TARDIS Cake Adventures!

Hi all!

So, this weekend my friends and I celebrated a good friend's birthday, and I was charged with the task of making the birthday cake. I asked my friend's fianceé what she thought he'd like, and she said "He'd love a TARDIS cake!". The challenge was set. After all, how hard could a big blue rectangle really be?

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

The night before the party, I made the butter cakes and sat down to do some hardcore research. I spent over an hour online looking for a nice, clean image of the TARDIS that I could trace, and I was actually really disappointed with what I found. Nothing seemed to be right. And then I stood up and looked down at my t-shirt... Yep, I'm a massive idiot.

So, I got to work quickly tracing the image onto baking paper, which happened to be exactly the right size for the cakes I baked. I use this method to help me cut out the rough shape, and sometimes (depending on the cake) I use it as a template for making the detailed decorations to make sure they're in proportion to the final image (there's nothing worse than making a character cake's eyes too small or large, or not being able to fit all the detailed fondant pieces onto the iced cake!).

I got up on the morning of the party, had breakfast (and lots of coffee to wake myself up properly), and got to work just before 11am. I cut my two rectangular butter cakes to size, using toothpicks to hold the smaller pieces in place before attaching them with buttercream (I left the toothpicks in because I was scared the cake might sag):

I then covered it in buttercream icing... pretty badly, because I need more practice icing cakes neatly. (The next time I do this, I will definitely dip my spatula in hot water to smooth out the lumps on the buttercream, because they show through the fondant icing.)

And then it was time to colour the fondant! It took me a while to get the colour even close to what I was hoping for - I used gel food colours; navy blue, black and a tiny bit of red. And of course, using gel colours meant that the fondant got fairly sticky as I added more colour, so I kept having to add pure icing sugar as I went along to keep it pliable and firm. My hands are still slightly stained from kneading the colour in!

I always roll my fondant out on baking paper (which I sticky-tape onto the bench), because it stops it from sticking as I'm rolling it out, and keeps the pure icing sugar in one manageable place. Then after a lot of rolling, fiddling, swearing, cutting, smoothing, swearing, fiddling, re-rolling, swearing, fiddling and more swearing, I finally got the damned thing covered. I decided to do the fondant layer while it was still on the baking paper and chopping board (see the buttercream photo above), which meant that I had to carefully maneuver it onto the cake board once it was iced. I'm not certain I'd do it that way again, but at least it worked without any dramas! I neatened up the edges of the cake by cutting away the excess fondant.

Then came the tricky part: putting on the decorations in the right order, so that it would look like more than just a blue art deco building. I was conscious of the fact that I'm very bad at cutting straight lines at the best of times, so I bought a metal ruler to help me, which was mildly successful. (Metal, I reasoned, would be the easiest to sterilise.) I'm sure that if I'd had more time, I could have done a neater job. I was using this excellent TARDIS cake as inspiration, and while I can now see the fondant joins and the dints and such in that cake, while I was making mine, I was incredibly frustrated by the imperfections of my icing job. In fact, I got so cross that my Mum (who had been kindly pottering about to offer me assistance during the day) actually went outside for a while to give me space and to get away from my temper. Still, I knew that the only person who would notice the mistakes would be me, so eventually I accepted my work, lumps and all.

Finally, I needed to put the finishing touches on the cake! I must admit, I cheated and asked my Mum to pipe the POLICE PUBLIC CALL BOX for me, because my handwriting is dreadful. She perhaps wasn't as meticulous in her text positioning as I'd liked, but she did a tremendous job, and I'm very thankful that she was so patient and helpful after my temper tantrums. I wrote out the majority of the text in the information panel on the door (I couldn't fit it all on, so two of the lines were just squiggles), made the St John's Ambulance badge, painted the handles and lock on, and voila! Finished TARDIS cake!

I finished it about 15 minutes before our dinner reservation for 7pm, so I put it in a box, buckled it into my front seat, and carefully drove to the restaurant for my friend's birthday, and I was only about 15 minutes late! That's what I call making it by the skin of your teeth!

The waitress at the restaurant was very kind, and after we'd eaten the cake she actually asked me if I took commissions, so I gave her my contact details. So... I guess this is it! I'll have to figure out accurate costings, get myself some food handling certifications, and get some sort of a small business page set up somewhere, because I might actually be able to use this as a source of income!

I really enjoy making cakes, and I always try to choose designs that provide a good challenge that involves using techniques I haven't tried before. In this instance, I hadn't had to make any straight edges or clean lines before, so this cake helped me realise just how time-consuming straight lines can be.

The total decoration time was 8 hours, plus cooking made it 10 hours all up. It was totally worth it for my friend's reaction. He was completely stunned, he just sat there staring at the cake in awe. Mission accomplished!

Red/Blue Dress Project coming along nicely~

Despite the hot weather this weekend, I managed to get some work done on my dress project!

I cut the full circle skirt out of a square of cobalt blue satin, which I'd folded into quarters. I was served by a lovely lady at Spotlight who was extremely helpful about my project, including explaining the way to make a full circle skirt (because I'm not working from a pattern). I normally have fairly bad luck at Spotlight stores with the material salespeople, but she restored my faith in asking for advice. :)

I then sewed the skirt to the inside of the bodice, having carefully unpicked the lining when I was removing the original skirt. I wish I'd left myself slightly more in the selvage, but I wanted the maximum length in the skirt that I could manage, since I love my skirts long.

Then I hand-stitched the zip in, since I didn't trust myself to do a close enough job with the sewing machine. The zip is a hidden/invisible zip, and because the colour of the zip itself is red, I had to do my best to hide it when worn. I think each side took me 4-5 attempts before the colour was concealed and the zip worked all the way!

I'm mostly pleased with how it turned out. There's a small amount of puckering  on the right side of the zip, and a small part of it peeks through where the bodice and skirt meet. But it's not bad for a first attempt, seeing as my hand-stitching is notoriously bad!

Overall, I'm extremely pleased with how well this project is going, and how quickly it's coming together. All I need to do now is to seal the back seam with a zigzag stitch (coz I don't have an overlocker), fasten the zip to the seam securely, hem the skirt, sew the bodice lining back in, and attach the ribbon-belt around the waistline! And then it's pretty much done! Although, since I have quite a bit of the blue satin fabric left from the unused corners of the skirt, I think I might make a hair piece to accompany the dress, or maybe even a bag (if I can find an easy design)! ^___^

And my boyfriend has just suggested that, given the colour palette, I might be able to turn this into a cosplay. I'm thinking Lolita Captain America? ^_~ Although the skirt would have to be red and the bodice should be blue. Ah well. Maybe I can just make the shield and pin some stars on?

Happy crafting!

Starting 2014 with a bit of flare~

Hi everyone!

I've been going a bit mad recently with 50's style fashion. I've been doing rock and roll dancing for years now, and I'm glad I fell into a hobby that has an aesthetic that actually suits me! So I've become rather addicted to sites like Modcloth, and I'm spending rather more money than I'd planned to.

However, I'm now trying to save money to travel overseas for an academic conference later this year (if I can successfully submit a paper to it *fingers crossed*), so I'm completely reigning in my spending.

The solution to my addiction? Make my own dresses, of course! =^___^=

I've got a few patterns kicking around for dresses, but I'm going to alter the skirt patterns to make full-circle skirts because they flare nicely when I dance. I'll be posting updates of my dresses as I go along.

My first project of the year will, therefore, be the modification of a dress I bought a few years ago and never wore. As you can see, the skirt didn't suit me at all, but the top fitted quite nicely. Faced with the option of donating it and wasting my money, or altering it, I opted for the latter (because when you've been a student for as long as I have, the idea of throwing money away is unthinkable, even though I always donate my old clothing to charity shops).

So, first things first, I sat down and carefully unpicked the skirt from the bodice. I was very pleased to discover that the bodice was lined in such a way that it was extremely easy to remove the skirt. So, now I have a completely finished bodice, and all I need to do is to make the skirt and sew it in!

As you can see from my little drawing, I plan to make the skirt from blue satin. I'm planning to sew a gross grain ribbon around the joining seam to break up the colours.

I'll take a better photo of my plans, and the rest of the materials, as I go along. I'm certain that this project won't take too long, since the hard part (the bodice) is already made and ready to go!

It's always so exciting when you can sink your teeth into craft projects. ^_^

After a sustained absence...

Hi all,

I'm finally dusting off my blogspot to try my hand at irregular updates again.

I'll be primarily using this blog for the following topics:

• Academia - fandom studies mostly
• Craft
• Beer
• Comedy (although not as much as I'd like, given my time constraints right now)

Please be patient with the updates - as I am undertaking a PhD I don't get as much spare time to write for pleasure, but I will try this time to diligently stick to some sort of vaguely regular updating schedule.

And now, to start off with, the gifts I made for the Melbourne Peggsters to give to Simon Pegg, Nick Frost and Edgar Wright at the Melbourne premiere of The World's End last year.

Apologies

This week's blog has been postponed til next week (which bothers absolutely no one, because this blog is read solely by me), because of human factors outside of this webspace's control.

Normal transition will resume next week.

Rock Bangin' at the Bella Union

So, as mentioned in my previous blog, Die Roten Punkte played a farewell gig at the Bella Union Bar at the Trades Hall a fortnight ago. The crowd wasn't huge, but the show still raced along in leaps and bounds, with yet another thoroughly solid set from the biggest thing to come from Berlin. There was much laughter, dancing, singing and cheering as Astrid and Otto Rot took us on a magical ride of ROCK. I'd say, if there was a fight-based-rock-out between Tenacious D and Die Roten Punkte, the latter would win hands down.

But don't just take my word for it. They're heading out on tour, hitting Dublin, Edinburgh and more locations to bring their own brand of rock to the world, one gig at a time, so you have no excuse. If you haven't already bought their album, what are you waiting for?

Bedroom Philosophering and Rock Banging

Well guys, last Thursday I headed down to the Toff In Town for The Bedroom Philosopher's album relaunch. Brown And Orange has been out in stores (and on iTunes) for a few months now, but it seemed as good an excuse as any for Justin to fill up a room full of comedy and music appreciators.

The night was not as long as the first time he launched the album (some would say it was less self-indulgent too, but this Mouse is not going to point fingers), and had a similar format; Josh Earl MCed the gig, and there was a warm up act who were very good (but I have temporarily forgotten their names, alas). Then Justin came on to do a solo set, followed by a set with his wonderful Awkwardstra.

Now, I'm not much of a music afficianado, but I don't think there's nearly enough sitar in the world. Thankfully, we have the Awkwardstra to help address this calamity. Their sound is incredible, at times ethreal and other times funky, and the album captures this balance quite well. Despite the accoustics in the Toff being slightly sub-par, it still blew this Mouse's mind, just like it always does.

In other news, this Thursday Die Roten Punkte are farewelling Melbourne before they head overseas for festivals and causing general rock and roll carnage. It's on at the Bella Union bar in the Trades Hall, Carlton, from 9PM. For those who are astute, you'll recognise this as being the setting for the Rock Bang! video clip I featured in my last blog. Come along and enjoy the zaniness before it escapes our borders!