beads was added after baking.


there's a lot of pretty glittery that didn't show up in the pictures here:


P is my real initial...


this one has already been snapped up by my mother to use as a cell phone charm as she has a very cute purple cell phone...

(I made a similar one for myself some time ago:
)

these ones were sooooo cute until I varnished them, because the gloss makes the details disappear a little... the petals are round and with a little indent which is soo cute, but were impossible to photograph. Imight try to thake some more pics tomorrow when there will be some better light!

and I obliged!



Actually they were not the dinner, of course - we had a table full of lots of different canapés and nibbles ad dips and spreads instead of proper courses:



and before they arrived I made the dough and set it to rise. After dinner I rolled out the dough, spread butter and cane sugar and cinnamon, rolled it and baked it to have....


my rolls:

out of the oven,
with the cream cheese and vanilla glaze
with a sprinkle of cinnamon on top.

These were much better than the ones I made last summer!!

So, ages ago I posted about this little voodoo mummy figurine I made to have a copy of a good-luck doll I lost and couldn't retrieve:


but it turned out my friends found it creepy, and after a while I got tired of hearing their comments. So my little mummy will find a secure hiding place in my purse, and I made a new little thing to hang on my phone:


a little smiling angel with a big heart. I hope they won't find it creepy only because it's not pastel colored!!

then with some of the pearly white fimo I used for the wings I made a little necklace I had been thinking about:




then since I had a little bit of white left and more of that glittery red, I made another pendant for which I still have not found a use, as it's a little big and heavy for my usual style...



and lastly, mixing the scraps of pearly white and glittery red, I got this glittery pearly pink (which is a lot less orange than in the pics) and made an earring/necklace set...


what do you think about them??

description is in the pic.... it's a very easy recon, but I'm happy with what I have got now instead of a lonely mismatched pendant and a too-full bracelet...

After finishing http://www.craftster.org/forum/index.php?topic=330194.0 this, I was stuck waiting for a movie to finish at the cinema where I had opened the bar my theater group runs (we volunteer there), so I was playing around with the blue beads and the limited materials I had brought with me... and this is the result! I like the simplicity of the bracelet, I'm not too sure about the earrings...

the photo above is proof that I am able to sneak in some purple even when I want to make something that is not purple... I love the purple shine on those beads which normally looks much more blue than that!


I made it half width than mine, which I previously posted http://www.craftster.org/forum/index.php?topic=325563.0, so it's just 5 stitches instead of ten... it took a lot less to make!!
I hope you like it!

Today I happily spent the day drawing, cutting and painting a new addition to my outdoor decorating for Xmas (barely in time: in Milan we put decoration up on Dec 7th, the day of the city patron saint)... I had decided last year that I was going to add something related to both Peanuts & skating... so that's Snoopy skating with Peppermint Patty!

starting out, you can sort of see the the design I drew and then went over with red permanent marker, under a layer of base white.


detail of Patty's dress, which is far more simple in the comic strip, but I am also a huge ice skating fan and and ice dance MUST HAVE sequins and swarovskis!


colors done, I was starting with the black & outline


finished! I LOVE it and I can't wait to hang it outside.


other details I like:


and to show you the rest of the outside decorations, I found photos from last year:

I have already another Snoopy themed panel


and a "fantasy" skate


(see a pattern here? this year's piece was the obvious addition to them!)

Mr.Snowman


and the Gingerbread Man


all outside with the fake present boxes


and the garland on the banister hides some lights: action shot!


I adore coming back to this sight at night during the holidays!

^_^ Today I was actually going to work on fixing a coat I inherited from my grandmother, but in the end I got sidetracked by two other projects: (crappy cell phone pics, sorry. I't also dark, so they look even more grainier that they would be if taken in daylight!)


I had been looking for a larger cushion for the dog we adopted from a rescue shelter last month: we had bought him a pretty big one, but unlike my other dog he sleeps quite sprawled out, and the cushion seemed small for him. So instead of doing a simple cushion, I made a completely removable cover for a mattress I pieced together from two different thicknesses of foam sheets, with a tubular cushion going all around it (detachable from the bed and with a removable cover as well - everything is washable!) kept in place by some fabric cuffs... it is WAY bigger  than the previous one and cost probably 1/5th of what I would have paid a same size one in a shop, and is in a better color than the crazy ones on sale (which would be horrid against my furniture).
I'm really proud of this one and he seems to enjoy it!

With part of the same cushion fabric (which is padded and lovely) I also made:

a coat for my other dog, who tends to feel cold and refuses to go out in winter. I modeled it off one of the coats of a former dog we had, it keeps both her back and chest warm, and has a large "buttonhole" on the back to pass through the rings of the harness I use to take her on walks, which has to be put on before the coat...
It has two fasteners, both around the end of her ribcage and in the tiny part of her "waist", to keep it all from moving around too much. She HATES when I try to take her picture so the one of her wearing it is really bad, but is the only one I managed to take.... but away from the camera, she seemed at ease in her coat!


totally gratuitous pc of my mom and her cat Michelle, "helping" her at the computer while I worked at the sewing machine...