Harnessing Your Inner Hermione

My daughter loves the world of Harry Potter.  It is a very real world for her.  That said let me explain the nail design for her this week.  She is rather superstitious and wears a Harry Potter bracelet she made, a Harry Potter shirt and usually brings her wand with her (and she leaves that in her back pack) when she takes tests in the testing center at college.  This week is finals.  She asked if I would do her nails HP for finals, you know give her some extra help to harness that inner Hermione.

 So here is what we came up with.  I didn't know she wanted me to do her nails so we bought a couple of things at Wal-mart but her college is in a small town and the selection left something to be desired. Thank heavens I found that using fine tip sharpies is amazing for detail on nails.
So we have.  A crown for of course Weasley is our King

 Then a wand, with sparks, glasses and scar for Harry, the deathly hallows and a light bulb for Hermione, because she is the brightest witch of her year.

 So I uses some gold glitter nail polish for the crown, didn't have my brushes so did it with a toothpick, the light bulb had gold under then  drop of white and the rest of the detail was done with a black sharpie

 Of course she is holding her wand, made especially for her based on what Pottermore.com said her wand would be.  Thanks again to the magnificent wand maker :)

I was excited how well they turned out based on what we had available to use.  She was very excited with them.    Let me know what you think.

Happy Birthday Guitar

My baby boy turned 17 last week.  I was trying to think of a fun idea for a birthday cake and decided to make one like his favorite guitar.  This is way more intense of a cake than I have ever attempted before and I am pretty excited about the results. 

So the first thing I did was take a picture of the guitar and have my amazing daughter put a grid behind it so I could draw it out.  Ended up being about 8 1/2 inches wide to 23 inches long.   I used 2 9x12 cakes a Red Velvet (my sons favorite cake) for the base and a yellow cake (my husbands favorite, his birthday is 3 days after our sons) for the neck.

I made the cakes on Wednesday night and froze them.  Then on Thursday I pulled them out and put the stencils I had done up based on the template my daughter sent me.  They cut fantastic.  

After I cut the cake  I put on a layer of icing as a crumb icing.   Notice the foil I have around the cake, this was an idea from my friend Melanie, just put the foil barely under the cake do all your frosting then you can pull it off and your cake board is clean.   I did end up having to tape 2 cake boards together.  I realize now I didn't take a picture of the neck at this stage, but you can imagine it ;)

Then into the freezer it went.  Isn't my top shelf amazingly organized?  HaHa  I cut the cake boards down as much as I possibly could and seriously that thing rubbed the walls going into the deep freeze.  Whew that was a lucky one.

 I had it sit in the freezer for about an hour or 2 and then pulled it out to put the black frosting on.  I ended up buying my icing from Harmons Bakery.  I was so worried there would be no way I would be able to get the icing to be a decent look and flavor if I tried to dye it myself.  3.99 for a lb of icing, seriously that is about what I would pay for it if I made it myself.   After I iced it with the black icing back in that tight fit in the freezer it went.

 This is how it looked all iced.

 Friday morning I got up put in Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy and got down to business.  Thursday night after finishing with the icing my nice and I did all the fondant pieces (I used Duff fondant, and I was told the truth that actually taste good).    First thing I did was smooth the icing.  I used the method of using a hot spatula over the frozen icing, it worked fairly well.  It was the first time I had tried doing this at all and was pretty pleased with the effect.

The stripes are made from sugar sheets.  This worked...ok, they kept breaking on me.  I finally figured out popping the sheet in the microwave for 30 seconds warmed it up enough so it didn't break.  The balls for the pick-ups were made with sugar balls, however I could only find them in white so I bought silver edible spray paint and painted them on a plate then dropped in the holes already made.  I admit, the stripes are an exact match of the guitar, but close enough.

 I hand did the decorations on the neck of the guitar and the frets are made from sugar sheets cut very thin then sprayed silver. Can I tell you my fingers were black and silver by the time I was done with this.   For the strings I couldn't find the silver string I wanted and didn't have a car to go look again so I used some curling ribbon we had in the house and cut each strip in 3 pieces.  I am so glad I had Mr Darcy and Lizzy to entertain me during some of these tedious steps.

 Here is the head of the guitar, I ended up redoing the skeleton head on the head with icing, here it was done with sugar sheets and I didn't like the look.

 Here is a look at an angle, you can see the detail on the body.  The Floyd Rose (whammy bar) was made from a q-tip with the tip cut off on both ends and bent then wrapped in fondant.  That Duff fondant really was amazing to work with.  I will certainly use it again.

 Here is Tanner's reaction.  Which I didn't get the best one.  He really liked it, but he was super tired.

 Here is the final product.  Like I said I was really pleased with it.  I have never done anything this elaborate before, but it gave me some confidence.  I can't wait for my daughters birthday.

 We decided to use tea lights instead of sticking candles in the cake itself.  And he stood at the end of the cake to blow it out and they blew out down the row, which was really pretty cool :)

And the green has been put to rest for a bit

I had 2 of the 3 girls come over on Friday. Busy weekend Lizzie was home and we were going out to eat for my birthday on Friday. I had time for a couple of quick mani's. Look how long their nails are getting. They are doing great on not biting their nails!

For this one just did a purple mani with confetti over the top and then an accept heart on the index finger. Turned out cute. Did 2 hears, one in a light purple with a dark purple over the top to make it stand out more.

We picked blue with a black crackle on this one, then a blue heart on the index finger. The heart really wasn't standing out so I outlined it with silver. Not my favorite design ever, but it turned out pretty cute. Her nails are growing too, I am so proud of them for not biting their nails.

Since Lizzie is home I had fun working on her nails too. We decided for the Mario Mushroom (still a little green, but we did do this design on St Patrick's day). Really a pretty easy manicure. I got the idea for this on this youtube video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=-3FgpqzBf8I

I have a great idea for next week when Lizzie comes home too :D