Shell Santa

Getting ready for a beachy Christmas!

While cleaning out some boxes I found a cute Santa ornament of my mom's.  I immediately thought it would be a great addition to a beachy Christmas. Here is my finished sugar one next to the ornament.

For this one I used a Turritella type shell.  Any size will work.

I used ivory AmeriColor that was diluted with everclear (or clear alcohol of choice).  Paint in the face area.

Use a black food coloring pen to add eyes.

Use a red food coloring pen to add a mouth. 

Paint on a red hat. 

Then use some royal icing to pipe on the hat brim and mustache. 

Last use some super pearl to cover the rest of the shell. 

Spiral Shells:

Spiral Shell #2
Spiral Shell #4

Spiral Shell #3

Tooled Leather Book

Create a great book with our tooled leather texture mat!

Roll out paste and use texture mat to emboss the design.  Pull mat off fondant to avoid stretching the design. Cut to size and place on cake.

Use a dowel to get the valley near the spine.

Using a combination of sponges and brushes add the color into the recesses of the design. 

To cover the cake board and carry through on the book theme, I used wafer paper from Icing Images.  I printed some pages of poetry with an edible image printer.  Then randomly tear the pages and apply to the board with piping gel.  I made sure not to glue down the edges of the torn bits. 

Once the board is covered lightly spritz with water.  Wait for the wafer paper to dry and check the amount of curl the edges have.  Spritz additional times to get desired results. 

Next I used a brush and some of the same colors I used on the book to add some color to the edges of the papers. 

To get a slight shine on the leather I used PME clear spray on the book cover. 

For the corners of the book I wanted to add some embellishment. Using the corner mold, brown and gold dust to get an aged look.  

I used the same mold for the lower corners but cut finished molded item. 

Look at the lower edge for the cut portions

Using the same printed wafer paper I created a fun flower.  

DTC Products Used:
Texture Mat Lg - Tooled Leather 

Get great wafer paper from Icing Images

For a more detailed description on how to create a book cake, check out the great video by Sharon Zambito at SugarEd Productions.

Happy Pills

If a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down, these pills will be easy to swallow!

Using various colors of fondant fill your pill mold. I also used some DECOgel to get pills that look like a Vitamin D or fish oil capsule.

DTC Molds Used:

Med - Pills

Icing Images products used:

DECOgel

Chocolate shells

Chocolate shells

Getting great looks shells is easy to do.

Start by melting white chocolate of choice.  Then finely chop some colors and milk chocolate. For these shells I did blue, green, purple and some milk chocolate.

Add in a selection of the chopped chocolate bits.  Do a quick stir and add to your piping bag.

Pipe the mixture into your molds.

Tap to remove any air bubbles.  Then let the molds cool.  You may place in fridge or freezer to shorten the wait time. 

Remove shells from the molds and enjoy! 

DTC molds used:
Beach4 - 4 pack Shells
Beach4 - Set of 3
Beach4 - Mini set of 9
Beach2 - Cut Shells 6 pack
Beach4 - Starfish Small2

Sugar Gypsy molds used:
Shells 1
Shells 10
Shells 11
Shells 18

Hearts for your Sweetie

Quick and easy heart cookies to make for someone special.

I couldn't decide between the red and the white background.  Which do you like?

To get the great crackle finish on the cookies use the directions from the "Warm Up with these Cute Snowflake Cookies!" blog.  To get the different shades of pink I used the same color of dust in just various amounts, adjusting water to get proper consistency.

For the flowers, I used the Rose Swag Pair mold and just put a fondant / modeling chocolate mixture in the spots I wanted.  I used one of the Sugar Shapers to make sure to really press the fondant/modeling chocolate mixture into the details.

Pressed green into the leaf sections.

Pressed pink into the rose section.  Didn't have enough pink so backed in white. 

The rose popped out!

To get the scrolls I used the Fancy Mini Scrolls mold.  To prevent distortion I placed the mold in the freezer for about 5 minutes prior to taking out.  Then lightly dust with silver highlight of choice. 

Playing with placement.  Decided I didn't like the silver on the white cookies after this test. 

DTC Products Used:
Rose Swag Pair

Fancy Mini Scrolls