Pink Heart Fruit Cake Tutorial

I made this cake February this year- the Valentine's season. I wanted to make something really girly and sweet. I took some photos of the work process but never got to post it. This is not a tutorial because I forgot to take photos started from the begining, so this is the process when I made only the cake. I will have tutorials on the felt fruit pieces up soon. 

The cake needs a template, I traced over a heart shape and drew on a piece of cardboard, and that shall be my base.

To make the body you need to trace over the cardboard to a piece of white and pink felt and cut out one heart shape each. They are going to be the top and the bottom of the cake.  

Cut a strip of pink felt that has the enough length to cover the heart shape, it is best to leave an extra of 1cm because you can always trim it off at the end. The height of the pink strip can be whatever length you want. Sew the white heart to the pink strip and the pink heart together, but leave a space to insert the filling. Then cut a wavy shape white strip and attach to the white heart and the pink body. 

That's what it looks like when you finish the above steps. I filled in the white strip pockets, you can skip this step if you want to.  

Place the heart shape cardboard into the cake to give it more support. 

This is the cake without the cardboard support, it is not flat and hard to place the fruit pieces on.  

So cut out another heart shape and put it on the top, now the surface looks smooth and clean. 

Insert the stuffings, and now sew off the edges. 

As said before, I left an extra 1cm to my body just incase if went wrong. However the came was sew perfectly and now I can trim it! :D

Sew off the end.

And now it's done! Ready for the toppings! 

I feel like this wasn't a well explained post, if you have any questions just comment below. I will try my best to help you. Any requests are welcome too~  

Have fun crafting!

Lisa

Heart Dango Tutorial

I fell in love with Japanese dango when I had it for the first time. It's basically some sticky rice ball mochi thing, but it was so soft and sweet. I wanted to use the colours I dyed last time, so I chose to make Hanami dango which has 3 lovely pastel colours. Instead of round shapes, I made it into cute hearts. 

It is very easy to make, it involves basic needle felting tools and a heart cookie cutter. The photos below will demonstrate the processes.

So here are the materials and a heart shape cookie cutter. 

Separate the fibers and fill in the cookie cutter to the top. 

Stab the wool until it gives a surface, and then flip to the back and do the same thing. 

Take the heart out.

This time stab around the edges to give it a curve surface. 

And here are the 3 finished hearts. 

After all this you can use a skewer and poke through the hearts. And now it's done!

Have fun crafting!
Lisa

Rainbow Basket

I have always wondering about this needle felting technique, but never got a chance to get my hands on it. After I bought a small kit from the store I got really addicted to this traditional craft. Not sure it if was the way you continuously stabbed the wool with your anger or the sound it made when you stabbed it that got into me. I am so obsessed with needle felting that I decided to buy nearly 1kg of wool and dye my own colours.

I love the rainbow colours! This basket was given to me on my birthday and I kept my friend's design logo up there, it made it even more special.

I even made some of my favourite pastel colours, they just look so sweet and soft. Even though my processes of dying these wasn't as smooth as I thought but there are always a chance to improve. I was really hoping that the shape of the wool sliver would come out as smooth as the original form, instead it was really messy and fibers flying everywhere! I will just have to keep trying.

Strawberry Field

For the first post, I want to share an old work of mine, the work was inspired by the coming spring.

I have used a variety of materials for this deco piece, it includes the Japanese Hearty paper clay, Crayola Model Magic, and silicone.  The silicone was harder than I thought, it got really messy and I had to wipe it off and started pipping again as the whipped cream. I was really happy with the end result even though the durability of the paper clay wasn't as strong as polymer clay, maybe that would be my next material to investigate on.

Strawberry Field (2011)