I love cake and I love animals; for my day job I work in animal health, so when my bosses birthday came around I couldn’t resist making him this adorable cake!
I made 2 large lemon drizzle sheet cake scaling up a recipe from Marry Berry. I really like her recipe and think her lemon drizzle cakes has a lovely sharpness to it which balances out the sweetness nicely. I sandwiched the cake with lemon curd and free hand cut the shape of the cows head, then from the off cuts shaped the horns and ears separately and added them on before brushing the whole thing with an icing sugar and lemon juice/water mix.
I rolled out white fondant icing to cover the head and horns, Black icing to cover the ears and make the nostrils as well as the characteristic splodges of a Friesian cow. I combined white and black fondant for the eyes. For the inner ear jaw and the muzzle of the cow, I mixed red food colouring with the white fondant to produce a pale pink.
One of the diseases which our lab tests for is Bluetongue so I couldn’t resist giving the cow a cheeky little blue tongue.
I think he looks so cute and he tasted amazing too. What sort of cakes do you like to make? Do you bake for the people you work with too?
Till next time make something with love
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I started by stamping out all of my elements using memento black ink onto my Neenah white card stock including all the cats and there accessories. From the year two set I stamped out multiple copies of the presents and party hats.
I coloured the cats and there accessories according to cats both Sophia and I have had using my trusty NUVO alcohol markers. Then using there respective dies cut the images out using my bigshot.
slightly smaller piece of card stock. Using a low tack tape I then marked off section of the bottom and blended together distress ink colours to form a rainbow band. I sprinkled this with water droplets to give a nice blotchy effect. I repeated this pattern for the flap of the envelope and added some paw prints to the top so it looked like a cat walked across it.
I cut out the shape of the horses eat free hand using the picture of my horse as a reference for the shape of its head. I modelled the colouring and markings of the horse and the head collar on cake recipients horse. So I mixed a brownie orange fondant and used that to cover the ganache covered cake. I used the same coloured fondant to make strips of hair by cutting 2/3rds the way up the strips to make a fringe which I attached to the head and neck. her horse has a white stripe which is slightly wonky around one eye so I copied that out of plain white fondant and I cut out darker brown fondant eyes and nostrils. Lastly I made the head collar out of a bright blue. I do have a confession to make though… I was running a bit short on time so instead of making and colouring my own fondant I just used store bought ready to roll fondant and mixed premade colours till I got what I wanted. It isn’t that bad right?
and a smaller size so that they can be layered and still leave a border. I also die cut the grassy border out of green card . Using the same size stitched rectangle die as the one used for the pale blue card stock die cut out a piece of grass to continue the stitched border along the bottom and sizes as it appears on the sky.
I chose to theme this card for Easter as I’ve been disorganised this year and haven’t made any yet. I have just bought the Hoppy Easter stamp and die set and have been itching to make something cute with them.
Out of blue and green card stock I cut out rectangles using my stitched rectangle die. From the green rectangle I cut different lengths of grass keeping the stitched effect on the edges. Allowing me to layer them up to look like a grassy field.
To make the shaker part of the card I cut small clouds out of clear acetate and white card which I added Wink of Stella to (you cant go wrong with sparkle). I put the acetate cloud on top and carefully sealed 3/4 the cloud together, adding white holographic sequins before sealing it up completely. I added them to the card using more 3D foam to make them pop up from the base.
I made the background by firstly stamping footballs in versa mark clear ink and heat embossing them using clear embossing powder. Then blending over it a combination of lucky cover, peacock feathers and cracked pistachio distress ink.
To start, I covered some plain white card stock with different coloured Washi tape. Then die cut two of each size of the three balloons. Next I arranged the different sizes and colours into a bunch that I was happy with and took a photo for reference. Then using the photo I chose which of the balloons I would like to be set back into the card and die cut those balloons out of Blue Card stock trimmed to fit the base card. Lining the die cut negative space up with the card I traced the balloons onto it and covered the area with Washi tape so that it would show through the negative space. I attached the Blue card stock to the base card with 3D foam tape to create the recessed look and layered other balloons over the top using the foam tape to complete the look.
secondary colours, skin tones and monochromatic colours (including a colourless blending pen). For a beginner this is perfect as each pack contains a light mid tone and a darker shade. However, if you are n artist or love colouring it may be more prudent to start building a larger collection such as Copic Sketch pens which come in 358 shades.
H is for Holly 