Happy Birthday Steph

It was my sister's birthday yesterday, and as you might have seen from other posts, she enjoys baking, particularly cupcakes.

For her birthday I put together a little cupcake kit for her:

The basket/container I crocheted from string. The book is 10,000 Cupcakes which has all different ideas for the cake, the topping and the decor, and they're printed on flip sections of the book so you can flick the different parts over to make different combinations.

I bought two different lots of cupcake cases from IKEA, and I bought some square and some heart shaped silicone baking cases too. There is also a mini silicone baking tray and some small cutters )Circle, Heart and Star). The final thing I bought was a jar of sprinkles.

I made three seperate kinds of cake toppers (5 of each).

Red hearts: These are simply red heart beads that I glued on to cocktail sticks. (use a strongish glue on the end of the stick and slide the bead onto the glued part.)

Double sided - different colours on each side.

Little Houses: These are made from cut outs from a sheet of scrapbook paper. I cut 10 little houses out of the sheet, glued the wrong side of one house, then sandwiched the cocktail stick between the glued house and another house. You have to press well to make sure there are no air bubbles and don't use too much glue because it will seap out the sides. Scrapbook paper is good for this because it is a heavier weight and does not wrinkle or curl when glued. Once they were dry, I trimmed any overhangs and made sure all the edges were matched up well. (I thought these would be nice if she makes some cupcakes as a housewarming gift any time).

Little bows and bells: These were a bit more fiddly. I used a thin satin ribbon to tie a small bow at the top of each cocktail stick. Using a needle and some red thread, I stitched a tiny silver craft bell to the bottom of the bow. This holds the bow firm because you stitch through the knot, and it adds an extra bit of decor with the shiny bell. To finish them off, I glued a round red bead to the top of the cocktail stick in the same way I made the red heart toppers. (These remind me of Christmas with the little jingle bells  - I could just imagine them topping some lovely white iced, red velvet cupcakes. Yummy!)