The Wedding Cake

In addition to making jewelry, body products, and other fun crafties, making food is one of my favorite pastimes. Combining my love of food and my love of crafts, I've been dabbling in cake making, more and more.

This week, I made my very first wedding cake, and the first cake I've ever been paid for. I'm very proud. It was a very complicated order, with NO time to spare.

The couple wanted a groom's cake shaped like a crate of explosives, to represent the groom who is an explosives expert in the military. They sent me a single photo, and I tried to control my growing anxiety.

The cake itself was German chocolate with a Bavarian chocolate filling. After hours of working with fondant, a ruler, and a razor blade, I managed to make it look just like the picture. I couldn't have been prouder. Here are the results:








Couldn't be prouder :)


The actual wedding cake was another story. Measuring 14" in diameter, 3" in height for the bottom layer, 12" in diameter, 3" in height for the second layer. The bottom layer was chocolate, with Bavarian chocolate filling, and the top layer was chocolate hazelnut with a raspberry cream filling. The bride wanted a deep peach fondant, with two stars on each layer, and three stars shooting off the top. I didn't have a photo, only a rough sketch and a few emails to work with.

In the end, it came out to be exactly what she described:







Viola! It's a wedding cake. While I'm happy with the result, I'm glad it's over. After two days of straight cake work, I'm ready for a rest :)

The Raven Cane: The Conclusion

Reducing the raven cane was a nightmare. Once I began applying pressure, the stupid thing wouldn't budge. After much careful pushing and slapping however, it began to move.

As with any cane, as I watched the end become distorted and immediately got nervous. After the massive amount time and materials I invested into this project, I was dying inside to see if the image would be distorted.

Finally, once it was reduced to a reasonable size, I sliced into it. Success! An astounding raven image was embedded in the clay. After experimenting with the slices, I found I could make the image appear in a few different ways. I couldn't have been more satisfied with the results.

Here are the finished slices before baking, buffing and polishing:

Happy Birthday To Me!

Today is my birthday. In the past few years, this has been an event little remarked on, and one I've never made a big deal of. However, I do take this time to look back on another year, evaluate life, and all of that happy, deep stuff.

I'm very satisfied with this past year of my life as far as my crafts are concerned. I've blossomed, learned new skills, and experimented with my creativity. I've grown more in the past year, perhaps more than in any other year in recent memory.

In that vein, I also received some of the best gifts ever this year. Yesterday, my parents came up to visit, and my mom took me to the jewelry supply store and let me pick out several items that I needed and couldn't afford. In the meantime, my dad spent the day building me my very own jewelers bench. Here it is:




I know it's not beautiful, but to me, it's spectacular. The fact that my dad made it for me, and that both of parents actually acknowledge, and respect my creative endeavors, means the world to me.

Happy Birthday ME! Here's to another year packed full of creative goodness.....

The Raven Cane: Part One

Recently, with the help of some online tutorials, I've been teaching myself to make picture canes out of polymer clay. Happy with my first forays, this week I decided to attempt to make a cane strait from my own brain.

The obvious choice was to make a raven. As intimate as I am with the raven, I thought it would be no problem to piece one together fairly easily. Boy was I wrong.

After spending an entire night focused on just the bird shape, I let it rest. Last night, I began packing my image, and after using 6 packages of clay, I was out, my hands were red, and I was frustrated. The cane was already huge and not even half packed, as shown here:





Today, I took the day off of work to get a few things done. After making a trip to the craft store to pick up more clay, I sat down and spent another 2 hours completing the packing of this cane:





Though it's not completely round, I'm satisfied with it. Now, to let it rest overnight. Tomorrow will begin the reduction process. I'll be keeping my fingers crossed that three days worth of work doesn't turn out to be a mess.

To be continued.....

I'm In a Treasury!

Thanks to the generosity of a wonderful Etsy artist, one of my pieces has made it into a treasury on Etsy.

Be sure to see my beautiful Sunshine Dragon in the "Polyclay Colorful" Teasury while it lasts:
http://www.etsy.com/treasury.php?id=1177037489948U5027156

Thank you so much Polyclarific!

New Endeavor

Several years back I bought one of my favorite pieces of jewelry at a craft fair. It's a large, Asian stamp, sandwiched between two pieces of glass, and then soldered around the edges and hung from a black leather cord. A fairly simple piece, it occasioned comment every time I wore it.

Since becoming involved in the Etsy community, I've noticed that these style of pendants, often called "collage" pendants, are immensely popular right now. After seeing all of the fun and unique twists on this style of pendant, I decided to make it my next craft to master.

I have now gathered together the necessary tools, books and advice, and keep waiting for the right moment to plunge in. However, I find myself oddly hesitant. The glass cutting, the molten solder, makes me suddenly shy and nervous. I out it off, day after day, my fun new craft toys sitting on my floor in plastic bags.

I've never been so apprehensive about embarking on a new craft before. Is it fear of failure where so many others are succeeding so well? Is is a simple fear of burning my house down with dripping solder? Perhaps.

This coming weekend however, I'm vowing to take glass, solder, and the various other elements, and make it come together. You'll see. I'll make this craft submit to my yet. Hahahahaha.

Wish me luck. Watch for fire notices in the local paper.

Fresh Ideas Contest

All right, as Spring begins to finally blossom, so does the urge for new ideas. Since my brain is a little frazzled right now, I need fresh, fun brains to give me new and exciting ideas.

With that in mind, here is the contest:

Please look at my photos at my Etsy shop www.ravenworks.etsy.com Look around at the items, and think of great new creations I could make with my skills. Think I should expand my dragon line in some way? Perhaps you have an idea for a new scent combo for my body products? Maybe there's images you'd really like to see in my new, forth coming line of collage pendants? Bring it on!

The person with the best suggestion will win a wonderful goodie bag from RavenWorks, as well as see their idea put into motion. You can enter as many great ideas as you like. Contest deadline is April 15th.

So come on, inspire me!