Washi Tape Cake Toppers!

When the Little Girl gets back from pre-school we have just over two hours of peace before we need to start the school run...and then chaos seems to reign! Our peaceful afternoons are my favourite part of the day because we have a rule only to do lovely 'Little Girl' type things such as wrapping bits of ribbon around barbie dolls, colouring, drawing family members (all with long eyelashes and lipstick) etc.

The Little Girl's favourite thing to do, however, is cooking and we have progressed from jelly to fairy cakes. Such are her cake baking skills that age 3 she can break eggs perfectly only getting a tiny bit of shell in the mix...which adds a bit of crunch! To our cakes we usually add pink icing made with icing sugar, a bit of water and pink colouring but we had a bit of white chocolate left in the cupboard so decided to use that.

We melted the chocky and then added a glug of double cream turning an ordinary cake topping into a very posh sounding 'ganache'. This basically means that the chocolate is quite silky looking and sets sticky rather than hard. We added 'micro' chocolate eggs and hundreds and thousands...yum!

Next stage of the decoration are the flags. The Little Girl is as equally excited about a plain sheet of A4 as her mother and set to making a 'no expense spared' white paper flag...

...and promptly selected the largest cake as her own...that's my girl!

Now if any of you arty/crafty bods out there in blogland have not heard of Washi tape you're in for a treat. It's basically decorative masking/paper tape which is ever so slightly transparent. Go to the Washi tape website for inspiration. Washi tape is brilliant for young children because you can rip it and re-stick it.

Anyway...we decided to make little flags for our cakes. Just cut a little piece and stick on the top of a cocktail stick....

Fold it over so it sticks to the other side and snip a little triangle out to make a flag shape...

Looks gorgeous on little cakes..!

Crayola Pen Lettering

Life's been super busy over the last few months and it's all coming to a head with our house renovation so we feel like we're overwhelmed with 'THINGS TO DO'. There is little time to put aside for creative projects so small moments of inspiration seem all the more exciting.

The little girl LOVES colouring and will spend hours carefully staying in the lines but only ever colours with one colour. A fairy, for instance, will be have a purple dress, face, wings, hair, shoes etc. Consequently the pens run out really quickly and are no use to anyone right? Wrong!! I was messing around with the rejects before they went in the bin and created some really exciting lettering. It looks a bit like brush lettering but was much easier to produce as the pen tip is much firmer than a brush.

The brilliant thing about these Crayola pens is than if you turn them on their side you get a really thick mark but holding them upright gives you a thin line. When they run out a bit they give a fantastically distressed look. To create this lettering you need to use the pen on its side (with pressure) for the thick 'down' stroke and on it's upright point for the 'up' stroke.

Tea Staining Paper

As far as I'm concerned you cannot beat a paper based craft especially one which uses bog-standard white printer paper. Anything you've got knocking about would do really including lined paper, junk mail, old letters etc. I've photocopied some handwriting on to an A3 sheet of white paper and this looks really effective.

It really couldn't be more simple.
1. Add a teabag to a small bowl of boiling water and brew for ages, the longer you brew the darker your stain. I allowed it to brew until the tea bag was cool enough for me to handle.

2. Squeeze the teabag out directly onto the paper allowing the tea to pool and rub it all over the paper using the teabag or, if you're doing a lot of staining, some cotton wool. (The teabag bursts after about four sheets)

3. An Aga is perfect for drying your paper on but if, like me, you're not blessed with such a beast then a hair dryer is very effective. On a hot day you could peg your paper to the washing line which would look interesting and your neighbours would think you've gone mad but 'hey ho'. Hanging up wet stained paper creates a drippy effect which is quite fun.

4. Make something lovely with it. You could cover a box, make a book cover. tear it up to use for scrapbooking or ...make a flower.