Piece of cake

I celebrated my birthday early again this year. My birthday is early in January, but I like celebrating it during the holiday season in December when most of my friends are either back from school or off from work. This time, instead of having a big group like last year, I split them into two events. The first one was dinner at Quinn's Lighthouse in Oakland. If you know me, I like to make favors for my friends :) Here's what I made this year.


I've seen cake favors on wedding blogs, and I stumbled upon cute cake favors on etsy. It's such a cute idea; how could I not try to make them for myself?


It took awhile to design. A cake slice is a shape that took a bit of thinking. I had to tap into what I remembered from geometry. I calculated angles, chord and arc lengths, everything that had to do with circles.  AND, I discovered my iPod can go scientific. Since Kevin still has my graphing calculator, this was an amazing discovery.

My sketches and calculations.

My initial templates. Working in pieces made it easier to get the right measurements.

The final template, with some patched up mistakes.

The prototype. I was super excited that it worked out :)

I then shopped for scrapbooking paper since that's thicker than regular paper. I chose a cream colored paper, because that's more cake-like. I traced the template onto the back of the paper, and firmly went over the fold lines with a pen to make it easier to fold.

Cut and fold.

Add glue.

Ruler plus CD case. My funny way of holding it in place as it dried.

Stacks. They look like take-out boxes.

As hard as I try, I can't seem to organize my table. I always have projects going on.

I filled the cake favors with some goodies, and then tied with a frosting colored ribbon ( I imagined mocha frosting).

I designed the most outerflap to be a bit longer since it's the arc. This was why I needed to calculate the arc length. It needed to bend enough to form an arc.

Wrote my thank yous on the inner flaps.

I made strawberry flavored cake balls (from a box mix). I colored half of them purple by adding a drop of blue food coloring. I also attempted to make peppermint bark. I think I should have used dark chocolate instead of milk chocolate. Not only because I prefer dark over milk, but it holds up better.

I wish I had time to decorate the top.

Nikki's instagram photos. So cute.

Now for my real cake! Cat got it from Red Ribbon. It was mocha, caramel, chocolate... something. It was REALLY GOOD. This cake was suppose to be a surprise. Funny thing was, the waiter didn't know who "Christine" was. So while I was at one end of the table talking to Ronnie, the waiter comes over, stands next to me, and announces to that end of the table that he's going to bring the cake out. Whoops! He also had to ask "which one's Christine?" during the singing of "Happy Birthday". So funny.

Happy early birthday to me!

With Ignition playing on Rasikh's phone -__-

Something Blue

Something borrowed. Something old. Something new. I got into Doctor Who a few months ago, and it is an amazing show! Ada is a big fan, so I wanted to make her something from the show for Christmas. I thought it would be fun to make a TARDIS phone cozy.

First, I had to find the right blue, TARDIS blue.

Sketched out the gameplan. Lots of numbers were involved.

This was the hardest part, those door panels. If it weren't for these things, I would've made the cozy double sided.

The TARDIS was a little off in proportion, because it was for a phone, so the panels ended up being more square than rectangular.

Now to make the window panes. I used plastic, stablizer, and thread.

Embroidered the partitions.

Using the button-hole stitch, I sewed the two pieces of the cozy together.

I skipped a bunch of steps.. but here's what it looked like after gluing on a bunch of pieces.

And, the back.

Next, the sign.

It was pretty small.

So I scrapped the original black piece I had cut out, and started with a bigger piece. Made it easier to embroider.

Again, I skipped a bunch of steps. I glued the sign together and glued some more pieces to the body. The sign on the door was another difficult piece. Originally I wanted to print it onto interface and then iron it, but I couldn't find leftover interface. I used leftover stabilizer, and printed on that instead. It was very faint, so I had to enhance it a little by using a pencil. The sign wasn't very detailed, but you get the idea.

Ada's phone is bigger than an iPod.

For funsies.

Playing with my camera features.

Can't wait for the Doctor Who Christmas special! Happy holidays!

Easy

Happy Halloween! I didn't really dress up today, I just threw on my default costume, Cho Chang/asian girl from Ravenclaw, and went to work.


Last week (I think) Perry asked me to help him with his Halloween costume. With help from Dawn, he decided to be the Staples Easy button. I agreed to help, because how hard could an easy button be? Well, it wasn't that easy.

To start, I first researched a picture.

That was easy.

(I haven't charged my camera in awhile... so I have no idea where my charger is. I had to settle with using my phone. It was also nighttime, and I have terrible lighting around my work space.)

I had all the material from Plushtography. Lots of scrap material. Benson cut the circle from red fleece. His scissors weren't sharp, so I fixed it.

I drew out "easy" to scale.

Traced the letters onto leftover stabilizer.

Cut the stabilizer letters out.

Pinned to and cut out of leftover white felt.

Glued onto circle.

Simple (suggestive) costume.

Me: How was the party?

Perry: People kept punching me.

Success.

Blue shoes, you saw me standing alone.

I haven't fallen off the face of the earth (yet). I've just been too busy for personal projects. 


Last weekend, Alane and I were bored, so I decided to finally glitter my old flats. I've been wanting a pair of multi-colored glitter flats, but just never wanted to spend the money on a pair. I follow a few (well, many) craft blogs, and I recently stumbled upon one dedicated to Mod Podge. What is Mod Podge? I didn't really know until a few weeks ago. You have to understand decoupage to understand Mod Podge, and basically the art of decoupage involves taking paper, fabric, leaves, glitter, whatever you want, and gluing/sealing it to another object. I've always wondered what kind of glue people used for decoupaging. Well, now I know.


I have a pair of Target flats that I got some time during college. They were my first pair of flats, and were always my go-to pair of flats. Now they're kind of dinged up, so they could use a little make over.

Flats. Mod Podge. Paint brush. Glitter. Sadly, Michaels didn't have my multi-colored glitter, so I settled for blue.

I was working in Alane's garage. Hello Toffee.

To start this project, I mixed my glitter into a bit of Mod Podge.

And paint, paint, paint. I don't remember how many layers I painted, but I just kept going until my shoes were covered. I forgot/didn't have the hands to take pictures of the painting process, so here's a picture of Alane's puny candle flame that died as soon as she picked it up.

Tah-dah. They are super blue and glittery, and very pretty to look at in the sun. Overall, I'm satisfied, but am having trouble pairing it with clothes.

Like the opposite of Dorothy. Speaking of Dorothy, there's a girl I see every now and then at BART who wears red shoes and carries a dog that looks like Toto in her bag. I guess if I were to look for a scarecrow, tin man, cowardly lion, and wizard, I would start in San Francisco. On an even stranger note. I walked to Powell from work the other day, and I was two blocks away from Powell when a stark naked man casually crossing the street walks past me. I was too busy checking the stoplights to notice everything, but he was definitely sans clothes. There were a few people waiting with me to cross the street, and we were all confused.

Anywho, now I have an excuse to find another pair of black flats.