please do not eat the cupcake!

A friend of mine just flew back home to have a break and as she would be away during her birthday I thought I'd better get a present organised before she left!

As we're both getting into the baking scene, I made her a cupcake card. This card was actually inspired by another card I made at a Stampin' Up demonstration where it was a flowerpot full of flowers.

First I made the pot by tracing it on cardboard, glued that together and used it as a template to trace the cupcake (remembering to add a little tab at the top to support the cherry button). The first cupcake didn't seem to fit right, so I cut it down and it looked worse so I remade the cupcake part! I think the problem, was that the cupcake case wasn't even on both sides and I must have slipped it in the wrong way! I ended up covering both sides of the case so I put my 'handmade by...' stamp on the back of the cupcake and squeezed in a message on the front XD

This was a pretty fun card to make so I think I'll make it again, even though I normally like to make new styles but there can be a lot of versatility with the patterns chosen!

Items:

• Scrapbooking paper
• Button - I bought this in a button pack from Aldi's though I've seen similar ones in Lincraft
• Stamps - Flower stamp (no brand)

And here's some more cupcake goodness ^_^

wrapping paper from Hot Dollar

gift bag from Big W (around $2)

 I also received some books I ordered recently which is exciting ^^

Origami Jewelry

Ayako Brodek

I've wanted to get this book for a while, just because the idea of origami jewellry sounds fun XD. I have attempted paper cranes in the past with nice washi paper but didn't get to the conversion into an earring part!! The front of the book talks about how to keep the piece together, using a varnish/coat on top and also basic origami folds to get you started. Some designs inside don't look like something I'd wear like the crab and sunburst brooch but many of them are very cute and colour-coordinated pieces which I'd like to try out. A lot of them are made into a brooch and earrings. And another thing to remember is that it is usually hard to imitate books exactly without the original paper used by the author, but with so many pretty designs on the market, it's really up to you to creae your own unique twist!

Korean Cuisine

Young Sook Choi

I wanted to buy a Korean cookbook and this was the one which I decided on after going through many of the Amazon reviews, although I'm planning to get another one at a later date. After purchasing it I realised it's a few years old, printed in 2001 and you can sort of tell by the layout. I haven't made anything from it yet but there seems to be a good amount of recipes. The beginning goes through basic ingredients and sauces used in Korean cooking, my sister was browsing through it and seems like one of the sauce ingredients was a few spoons of Coca Cola, I'll have to check up on that XD. There is also a nice (yummy-looking) section on Korean BBQ! The book is actually in both English and Traditional Chinese which is pretty cool, though not sure why the Chinese is there...

~~~

I also went to see the trains for the Sydney Steam Weekend on Queen's Birthday. I didn't ride the steam train which is a shame but it was impressive to see the display train belting out steam and then chugging away back to its home in Thirlmere.

The steam train on display is maintained by the Powerhouse Museum and there were chances to visit the different carriages as well as try your hand at shovelling coal.The steam train ride is around an hour and is a round trip from Central to Clyde. I was around when the last trip of the day left and the tickets were probably sold out by half an hour beforehand from my guess.