I’ve got a new little kit in my FS shop that I wanted to share. This week is the big Birthday celebration week over at Faith Sisters. There will be lots of challenges, prizes and a big kit sale! 50% OFF!! I’m hosting a challenge Tuesday evening called “Hip to be Square” and will be giving this kit away to all who come play with me! Be sure to stop by the forums and join in on all the fun!
Now, I’m so ready for fall and cooler weather, so this kit has a great fall color scheme and patterns inspired by cozy quilts. Plenty of squares to help with my challenge and few other items thrown in make this a cozy little kit to wrap your pictures in.
Image is linked. =)
There are many things in my life that I love. My hubby, my kids, my family, my pets…and now this. I don’t think I have ever loved an inanimate object before, but there is always a first for everything. What is it that has made me weak in the knees you ask? Well my dears, it would be my new laptop.
Isn’t she just so pretty?! After years of trying to make my old computer keep up with my needs, I finally have a new spiffy one that can handle everything I want to do. And its even pretty on the inside…
Did you notice? It even has a coordinating mouse and sleeve with the cool swirly pattern. My hubby called around and told my family what he was planning and they pitched in to get this for me for my birthday this year. Thanks everyone, you’re the best-est!
At first, I had a hard time getting up the nerve to use it. It was so clean and pretty, I didn’t want to goober it up with finger prints and fill up the hard drive with files. I just wanted to set it on my desk and look at it. But then hubby asked me why I was still using the old computer and when I tried to explain, he threatened to send it back if I didn’t start transferring files over and use it.
So now I have all my files and programs (plus some new ones that came with it) on it and am beginning to make myself at home. The old computer is going to be for the kids to play games on, because they’ve already been threatened that if they touch my new one with their grubby little fingers I cannot be responsible for my reactions. Oh and hubby has been informed too. =)
I’m really excited about my newest kit. Since my Lil’ Adventure Series was inspired by my sons, I figured it was time to do one for my hubby. He loved the first Transformers movies so much that I think our dvd may be getting worn out. =P We were also at the early showing on opening day for the second one this summer. There’s just something about giant robots fighting and blowing things up that brings out the kid in him. Oh wait, the kid in him never went away. I think he can’t wait till the boys get bigger so they can play with the “cool” toys and then he can play with them too.
So, Roll Out was inspired by our favorite robots in disguise and is full of metal, grunge and more. Its available in my shop at Faith Sisters and is on sale over the weekend. I’ve also made the papers available separately and there is a bonus quick page for you to get a taste of the kit. Click on the images to be taken to the shop.
And here’s a couple layouts made using the kit. These first two are by me!
One of my fellow designers over at Faith Sisters, Cinda from Digital Compilations by Cinda, helped me out by doing a couple of layouts with the kit. Thanks Cinda!
Don’t forget Faith Sister’s Birthday Month Specials are still going on in the store, so be sure to stop by and check it out!
So when I was little, my mom made special birthday cakes for me and my sister. There was a horse cake, a barbie cake, even a teenage mutant ninja turtle cake. My grandmother also made amazing cakes for parties and holidays. I remember helping them, or at least licking the beaters, and thinking someday I too would carry on this tradition.
Now I have children of my own and birthday cake opportunities abound. I had grand ideas of making cakes my kids would remember forever and then reality set in…at the time of Sir Q’s first birthday I hadn’t “helped” with a spiffy cake since I was about 12 and while I might vaguely remember the end results of those cakes my mom made, I apparently blocked from memory how much work a cake can be.
So when Sir Q’s first birthday rolled around I looked for a easy way to create a cute cake. I didn’t have an arsenal of icing tips and cake pans like my grandmother, so I made do with the couple of round cakes pans I had. I decided to go with a Sesame Street Theme and made a Cookie Monster cake. Well and blue icing is just the best for first birthdays.
So birthday number two rolls around the next year and I feel the need to create another cake. By this time Sir Q is totally hooked on Toy Story and thinks Buzz Lightyear is the coolest thing ever. So I start trying to figure out how I’m going to make a Buzz cake and still keep my sanity. After some Internet snooping I find out that there is a technique called buttercream transfer. You basically draw out the lines of the design on wax paper, fill in the empty areas with colored icing and then poop it in the freezer. When it’s hard enough, you take it out, peel the sheet of icing off the wax paper and plop it on top of the pre-iced cake. As the icing warms up it melds with the cake and looks like you are a uber cake decorator of doom.
So after two years of managing to pull off creating cakes, I decided to get more ambitious. I brought me some spiffy decorator tips and a 3d cake pan and set out to create a cute dragon for my little knight. The instructions that came with the cake pan said to make your own icing using their recipe. Why would I want to make my own icing when I can buy little tubs of the stuff premade at the grocery store? I’ll tell you why, the icing at the store is not the kind that makes nice stiff little stars that stay in place on vertical cake surfaces. I spent the entire night putting the icing into the fridge to try to make it firm enough to decorate the cake. Lesson learned!
I also hadn’t figured out how I was going to make the wings for said dragon and by the time I finished icing the cake I didn’t have any energy left to make wings. Over all I wasn’t thrilled with the end result and swore that was the end of me making birthday cakes. But the next morning I looked at it and it wasn’t too bad. Without the wings it looked kind of dinosaur-y, so the dragon became a dinosaur and I went out and brought some dino balloons to make it look like thats what I had planned in the first place.
And that last picture is why I am currently looking around the internet to figure out a way to make a Word World cake for his birthday in September. I’ll let you know how it goes.
Make sure you don’t miss out on all the fun going on at Faith Sisters all month long! Click the calendar for more info.
