Tutorial: Hello Kitty Cupcake Topper

So, my little sister turned 14 today. She loves Minecraft and Hello Kitty. Seeing as how Hello Kitty is a lot easier to find in the stores than Minecraft stuff, my parents geared her birthday more toward that.

They bought her some Hello Kitty rings to be placed on her cupcakes, but there were 4 rings and six cupcakes…dilemma, we have you. I took it upon myself to whip together a couple quick Hello Kitty cupcake toppers so each cupcake had a little something cute.
Fortunately, my camera was right next to me, and I snapped a few pictures on how to make these cute little things.
So, if you want to make something that looks like this:

Then keep reading. 🙂

Here is what you will need:

Ball Tool
Tooth Pick
Clay in white, black, yellow, and pink (or red, or whatever color you want the bow to be)
Something with a round tip. I used the bottom of a mechanical pencil and took out the eraser. A cookie cutter, or marker cap or whatever you want to use will be fine too.

*Tip: When working with white clay, lay out some wax or parchment paper, keep the area clean, have some scotch tape on hand, and needle tool. Make sure to complete your work with the white clay before moving on to another color, and keep your hands clean.
I know mine is covered in lint and such, I was kind of in a rush. But following these tips will keep YOURS clean.
When you get lint on your clay, take a small piece of scotch tape and place it gently over the area. That should pull most of it off. After that, take the rest of the lint out by carefully removing it with a needle tool.

Step one is rolling a chunk of your white clay into a ball:

Flatten the ball into an oval shape:

Take another two small pieces of white clay and form them into a triangular shapes:

Put them on the oval shape for Hello Kitty’s ears:

Smooth the ears into the head with your finger or another tool:

Use your ball tool and make three indents in your clay like this:

This will keep your eyes and nose in place. (I know there is lint in the clay, please check out my tip further up to keep YOUR creations lint free)

Now, get a super small piece of your yellow clay and roll it into an oval ball-ish shape:

This will serve as your nose:

Repeat this process with the eyes:

Now it’s time for the whiskers!!! Just rolls 6 small pieces of black clay into ‘snakes’:

Place them on you Hello Kitty head.

Now for the bow!
Make a couple small triangle-ish shapes with your pink clay. Add the dent to them and put them on Kitty’s head:

Roll another small bow to finish off the bow and slip in the toothpick:

Bake according to the direction on your clay’s package and you are done!

Cute right?!

Happy 14th Birthday Baby Sister! 🙂

Show and Tell: Rayven’s Pink in Paris Party

The 22nd brought my daughter’s big birthday party. Yes, there were hiccups, and I think I threw a fit like a two year old sometime before the first guest arrived (some decorations I had made and spent several days on weren’t out, and never got to be).
But, my guests were extremely happy and, most important, so was my daughter.
My two hour long party ended up going over into 5-6 hours as my guests stayed and visited, ate, and were just happy in general. I think that says something in itself, what about you?
Friends and family we had not seen in several years were there, and it felt peaceful and comfortable after it all got started.

Party Highlights-
The Cake Stand
Handmade (and perfected) French Macarons
Tutu and Gumball Necklace Party Favors
The Water Bouncy Mat
Bubble Machine
and of course,
The Cake




The cake and cupcakes were made by a talented bakery artist local to my area. She has a Facebook page if you are from the Kansas City-ish area: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Kristys-Kitchen-presents-Guilty-Pleasures/576830295683515
I do recommend checking her out. She is very talented and extremely easy to work with.






The wind and the heat made it difficult for us at times, but since I was more worried about how everything looked when my guests arrived, I had no problem moving the food indoors. The kids were able to stay cool with their bouncy water mat…thing. Well, whatever it is called, they loved it.
Nearly all the decorations used were handmade.

The punch bowl was given it’s own tutu
The backdrop is made up of a piece of fabric, tissue flowers, and tulle garland, pinned to a collapsible clothing rack.
The jars are spray painted candle sticks glue to various glass jars and globes and filled with candy.
The cake stand is a re-purposed chandelier (tutorial found here: https://portiasunexpectedtreasures.wordpress.com/2013/06/16/the-chandelier-cakestand-a-walk-through/).
The balloons are tied with regular balloon ribbon and tulle.
My daughter’s outfit was handmade from top to bottom.
The guests got their own tutus and necklaces, also handmade. (tutorials can be found on my blog here: https://portiasunexpectedtreasures.wordpress.com/2013/06/21/gumball-necklace-tutorial/, here: https://portiasunexpectedtreasures.wordpress.com/2013/06/19/parisian-inspired-necklace-part-2/, and here: https://portiasunexpectedtreasures.wordpress.com/2013/06/17/tutu-party-favors-aka-my-death/)

None of these things would have been possible without the help of my family. My mother-in-law made many of the sweets, including those perfect and utter gorgeous macarons.
My sister helped make the tutus and get the yard set up.
My husband did a lot of the shopping for me and put together the water bouncy mat thing…
My parents cut up most of the food
And my father helped me put together the back drop.

It was a huge team effort.

It was all well worth the effort in the end. Some things were omitted, sure, but the look of utter joy on my daughter’s face is all that really matters.

Thanks for allowing me to share her special day with you.

Gumball Necklace Tutorial

For today’s tutorial, I’ll just be going over a simple gumball necklace.

My mother-in-law and husband did 100% of the work. I just sat there taking pictures and looking pretty. 😉

Here is what you are going to need:

Gumballs in the colors of your choice. I am using black, pink, and white. You can get these for $5-6 in the size of bags seen here at a Party City, but I recommend shopping around. I am positive you can fins much cheaper.
Ribbon in your color choice.
Scissors
Large Darning Needle
Drill

Step one will be cutting your ribbon in the size that you need. We used about 70 inches of ribbon for each necklace. I know this sounds like a lot, but bare with me.

Step two will be drilling. My husband decided that before you drill, it is best to slightly puncture the gumball:


Step three will be grabbing your ribbon and knotting it at the end. Put your ribbon through the eye of your needle and you will then add your first gumball. Be sure to knot it after each time you add a new gumball:



***Note: Be sure to leave around 5-10 inches at each end of your necklace so that you can tie it around your or your child’s neck.

Repeat, repeat, repeat. We used 12 gumballs on each of our necklaces. At the end, your necklace should look something like this:

Tadaah!
And here you can see my little sister-in-law modeling:

Hope you enjoyed the tutorial. More to come!

Parisian Inspired Necklace: Part 2

Time for part 2 of the necklace tutorial!
We are going to have a finished product that will look something like this (thank you to my lovely little sister for modeling :P):

Now it’s time for the assembly. Here is what you will need:

Unfortunately, all our regular tools are still packed away in our boxes…somewhere, so we used what we had on hand:

1 pair of Wire Cutters2 pairs of Needle Nose Pliers
Length of chain (mine is 18 inches, bough at Michaels)
3-4 Jump Rings (also from Michaels)
Lobster Claw Clamp (Michaels again!)
Eiffel Tower Charm (I bought a load of these from Tophatter for like…$5. Keep an eye on that site for neat things like that)
Your Macaron we made last tutorial!

Let’s get started!
Open up all the jump rings first. My husband will be putting it together for me while I sit back and just snap pictures. 😉 He has found that it’s much easier when he does this step first:

Next, add a jump ring to one end of your chain:

Add a jump ring and your clip to the other end of the chain:

Now, comes the hard part. If you used a head pin and don’t happen to have your curling pliers around, you are going to have to try and curl your excess wire on your macaron with regular needle nose pliers…like this:

Clip off the extra with your wire cutters. Fiddle around with it and you should get something that looks like this:

Add this and your Eiffel Tower charm to one jump ring:

And attach this to your chain (If you decide you want it stationary, you will need to find the middle of your chain. If you don’t care, then just attach it completely around the chain) and you are all done! Now admire your work and show it off!:

Parisian Inspired Necklace Tutorial: Part 1

Since I am still preparing for my daughter’s birthday party, pretty much everything I have been posting is in relation to that. Today is no exception.

This is a two part tutorial. The first half will go over making the macaron, like these:

Here is what you’ll need:



2 colors of Polymer Clay in your choice.
Needle Tool or Toothpick
Eye or Headpin
Optional* Small Circle Cookie Cutter

Pull out a bit of the clay in the colors you chose:

Separate the color you want the outside of your macaron to be up in three different pieces. Two need to be the same size, the other can be whatever is left.
Let’s work with the same sized pieces first, shall we?

Roll these two pieces into a ball like so:

Then lightly press them so that the bottom flattens and the tops is domed:

Now we are going back to that other piece of clay:

You’re going to want to roll it into a long snake:

Wrap the snake around one of your little domes:


Cut off the extra and repeat the process with the other dome.

Now you’re going to pull out your needle tool, or your tooth pick, and start to texture the snake. You want to poke, press, and seam it up with the rest of your clay:

You’ll want to end with something that looks about like this:

Repeat this with the second one.

Now grab your second color of clay!

Take a small amount and roll it into a ball:

Flatten the ball into a disk and place it on one of the macaroon pieces like so:

Add your top piece and your eye or head pin:

Bake according to the direction on the package of your clay.
My clay bakes at 275 degrees F for 15 minutes per 1/4 an inch of clay.
And you just made your macaron!

I hope you enjoyed the tutorial, part 2 is tomorrow!

Tutu Party Favors: AKA My Death

No sew tutus are fairly simple to make…however, when you have to make 6 of them, they are also fairly time consuming and back breaking.

I know there are hundreds of tutorials out there for the no sew tutus, but let me walk you through it as I make the party favors for the girls that will be at my daughter’s birthday. 🙂

What you’ll need:
Elastic
Tulle in your choice of colors (I prefer the kind on the spools, generally they come in 6 inch widths and varying numbers of yards)
Patience
Scissors
Hot Glue Gun
Hot Glue
Measuring Tape
Patience
Optional: Ribbon, Flowers, or whatever else you would like to use to embellish it.

Step one is measuring your child’s waist. You need a strip of elastic that is about an 1 inch smaller than their waist (un-stretched). I get my elastic from any craft store and always use the 3/4 an inch no-roll kind. Take your two ends and either hot glue them, or if you are more capable than myself with a needle and thread…sew them. This is what you will be tying your tulle around. It should look like this when you are ready:

Step two will be cutting your tulle in the length you desire. For my daughter, I make all her tutus about 10 inches in length, so you would need to cut your tulle at 20 inches in order to get this same effect. Why? Because we will be folding them in half as we tie them in a moment. Generally, I use between 25 and 50 yards of tulle. Most of the spools of tulle I use come as 25 yards, but again, these vary. Make sure you have plenty. If you daughter is older, taller, shorter, younger, you will have to eye it and see what length you like the most.
My little sister is here, helping me cut all of this stuff. Thank goodness for her help, otherwise I would have lost it long ago. 🙂

Step three: tying the tulle to your elastic. Now, I place the elastic band on something round to make it easier, but it really isn’t needed. You will want to fold your tulle in half and slide it under your elastic, loop the loose ends through the hole you created, and tug slightly. Don’t make it too tight, or else the elastic will stretch out too much as you go. Pull it too loose and they will come off and it just won’t look neat.
That all might have been confusing…maybe the pictures will help:

Hopefully that helped a little. Now, just repeat this process all the way around. You can leave it with the singular layer, or, you can do a second layer. I personally always do at least 2-3 layers.

In order to accomplish the second layer, just over lap you first layer. Don’t push them to the side, as this will stretch out your elastic and won’t give you a layered look like you will want to be going for. Here is what it looks like with a singular layer:

Here is me starting on the second layer (sorry for the crappy picture, it just wouldn’t take right):



Here is a tutu with a completed second layer. This is where I will stop on these. Normally I would finish it by ribbon wrapping where the elastic is, but I don’t think anyone will really mind. Simple and cute, just a little time consuming:

Hope you enjoyed the tutorial. More to come!