Saturday, March 28, 2009

Not your ordinary cheese cake

I always bake birthday cakes which have something to do with the birthday childs likes or hobbies. Usually I just take a plain cake and decorate it. But the birthday cakes for my father are always a bit difficult. He rarely eats cake and only eats certain sorts of cake. The only cake he really loves is cheese cake.
But I always have a hard time coming up with fun decoration ideas for cheesecake.
Some time ago I found a pig baking mould in a shop and I knew I had to buy it to make a birthday cake for my father who loves pigs. But cheese cake in a pig mould? I was not sure whether that would work out...
But it did! And my father loved it!
Here the proof that it is really a cheese cake:

For those of you who are curious how such a masterpiece of cheese cake was made:
I made a plain shortcrust pastry and put it into the (greased) mould. Afterwards I prepared the filling and the only thing I altered in the recipe was to add an additional two tablespoons of starch.
After baking I let the cake rest for about 3 minutes and then turned it out onto a plate. I still can't believe that this worked out, I thought the cake would break, stick to the mould or do anything else horrible...

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Customized Converse

I got a pair of plain black Converse Chucks for Christmas. Of course they are absolutely adorable, but everyone seems to have the black ones. Not that I'm being snobby and want to wear only one-of-a-kind designer pieces but I want to know which shoes are MY shoes when standing in front of one of these stundent-party-shoe-piles. Because my drawing skills haven't improved since I'm ten I decided to stitch them. Things I make with some kind of string in general turn out better than projects that involve pens and brushes...
Here is the result:

The thread is glow-in-the-dark thread. How cool is that?

After this successful customization I took a pair of plain brown chucks, which were a bit too plain for my taste.
Stitching on fabric shoes is much easier than I had expected. If you want to try it yourself just make sure that you don't use knobs for fixing the loose ends of the thread. I just stitched a few times through the inner fabric until it looked like the thread would stay were it should.
And last but not least I'll show you the painted pair. I really love how it turned out but you'll understand why I think stitching is the better option for me...

Procrastination...

is starting a craft blog...
I usually don't have much time for crafting. I still craft a lot, but some ideas have been on my to do list for ages and I never felt I had time for them.
Well that was before I started studying for my last university exam. I've become a professional procrastinator in the last weeks and I think I haven't been so productive craftywise since kindergarden (you know the time when you produced 10-20 masterpieces of art a day).
So instead of studying, I finished 6 craft projects, started 4 new projects, ordered fabric, cleaned out my wardrobe so there is more space for new (knitted and sewn) clothes and invented a new point system for cleaning our apartment.
And started a craft blog...