Out shopping on a Wednesday

 

Hello friends! Your gal is in town today for dinner with the bestie and doing some “shopping”. Actually. I bought nothing. Just collected my free product samples from attending Sephora Zoom beauty workshops. 🤪. And yes, mask-wearing is mandatory in all public places in Singapore.

This week's quick and cute project

 

This week's quick and cute project features a smiley face pear and some cupcakes which I decorated on a colourful....

Envelope! :) Great for those days when you just want to slip a handwritten note in with some cupcakes/sweet treats. *winks*

A notecard, a fussy-cut smiley-face pear, washi tape, stickers and a ribbon tab. :)

Ahhh..the colours just make me happy!:)

Hope you are having a great week so far friends! 

Make Stuff Monday - a decorated mooncake box Christmas edition

 

Hello friends! The 2020 Mid-Autumn Festival is just in a few days so I thought it would be apt to showcase a decorated mooncake box featuring my latest obsession - the vintage Santa face that has been the feature of all my recent projects (under 20 Santa faces to go...*happy dance*). 

I started with this cardboard mooncake box which I had been reluctant to decorate because the design on the cover glows in the dark! 

In case you were curious, the box has a pull-out drawer.

I actually don't have that many whole 12x12  sheets of Christmas patterned papers left in my stash so I just added some pink elements on the cover to coordinate with the pink reindeers on the sides of the box.

I went with a mix of stickers, fussy cut elements, chipboard and washi tape. 

And added some bling sequins and gold stickles.

I intend to fill it up with sweet treats. :)

What do you think?

My first official cake order *winks*

 

So your gal here got her first official cake order!  *winks* Doesn't matter that it was an order from mum for her colleague, right? 

An almond flavoured white cake with a Swiss Meringue Buttercream. Yes, you know me. Always trying out totally new recipes (both cake and frosting) to up the stress factor for myself. *hehehe*

No need to adjust your screens...the photo of the cake is in soft focus so that you don't see the flaws....*hahaha* In my defence, it was my first time using a piping tip and bag. Let's just say that if the frosting was red, my work surface would look like the aftermath of a violent crime scene. Really. 

But I gotta say, "bling" is the key to covering up mistakes of all kinds, including flaws on cake. Hence the decorative "bling" on said cake.

Lest you think I was pretty "unprofessional", I did drop by the cake supply store to get a cardboard cake plate and box. :)

And of course, mum brought my signages for a cameo appearance at the birthday celebration. As you know, we've had so few birthday celebrations this year in the Yam household because of the COVID 19 situation, so the signages were feeling a little neglected.  ;)

Apparently, the cake was very yummy....

And since I  had some of the frosting leftover, I decided to make another cake the next day so that the Yams could enjoy it.

Of course, I went my usual rustic route when frosting this cake because that first one took hours - probably a combination of my amateur piping/frosting skills + the room temperature (the cake had to be chilled several times in the frosting process because it was getting too soft to handle). 

And did I mention that I had a major crisis while making my Swiss Meringue Buttercream? It was supposed to be creamy and light but mine looked like cottage cheese. I seriously wanted to cry because it was a lot of expensive French butter in the mix. Turns out that it was just too cold. I covered my mixing bowl with a hot towel to get it to room temperature, then whipped it up again for a minute or 2 and it was perfect! *Triumphant music plays in the background*

Needless to say,  "How to save your buttercream" is in my Google search history. 

The cake was really good. I adapted it from the white cake recipe from Preppy Kitchen. I switched out the All-Purpose Flour for cake flour (for a softer and lighter crumb) and reduced the sugar by 1/3 in both the cake and frosting. 

Happy weekend friends! :)

A postcard from Santa

 

So I've been on a roll with my Christmas 2020 projects featuring this cute Santa. I have less than 20 Santas left in my stash,,,woohoo! *insert triumphant music*

Today's project is a postcard from Santa.  I had this postcard base and just collaged some Christmas patterned papers together.

Then I added some stickers, washi tape and a chipboard Christmas tree to tie everything together in Christmassy colours. I think it could be used as a gift tag. :)

For the back, I just adhered a Christmas notecard. 

What do you think?

A decorated birthday kraft bag

 

This was one of those accidental projects that came out from sorting out my scrap pile. You know, the fussy-cut bloom fell on the note card with the banner and I was like, "Hey, that looks decent. Let me just glue it down so that I can use it later."

Apparently, "later" happened in five minutes when I found the cupcake dimensional stickers. I only had 2 left so I decided to use them up. Then the note card got too small for the additional elements I was adding so I added a stripey patterned base. And of course, piled up more elements because now I had real estate. *winks* 

As usual, I had a glue mishap so I had to add party hats into the mix. *LOL* When I was sort of "done", I thought that I should attach the whole cluster to a card base. Now you know that I have been working on 3x6 cards this year (all folded and scored) so the thought of getting some regular cardstock out, cutting it to size and scoring it was just not appealing to me *I know, how lazy can this gal get, right?*. 

Then I remembered I had loads of glassine/kraft bags in my stash so I grabbed one. And finished with some washi tape. 

I think it looks pretty lovely for an accidental project, eh? What do you think?

A page from the recipe planner - Angel food cake

 

Whenever I have a lot of leftover egg whites, I make an angel food cake. It doesn't contain any fat so it dries out pretty quickly but when it's freshly baked, it's soft and cottony and tastes great with mango puree. Mum likes to dip hers in her soft-boil eggs.

Personally, I like the process of making the cake because I like whipping up egg whites into a meringue. And of course, the tube cake pan gets a bit of love. *winks*

Just saw that I wrote paddle attachment in my recipe when it should be whisk attachment. Dang it. How should I correct the boo boo???

What about you? What do you make with your leftover egg whites?

Make Stuff Monday - Another decorated Christmas mini file folder

 

Well friends, it's been a while since I last made a decorated mini file folder. And given my mission to exhaust all the Santa faces I fussy-cut out of a sheet of patterned paper, I decided to make a Christmas-themed one. :)

I had this special request from a bloggy pal to include a bird with Santa. Does this count Julie???

I really liked the last decorated Christmas mini file folder I made with the pockets and pull-out tags so I made a variation of it here.

Here is the back...

With another Santa face of course...*winks*

Another fun pull-out element. :)

I really enjoyed creating this decorated Christmas mini file folder. What do you think?

P/s: I still have 20++ more Santa faces to work through...*wish me luck*

This week's quick cute card

 

So I've been working my way through my sticker stash and found these ones that I just had to put on a card....here is this week's quick cute card! :)

These were clear stickers so I did have to layer them on white cardstock and then fussy-cut them. 

If you were thinking that the girl got a bit fancy with the card base...you would be right. And of course it was to cover up a mistake.*winks* It was one of those days where I had overworked my dominant hand and had trouble holding my precision scissors. The only way I could "save" the crooked cut was to use the curvy blade on my cutter. Then I added a stripey paper to make it look intentional. Did it work? *LOL*

I finished off with sentiment stickers and some bling. :)

Happy weekend friends! :)