PIN IT FRIDAY FAVS: Birthday Cakes and the Very Best of Pinterest Pins

I had a chance to make another tea pot and tea cup set last week plus I added a birthday cake idea I saw on Pinterest:

The tea pot and cup with the measurements and

video was shown in my post HERE...

then...I started seeing these adorable Hershey Nugget

cakes all over Pinterest and decided to create some

color coordinated trios!

(Happy Birthday die from Stampin' Up)

The directions on one of the Pinterest cakes
used a styrofoam ball cut in half, but that seemed like
a lot of mess...so I came up with a much easier solution.

I adhered the Nuggets to a 1" x 8" strip of black card stock - using red sticky tape to attach the Nuggets side-by-side to the strip while I curved it to form a circle. I trimmed the strip and left a tab to attach the last Nugget to the first Nugget. I simply hot glued the Nuggets to the heavy card stock small scalloped circle bases (made with Nesties). I also applied yellow Stickles paint to the candle tips to make them stand out. My formula for the construction was 7 Nuggets for the base, 6 for the middle layer and 5 for the top layer.

Here are a few more Pinterest pins of Hershey Nugget cakes:

 Original Pin HERE

 Original Pin HERE

Original Pin HERE

...and some with a tea light for the top layer:

 Original Pin HERE

Original Pin HERE

The creativity incorporated into these cakes

really makes me smile ^_^

BTW: My Safeway sells a huge bag of Nuggets

and it seems that they have a new customer

since I discovered how to make no-bake cakes!

I can tell you first-hand that these cakes

will bring your friends and family

a lot of happiness!

PIN IT FRIDAY FAVS: Dragonfly Dies, Halloweenand the Very Best of Pinterest Pins

I bought a new dragonfly die from Spellbinders called Dragon Delight using my 40% off Cut at Home VIP coupon this month:

These are the very first cards I made with it:

SENTIMENTS:

Signature Greetings by Papertrey Ink

Wavy Wishes by Hero Arts

I also tried this same layout idea using the butterfly dies from Memory Box called Isabella Butterfly (solid butterfly blue layer) and Rhone Butterfly Wings (lacy butterfly white layer):

This was my Pinterest pin inspiration card:

Original Pin HERE

Here are a few other dragonfly card pins:

Original Pin HERE

Original Pin HERE

Original Pin HERE

More dragonfly pins can be found HERE.

I'm starting to think about Halloween projects and this easy candy popper treat from Chic'n Scratch caught my eye:

She has included a video HERE and a nice set of written instructions HERE. Her project uses a 4.5" x 6" piece of DSP scored along the 4.5" side at 1", 2", 3" and 4". It makes a nice little box to hold a few sweet treats. I made these two up in no time using the envelope punch board, SU's oval punch and Martha Stewart's bat punch:

 

PIN IT FRIDAY FAVS: The Very Best of Recent Pins on Pinterest

CALORIE-FREE CUPCAKES
Last week, Splitcoast Stampers featured a cupcake box project for their Wednesday Tutorial HERE by Caroline Hallett. She included this photo of her cupcake boxes in the tutorial: 

Original Pin HERE

Since I had just reorganized my stamping supplies recently and re-discovered my stash of paper flowers that were quite the trend many years ago, I knew they'd be PERFECT for this project! I went to Michael's and bought a package of six 3-inch (76mm) balls, and thankfully, I already had the perfect size of paper cups to cut down to make the cupcake wrapper/base. (Cups were cut down to about 2" to 2 1/4" high.) Here are some of the boxes I made:

 

I used pins to hold the yellow flowers in place...then I tried

something different on my next two cupcake boxes:

After attaching the flowers to the foam ball using hot glue,

I used 3D Shiny Bright Yellow Paint by Scribbles

for the centers in the above two cupcake boxes.

The tops come off and open to reveal a space that can be used to hold a small gift. The inside of the foam ball cut in half is covered with a circle of medium weight DSP. (Circles were cut with Classic Circles Nesties.) To adhere the DSP circles, I used a 1" glue dot to cover the cut surface on some and I also used a low temp hot glue gun on others. Both worked just fine:

Check out the gallery on SCS dedicated to these cupcake boxes HERE...and for cupcake cards to give with this cupcake gift box, check out these Pinterest ideas HERE and my Pinterest cupcake board HERE. Plus....for the ultimate theme in gift giving, you'll want to make up a set of black-bottom cupcakes to go with your box and card! Check out these recipes HERE and my family's favorite recipe for them below and HERE! I also like to add 1 t. of orange zest into the cream cheese mixture because we're big orange chocolate fans and it also looks nice with the orange flecks! No frosting needed for these decadent treats full of deliciousness! I've provided the recipe with the orange zest modification below:

Ultimate Cream Cheese Black Bottom Cupcakes

Yield: 18-20 cupcakes

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cup all purpose flour
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 cup cocoa
• 1 cup water
• 1/2 cup oil
• 1 tablespoon white vinegar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Filling:
• 1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, softened
• 1 egg
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 1 cup mini chocolate chips
• orange zest, 1 t. (optional)

Instructions

1. Make your filling first. In a medium bowl, beat cream cheese, egg, sugar and salt until smooth. Stir in chocolate chips and orange zest. Set aside. 
2. Combine flour, sugar, salt, baking soda and cocoa in a large mixing bowl. Add in remaining ingredients and mix until smooth. Line a cupcake/muffin tin with liners and fill cups 1/2 full. Add one heaping tablespoon of filling into center of each cupcake.
3. Bake in preheated 350 degree oven 25-30 minutes. Do not over bake. Let cool in pan for 20 minutes before removing to wire racks to cool completely. 

My boss's wife made these for me when I first started in the office on July 3rd, 1979! They are heavenly and one of my most requested recipes!

http://hugsandcookiesxoxo.com/2014/01/ultimate-cream-cheese-black-bottom.html

PIN IT FRIDAY FAVS: Masculine Birthdays

My son's birthday was last month, and since he plays guitar, I thought this was the perfect card for him:

Original Pin HERE

Here's my version:

I used the Classic Circle Nesties to make the circles and the Happy Birthday from the SU Create a Cupcake stamp set. When I had it all made, I turned the card over to put my HOMMADE label on the back...then when I turned it over to look at the front, to my shock...there was an ink stain on the lower left area - ARGGG!...so...out came the JUST FOR YOU sentiment from the SU Teeny Tiny Wishes set so I could make a small banner to cover the stain.  It worked out OK, thank goodness...and while I had all of my Nesties and gold cording out, I made another one in a darker brown:

I secured the gold cording with red sticky tape on the back/reverse side at the top and bottom while making one continuous wrap around the card to create all six strings. I printed out YOU ROCK on red DSP, sketched out a template for the guitar pick then traced it around the YOU ROCK. To check out my Masculine Cards board on Pinterest, click HERE.

NOTE: I accidentally made two different posts today for my PIN IT FRIDAY FAVS. The post with my favorite Christmas card has been rescheduled for 11/28/2014. 

CARD DIVAS CARDS

Here are the cards we got to make at last Card Divas meeting:

Mel says the name of this die is

Butterfly Hearts by Memory Box.

Inside View:

The red centers of the flowers are actually paper!

This is a card made with my new mason jar

stamp from Paper Source. Here's another version:

Inside View:

The bee stamp is from a retired

Stampin' Up set called Botanicals.

Inside View:

Michele's wonderful card is made with

washi tape and nesties!

Christie wet embossed the flowers for us ahead of time

then we used daubers to rub on the color,

cut out the flower and popped it up

with dimensionals.

This card reminded me of my grandmother's

Singer sewing machine that she used to

make all of her quilts and clothes

for me and my sister!

Mel also sent along these cards for each of us that we had admired at a previous meeting:

What a nice surprise to get all three cards!

Here is Christie's awesome favor that she found on her last trip:

...and here are some food pics from Christie's kitchen:

  

 It was a fun fun day!

PIN IT FRIDAY FAVS: For the Week Ending 8/1/2014

Here are some of my favs that I pinned to my CARDS: MUST MAKE board last week:

Another use for my Nesties Labels sets!
Original Pin HERE

Great way to use up scraps!

Original Pin HERE


Original Pin HERE

I just made up a version of this quilt card:

INSIDE VIEW

SENTIMENT: Wishing You by Verve

DIE CUTS: Spellbinders Captivating Squares
My friend Katie used these dies on a
card that I saw...then I HAD to buy them!
Here's Katie's lovely card:

All quilt cards remind me of the treasured quilts my Grandma Lucy made me throughout my childhood that were filled with loads of love! To make the quilt cards above, cut 1" squares for each color as follows: 4 of solid colored card stock, 4 of medium-weight patterned DSP and 8 of vanilla card stock. Cut all but 4 of the vanilla squares on the diagonal. (The 4 uncut squares go in the corners.) I used a glue stick and a piece of computer paper and attached each quilt piece starting with the center pattern. It helped to start out with a 4 x 4" piece of computer paper scored every inch in all directions. After all pieces were attached, I let everything dry, trimmed all four sides and ran this final piece through my Cuttlebug using an embossing folder.