Seashell Candles

Today's entry comes from my dear friend, Tessa. She has her own blog that you should check out here. She makes some of the best cupcakes ever! She showed me some of these that she had made and I thought it was a wonderful idea to showcase the seashells from her vacation..

I recently took a trip to Florida. Naturally, I came back with A LOT of shells. I knew both my mother and sister would appreciate me bringing them shells back. After I got home, I started looking at these three small ziplock bags full of shells and realized... what kind of presentation is that!? "Oh, here ya go. Yeah, just a ziplock bag full of shells. Not sure what you'll do with that but hey, it's shells!" Yeah... I didn't like that. So, I randomly had this idea to create a few candles out of them. This isn't the first time I've done candles like this. Here are a couple I still have at home:

Ignore the dust on that second one. But anyways, I decided to do something similar to those with these seashells I came back with. Here's everything I used:

First step is to evenly distribute the send into the three different bowls:

Next, I put in the candle, turning it to go into the sand:

I then started putting seashells into the candle holder, starting near the candle and working my way out.

First Layer

Second Layer

Third Layer

I then tied a ribbon around the top of the candle holder:

On the back, I wrote what beach I got it from. =)

Visitors Counter

Retirement Sign

A coworker asked me to make a sign for a woman in her department that is retiring. Of course, I agreed. Finally, a reason to use my new Expression that I got for Christmas! She bought a foam board for me to make the sign on. She wanted black letters on the white board.. Now that just seemed a little too plain for me so I jazzed it up. I used a bluish paper to shadow the black letters for the sign. I left the sign very plain since she wanted room for everyone to sign it at work. 

I'm not a very straight person so it worried me to make the sign on the foam without ghost lines. I thought of penciling lines on but that never fully erases or it will smear. I was just laying out the letters to get a feel for what I wanted when my mom suggested using a piece of ribbon as a guide.. Genius idea!!

 I used the Cricut Classic Font cartridge for the letters. 

 I used a yard stick to help make sure the letters were spaced out pretty equally. I also used it to make sure that my ribbon was taped straight too.

 The completed sign. The "8" in the date is closer than I wanted. It was almost 4am by the time I got to this point and once I put it down, I couldn't slide it at all! 

I embossed the black letters using the Divine Swirls embossing folder to make it pretty too.

Easter Morning Gooey Butter Cake

Happy Easter Everyone!

This morning, I woke up to James calling me. He wanted to know if there was a dessert that I could whip up this morning to take with us. His family was in charge of dessert and his mom wasn't sure if she made enough for everyone. In my groggy state, I thought of cupcakes but I didn't have any frosting. Plus, when I make cupcakes, it takes like two hours so I didn't have time. Then, I remembered that I just got a recipe for Gooey Butter Cake from my manager yesterday. I needed powdered sugar and cream cheese though. His mom just happen to have both so we were in business! James ran me the ingredients and in an hour, we have gooey butter cake. Only scary part is, I have no idea if it's any good... Guess we'll find out. It sure smells good!

The yellow cake mix, egg and butter mixture patted in the 9x13 pan. I created a little lip from the experience I had with the Snicker Gooey Cake.

Cream cheese, powdered sugar, eggs, and vanilla extract mixture. 

All together and in the oven. I almost forgot to take the picture!

 This is showing the way it sank when it cooled. 

The finished product.


And.. It was a hit!! Everyone loved it! I must admit, it's pretty yummy! Plus, it was simple to make..

Baseball Pennant for Work

Since I've made some signs for different things at work, I was asked to create our pennant for the cashiers. Our work is starting a customer service event with a baseball theme. Each department had to create a pennant to display. My manager asked me to create ours. She wanted me to do it at work, but I wanted to use my Cricut to make it look unique.

Here's what I was given to work with. My manager also included some other items that I decided to use.

I was going to cover the pennant with receipt tape but didn't like it. I went to Michael's to look for paper with baseballs on it.. and found it! I bought two pages but only used one. I also picked up some baseball dimensional stickers by Recollections.

This was the first layout idea. The letters moved around a little when I was walking around.  The green bills were part of what my manager gave me. I thought they added a nice contrasting color. Plus, this was for the cashiers so I had to incorporate something to show that. The words were cut using the Don Juan Cricut cartridge at 1 3/4 inches. The blue was cut using the shadow effect on the cartridge.

And the final product... 

Here's the display at work..

 This last picture is a bit blurry.. I might try to retake it on Friday when I work.

Lemon Burst Cupcakes

It's been a while since I made a blog post. I thought I'd post the cupcakes I make this afternoon. 

I decided I wanted to make Lemon Meringue cupcakes.. After looking up recipes, I didn't feel like going through all the hassle. I decided to make Lemon Burst cupcakes.

I already had the lemon cake mix on hand. I just had to pick up the lemon curd and frosting. I looked for yellow sprinkles but all I could find were the multicolored packs at my local grocery store.

This was taken after I filled them all. Two of the cupcakes had minor cracks in them and when I filled them it looked like an earthquake hit. 

 

I used my Easy Accent Decorator from Pampered Chef to fill the cupcakes. It was super easy to fill with the lemon curd and use to fill the cupcakes. 

Here they are after I iced them with the BC Whipped Vanilla icing. It's not my best job but I was in a rush.

The cupcake that isn't iced is for James. He doesn't like buttercream icing and requested his like this.

They are really yummy and would be great for a summer picnic.

 

This is the wonderful cupcake carrier I bought a few years ago. I was just starting to make cupcakes frequently when I found this at my local grocery store. I used it take treats to my boyfriend and his roommate when he lived in the dorm for four years.  You can use the bottom piece to bake the cupcakes but I prefer to use two muffin pans so I can bake them up at the same time.

Baby Alana's Letter Plaque

My friend Heather had a baby girl on January 26, 2011. Heather waited until the baby was born to decide on a name. Once the Baby Alana's name was picked, I was set!

Here are most of the supplies I used. The only things not pictured are my Cricut and the Don Juan cartridge.

I forgot to take a picture after I put two coats of the purple paint on. This is after I applied the dots.

This is after I applied the name to the plaque before covering in Mod Podge.

This is the finished product. I hammered a picture hanger to the back and ran ribbon through it. I'm undecided if I like the ribbon on it or not..

Here it is with the ribbon hidden.

After getting the opinion of a few people, it was decided that the ribbon just did not go with it. It was suggested that a pink ribbon would look better. I bought a pink ribbon that was closest to the color of the name. I think the pink ribbon looks so much better!

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