Hello there, how've you been?
I've been pretty busy making Christmas themed desserts, jewellery, and a hobbit house using a glass jar you might have seen snippets of in my Instagram stories. I envisaged this house being Christmasy, so I hope to have it ready by then.
Starting with the jewellery, I've been wanting to go back in time a little and remake some of my previous Christmas cupcake earrings. I've felt more motivated to make Christmas themed pieces this year than last year. Last year we were about to move at the start of December and found out we couldn't because our new apartment had dangerous mould in it. So everything had to be put on hold. I was very stressed out and I literally wanted to skip Christmas. Everything about it irritated me. It could've been a combination of being sleep deprived (because of my rabbit) and all the stress of the move not happening when it was supposed to. I just wanted to stay in and deal with everything, fix everything, so we could have a home.
But this year, I felt more motivated and simply wanted to touch on those old feelings again, what else can I say?
So, I looked at my early Christmas cupcakes from 2012 and decided to keep the design almost the same, with something else added to them; I think I was more curious about how I would make the same design today.
I like how now I make everything look tinier and more delicate to wear. Not to mention my improved photography skills! :'D
Our new apartment is not as luminous as our previous one and days are getting shorter, which means I have less natural light to work with. On top of that, it has been mostly overcast lately and raining a lot, making it even more challenging to take pictures. These pictures, especially the cupcake ones, look a bit romantic and moody, which was not intentional, but I like the result very much.
This year I wanted to make more food jewellery dripping with icing, like my mismatched cinnamon roll earrings, so I thought melting snowman cookie earrings were the perfect choice.
I love this concept, whoever invented it! I love their little surprised faces seeing that their marshmallow bodies are melting away and (at least mine) are trying to keep themselves together.
As for miniature food, I've made chocolate naked cakes with chocolate gingerbread men and candy canes as decoration, some gingerbread houses of which I made a little video last week, some chocolate and crushed candy cane cookies and yule logs, one with torched cream (not literally!) and cherries on top.
Pinterest has been my downfall lately, there's way too much in there to choose from and I am famously undecided! :'D
My second batch of Christmas food is all about miniature gingerbread and cookie houses. I love thinking about how I'm going to decorate them and how a lot changes during the process. A lot of the houses have one of my favourite childhood biscuits, jam biscuits that in Spanish we call "pepas", but I think the closest thing in English cultures is thumbprint cookies. These cookies are extra special to me, because I still have the memory of going to the shop with my dad and seeing all the tin boxes of cookies on the shelves, those that you can look into so that you know what cookies are in there. We'd tell the lady how much we wanted of those cookies and she'd bring the box to the counter, open a plastic bag and scoop the cookies out of the box and into the bag on the scales. And then we'd walk back home, me dangling from my dad's hand, possibly spinning the bag of cookies around ^_^ Just thinking about it makes me teary.
The gingerbread houses in this collection are all different, I've combined a lot of different sweet foods that say Christmas to me and so, some have chocolate cookies, some don't but they have orange jam biscuits and gingerbread men with jam buttons, chocolate ganache or candy canes, making each one unique.
My Christmas collection is now available to purchase from my website and my Etsy shop.
A glimpse of my day: Making miniature gingerbread houses
In case you missed it:
* My book "Miniature Cake Creations" came out on 7th October, you can read more about it on my blog post and order a copy here.
* Katie Dean has written a lovely review of my book on her blog and I collaborated with Katie by writing a blog post for beginners in polymer clay, where I talked about the basic tools and materials needed to get started and basic things one should know when working with this clay. So if you're a beginner in polymer clay or if you're interested in knowing a little more, head over to Katie Dean's blog.
* My "Melted ice-cream cone cake" tutorial is in the November issue of Doll House & Miniature Scene magazine. Plus, there's a competition to win a copy of my book! You can order the magazine here.
Thank you so much for reading and I'll catch you next time,
Love & Light,
Maive
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