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27 Kodak Moments.

Although it was on hiatus for a while the other blog I run, 27 Kodak Moments, is now back up and running and I've been featuring some very talented photographers on it recently.

Here's just a preview of some of their work (click their name to view the full feature)

Alexander Hernandez

Daniel Schultz

Nikki Ditter

Kate Van Genderen

Karly Brecher

Tanya Voltchanskaya

Mallory Shriver

Hannah Platt

Ice Cream Cone Cupcakes.

There's a cupcake competition at work tomorrow in aid of Macmillan Cancer Support, so I thought I'd try something new and different. I'd seen someone post a photo of some ice cream cone cupcakes they'd made on Facebook, so I decided to try that. After searching around for a few recipes (good ones here from Betty Crocker, Meridian Ariel, The Pink Whisk and Baking Mad) I found a successful combination of the lot.

I used a box cake mix. I couldn't find any Becky Crocker mix that wasn't chocolate flavoured, which wasn't what I wanted, so I used a different one but it worked ok. It only made six cakes though so I also had to make some up from scratch.

Here's the process of making them:

I wrapped the cones in foil as suggested in a few recipes - this really helped them stay upright in the muffin tray. I filled the cones to the bottom of the wider part with the mixture.

The ingredients I used, from left to right:

Greens Butterfly Cake Mix

Askeys Ice Cream Cornets

Cadbury Flake Bars

Silver Spoon Icing

The boxed mix raised a little more than I wanted so I did cut the tops off before I iced them.

I put the cones in ramekins before I iced them to help them stay upright.

Ta da! They turned out great, and I think they really look like ice creams. There's quite a lot of icing on each one so they're pretty sweet, but they're needed for the look!

Transporting the cakes proved to be a bit more difficult than expected though - the cupcakes were too tall for most of the tupperware we have. To overcome this I used a really big tub and put silicone muffin cases in the bottom for the cones to stand in:

I also wrapped more foil round the base of the cones to really keep them in place while I get them into work.

So overall I love how these cakes turned out! I'll just have to see how they get on in the competition tomorrow; I'm only entering 4 (4 judges) so the extras are for people on my team - they're already excited!

Disposable Goodness.

It's been a while since I experimented with a disposable camera, so it was good to play around with one again.

This set was shot using a Fuji QuickSnap disposable camera. I coloured the flash in with red Sharpie and used lilac and glitter nail polishes on the lens. Check out the full set on my Flickr.

Angel Cake

Bluebells

Country House

Cupcakes

Mysterious in the Forest

Balloons

Bay Windows

Blinds

Praktica

Rooftop

Stories

Crafty Creatives.

Anyone who's anyone in the crafty world right now is talking about the Crafty Creatives monthly box. I'm not saying I'm anyone, but I have subscribed to these amazingly cute little boxes - a box of craft goodies delivered every month!

I obviously can't be anyone because it took me two boxes before I finally got round to blogging about them....my bad. But they really are wonderful, each box has a theme (first it was floral, then nautical) and there's ideas in there as to what to make but it really is up to your imagination.

I won't say much more seeing as I'm a bit behind and so many other lovely people have blogged about the boxes, so I'll just take you through what I've made so far :)

Warning: picture heavy!

Cheeky look inside the boxes - just bursting at the seams with crafty goodies!

BOX 1

Close up of the contents - I'm not going to list them, but if you do want to know head on over to the Past Boxes section of their website for full details.

This brooch was part of the kit that comes in each box. It was a bit fiddly but with some help from the video tutorial on the Crafty Creatives YouTube channel I figured it out.

I used a little of the leftover fabric to make this little stitched bird image - an idea I'm hoping to develop into something I can sell in my Folksy shop, Wishcatcher Crafts.

I used some of the floral tissue paper as the backing to an ornate rose gold frame I bought a while ago from TK Maxx but which has been sitting empty on my bedside table ever since.

This was a bit random, but the little glass flower beads came in the box and I mixed them with some other beads I have (I love the tiny little heart ones!) to make this cute little garland. It's currently hanging off my headboard...I'm very limited for hanging space in my room at the moment with all my other crafty experiments hanging up everywhere else!

So that's it for box 1 so far, plenty more in there to play with though and I'll add more photos when I have them :)

BOX 2

Close up of the box, again check out the past boxes page for more info.

 

This bracelet was in this month's kit. The starfish came separately but I thought they'd make a cute little addition. It's quite bulky on my wrist, so I think it would work better with slightly thinner rope.

Another random experiment but it incorporates several elements of the box. I got my dad to drill holes in the driftwood, de-threaded then re-threaded the pearls along with the coloured and fish buttons, and finally the wheel pendant. Then just a little of the paper string to finish it off.

The garland/mobile thing is currently hanging up in my mother's "secret garden", which is a work in progress. There's a load of little tealights dotted around in lanterns, which we finally got to light last night as it was warm enough, and it really does look lovely. I'll blog some more about this later on - the wooden bunting from this box is also going to feature in the garden.