A glorious Easter birthday

As promised I am back with some photos of Jack's 2nd birthday on Easter Sunday.

 We could not have had more perfect weather, it was like a hot summer's day and we were able to enjoy his birthday lunch outside in the garden.

He adores everything Brio; trains, diggers, boats..anything he can wheel along the track. As he also lives at the seaside I decided to make his cake with this theme in mind. I made a fondant icing Number 2 into a road and created a sea scene complete with lifeguard, buoys for his 2 candles and a whale.

I then added the Brio vehicles;

Here is the whale (which Jack named Tiddler!)

and the coast guard (of course)

Jack really seemed fascinated looking at it...and we all sang him Happy Birthday in the sunshine.

His Mummy and Daisy also made some gorgeous matching cupcakes.

He blew out his candles

and then it was time to get those vehicles moving.

and of course cutting the cake and making a wish with Mummy

My card today is not Jack's card as I forgot to photograph that one but one with a lovely STAMPlorations quote that is so perfect for our darling Jack. It is for sale at Dotty's Teahouse, Carshalton, SM5 2AE

The background is embossed using a wood embossing folder, the dies in my favoruite Tim Hollz world die and I added some stars too. 

I would like to enter my card into the following challenges;

Pixie's snippets playground #350
Simon says stamp Monday going round in circles 

Sweet stampin 2/3 recycle/anything goes

Crafty catz 3/3 anything goes
Creative fingers 3/3 anything goes
Creative artiste 3/3 anything mixed media
Crafter's Castle 2/3 anything goes

 What a memorable day we had...so much fun in the sunshine and so incredible to think that 2 years have raced by since my darling Jack was born.
Special family moments.

Back soon,

Bye for now,

Jane x

A magical rainbow unicorn birthday

The sunshine has returned again after some very heavy rain at the weekend. The ponds are full and looking beautiful.

We are told that the temperature might reach 16c today...how very pleasant.
Yes my sweet little granddaughter Daisy Jane turned 5 on Sunday and as promised I am back with some more photos of her cake. She is unicorn mad and her request this year was for a "rainbow unicorn theme". 

 I confess that this cake turned out to be a real labour of love and a lot more involved than I thought! Daisy's requests were that there should be the rainbow theme, her name must be there and the number 5. The issue I had was that to get the unicorn features in the correct proportions the cake needed to be tall and that meant baking 2 cakes. Now I have been a cake maker and decorator for nearly 37 years but I have never made a 2 tier cake. The Internet is such an amazing source of information and I quickly realised that even though the cakes would just stack and be under 1 piece of icing, they still needed some engineering support in the form of dowelling.

So this is what I did;
I had to create a central support and needed a thin cake board for the top tier (which would be invisible) and then the usual drum at the bottom.

 I also added 3 dowels into the bottom cake and stacked them up.

I had made fondant icing rainbow cloud candle holders...5 of course.

Over the weeks I had also been making flowers and leaves out of petal fondant and painting them up with metallics. I also made ears, eyes and a gold horn, all from fondant icing.

So here is the finished cake, I have photographed it from several angles as it is so hard to show it in its entirety.

and yes I found a place to put a number 5 and a rainbow ribbon made a great base edging.

Her party was a soft play session at a leisure centre and was followed by a family tea party at home.

My daughter made rainbow cupcakes for the children to take home from the afternoon party and Daisy was able to blow her candles out twice... once with her friends

and then again at home with the family in the evening, just before bedtime. Within half an hour of this photo the unicorn was all gone, magically disappearing into all our tummies 😄

I think her little face speaks volumes .

What was also magical was that at lunchtime on her birthday as we were all getting packed up to go out to her party a rainbow appeared in the sky...what a blessing on my sweet girlie.

So it's a cake wrap for another year.

I wonder what her request will be for next year?
My card challenge card today is a very CAS one.....and has the perfect image..yes cake. It's a digi image from Lili of the Valley with a stamped tag. Yes we certainly did celebrate on Sunday.
It's up for sale at Dotty's now.

I would like to enter my card into the following challenges;

Not just cards 2/3 anything goes
Crafting from the heart 1/3 anything goes
Die cuttin divas 1/3 birthdays my dies are spellbinders and Memory box stitched rectangle.

Thanks for getting all the way to the end of this post and for stopping by today.

Back soon,

Bye for now,.

Jane x

1st birthday celebrations

On Saturday we celebrated our darling grandson Jack's first birthday. It was such a lovely family occasion, it's always so good to all get together and the birthday boy was the star of the show sporting his new Cath Kidston shirt.

As always I am on cake making duty and as Jack is far to young to have a favourite charactor my daughter thought it would be fun to make something with tools on. His favourite toy is a wooden tool bench with tools which have fun faces. So out came my my fondant icing and my cake decorating equipment and I started to make the tools and some bright stars for decorations.

I made a personalized red tool box out of icing as a focal and to sit a few of the tools in. 

I made everything from saws to pliers, files, spanners and screwdrivers and added fun little eyes to everything. 

Here is the completed cake which I then had to carefully transport to the party.

Jack adores a little rainbow zebra charm my Hb bought me for Christmas and will take any opportunity to try to grab it from Nanna. 

 and yes bless him he was sporting a black eye from a birthday fall poor lad! 

Here is the cake in place with my daughter and Daisy's lovely cupcakes in the background.

And this is Jack with Mummy, Daddy and Daisy getting some help blowing out his very 1st birthday candle.

There was even time at the party for him to ride his little wooden trike around

and to enjoy his first ever piece of Nanna's birthday cake.

My card today is obviously his birthday card I made.

 I used one of my fave baby stamps made by the sadly no longer trading Ladybug Crafts Ink. I'm sure my friend Kerry will smile when she sees it. I coloured it with Promarkers and decoupaged the baby and duck.

I would like to enter my card into the following challenges;

Passion for Promarkers celebrations
That's Crafty 2/3 circles
Crafty Catz 2/3 anything goes
Love to craft 2/3 anything goes
The ribbon girl 2/3 anything goes
Lil patch of crafty friends 2/3 anything goes
Simon says stamp Wednesday sparkle and shine
Crafty Hazelnut's patterned paper challenge anything goes

Thanks so much for stopping by today and happy Wednesday. Our hot weather has been and gone but it's so good to have days which are so light and cheery. We are racing through April now, just 5 days left!

Back soon,

Bye for now,

Jane x

A Ben and Holly kind of day

We had such a wonderful day celebrating Daisy's 3rd birthday at her party yesterday. Daisy chose Ben and Holly as her theme and I made her cake. For those of you who are not familiar with these sweet characters, here they are on her party plates.

She enjoyed a Gym Tots party with 15 other 3 year olds followed by a party tea at the Sports Centre and then the family went back to hers for an evening celebration.

Just look at them playing pass the parcel....so sweet.

 Her Mummy made some Ben and Holly cupcakes that were eaten with her friends and we took the main cake home to her family celebrations in the evening (we also had forgotten to take a knife so that worked out quite well!).

So here is my cake in it's entirety.

I am sure you would like to see a little of how I made it....
 I always make an all in one Victoria sponge. I then covered the top with icing

and added some clouds in the sky and some grass around the edge.

I made Daisy's name out of fondant icing.

I had previously made the Ben and Holly figures and lots of extras to create a little picnic scene

I then spent some time adding the little details. A picnic blanket with sandwiches and cakes for a fairy party. The candles were added to fondant icing toadstools.

Gaston the ladybird was there too

a view of the back

and Daisy's  name with some extras.

She got to blow out the candles again in the evening...

and cut the cake with Mummy and Daddy.

Such a special day. Precious moments and memories for me. 

I have already shared Daisy's  birthday card so I thought I would share a very apt cupcake fairy card, the cute image and tag stamps are by Lili of the Valley.

I coloured her with my Promarkers. I used snippets of card for the Cheery Lynn flourishes and tags and MS butterfly punch. I added some extra sparkle with some Glamour Dust.

I would like to enter my card into the following challenges;

Pixie's snippets playground #255
Happy Little Stamper anything goes with dies
The Ribbon Girl 3/3 November card challenge
Deep Ocean use die cuts and/or punches
Crafty friends 2/3 for someone special
As you like it 2/3 teddies or fairies mine is fairies as I love to think they are real...don't you?

Thank you for all the sweet love you sent to Daisy on her birthday and your best wishes to our family re the new baby news. You are so very kind. Enjoy your Sunday night, We need to catch up on Strictly ;0)

Back soon,

Bye for now,

Jane x