Rainbow Cakes in Jars

 RAINBOW CAKE! These jarred lumps of happiness were a lot of fun to make, and nearly mess-less. 

We used:

1. Cake Mix

2. Food Coloring

3. Zip Plastic Bags

4. Clean, dry jars

5. New jar tops (w/rubber seals)

6. Cooking Spray

1. Cake mix. Mix it up, partition it into however plastic bags you have food coloring for. I used four bags. Insert food coloring into bag. Mix by squishing (don't pop it!).

 2. Cut a hole in the bottom of the bag full of cake batter and squeeze the batter into the oiled jar in layers. Don't go above half full.

3. Bake at the appropriate temperature until done (toothpick test worked fine).

 4. When the cake is done, pull the jars out of the oven and give them a minute to breathe. You should then cap them and gently screw the tops on the jars. You'll hear popping after a minute or two, which means that the cake is sealed in the jar.

Enjoy the cake FOREVER.


Ok, not forever, but it'll keep for a while.

Nightingale Mask

Well this was a project! I volunteered to do costumes for my high school's Drama Club, and they're doing "Once Upon A Mattress". I was responsible for organizing all the costumes and making the Nightingale costume. Here is my Process for making the mask.

First I used a half-face mask for the base, and sculpted a beak out of air-dry clay. After the clay had dried, I applied Felt pieces to the mask using hot glue. These pieces were guides for my feathers.

The feathers all had to be shaped, so I was COVERED in feather fuzz. I then applied the feathers one at a time using little globs of hot glue. I added sequins under the eyes to give the eyes a wet, living look to them.

 Here I started applying the last layer of brown
feathers. I had to add a rolled up piece of felt under the back of the brown guide felt to help the feathers stand up. The peacock feather also had to be trimmed,so I used the left  over feather for eyelashes, which seemed to work pretty well. The brown nose felt worked well for securing the beak to the mask. The beak was spray painted with gold and sparkles, which doesn't show up very well in the picture.
 

Jello Citrus Slices

This was a fun little dessert that my sister and I made one afternoon. It's fun to make, and with all the orange and grapefruit we had, it was actually kind of healthy. Go figure.

 We hollowed out the citrus halves, then filled them with jello.We then sliced them up using warm knives before arranging them on the platter.

The tastiest were definitely the ones in the lemons, oranges coming a close second. The grapefruit had a weird bitter taste to  it the closer the jello was to the rind, so we won't be doing those next time.

The aftermath. For how long it took to make, it disappeared awfully quick. Next time, we're trying a rainbow version!

Caramel Apple Cups

My brother and I made these lovely apple cups using only 3 ingredients:

Hollowed out apples, vanilla ice cream, and caramel sauce. You could go all fancy and make the caramel yourself, but I was being lazy.

 Hollowing out the apples was the trickiest bit. We tried really hard not to break the outer skin, but we messed up a little on one or two apples... We kept the apple innards and diced them, then added them and two scoops of caramel to the ice cream. We mixed up the ice cream, then filled the apple cups with it. We put them in the freezer for an hour or so to harden up a bit.

 When they came out, we smothered them in hot caramel and ate them. They were tasty.

How To Make A Custom Dress Form: Take 1

This is a custom dress form that I am building for myself. It's a work in progress right now, but here are the steps so far:

1. I started with a large, stained shirt that I didn't want anymore.

2. Janel, my sister, started to wrap me in duct tape. We made sure to get as tight to the body as possible without causing asphyxiation.

 3. We wrapped me all the way up (and had to avoid getting my hair caught in the process. We ran out of duct tape, so  we switched to masking tape for a few layers at the top.

 The side...

 The back...

4. When we were all done, we cut it up the side to allow me to escape. Here I am, holding an empty mold of my torso!

I'm currently working on stuffing and strengthening the mold, but I'm not quite sure how to do that yet. I'm thinking either paper or gauze mache, with a felt or muslin surface, but we'll see.

Clouds in Cups - 20120325

My first adventure of the off-term was Clouds in Cups. I made blue Jello and whipped cream, then mashed up the jello and layered it into the cups, all the while adding whipped cream clouds around the edge. It was fun, simple, and tasty.

Badger Rambles

Hello! This blog will probably be dominated by pictures of crafts and costumes I'm working on and food that I have made. Really, I'm creating this so that I can share what I'm doing on my "off-terms" from school. Enjoy!