How to Make a French Pâtisserie Canopy

The French theme continues on my blog today as I show you how to make a canopy for a quaint little shop front. I created a faux pâtisserie for my sister's birthday and this was just the finishing touch to set it off. I started out with two black tri-fold foam core display boards - the type used for science fair projects. It would be just as easy to start with white core board and then you could colour it any colour you want but black and white worked perfectly for my theme. To create the scalloop, tape a bunch of papers together to form a piece of paper the same length as the width of the core board. Fold the paper in halves, quarters and then eighths. Draw a scallop and then cut it out. With the board still in the flat position (sides folded in), place the pattern along one of the folded edges and trace around the scalloped edge. I used a white pen so I could see where to cut. The easiest way to cut foam core board is with a Stanley knife. Run the blade along the...

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How to make Felt Strawberries

In my last post I showed you how I combined polystyrene disks and felt to make some really yummy looking faux mini gâteaux. But what would a cream sponge cake be without a strawberry on top? So today, I'm going to show you how easy it is to make strawberries from felt. All you need is red and green felt, yellow and green thread, stuffing, a needle, a sewing machine and scissors. You'll also need something round to trace around. I used a ribbon spool - the perfect size for lifesize medium strawberries! Begin by tracing the circle onto the red felt. Use a permanent marker so you can easily see where to cut. Cut out the circle, fold it in half and then cut on the fold line. You now have two semi circles. Fold each of these in half and then stitch the straight edge. You can see that I've just stitched a bunch of these semi circles and left them joined. I just cut them apart as I'm ready to make them. Once you've separated them, turn the seam to the inside. ...

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Faux Pâtisserie - How to Make Mini Gâteaux using Felt and Polystyrene

One of the highlights of my sister's big birthday bash was the Faux Pâtisserie we put together to help dress the party room. It was filled with wonderful pastries, cakes and chocolates, all of which were crafted from supplies you can pick up from your local craft shop. Today I'm sharing the "how-to" for making your own mini gâteau like the pink one below. For this example, I've used polystyrene disks, acrylic paint (which sticks surprisingly well to polystyrene!), ric rac, lace, felt and a ribbon flower. I also used Aleene's Tacky Craft glue and some toothpicks to hold things together. If you've got white acrylic paint in your craft supplies then you can make a pastel shade of any colour paint you have. Pink seemed like a good idea for this cake. All you need to do is mix a little of your chosen colour into a LOT of white paint. You can see I had way to much pink paint here but it shows you just how intense the colour was before I toned it down wit...

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Party Decorations - Glittery Eiffel Tower Table Decorations

This past month has been a whirlwind of activity in the studio. As the self-appointed "event manager" for my sister's milestone birthday celebration, it was my job to pull together a party in a city more than 2200km away. A two day drive through rural/outback Australia with a vehicle filled to the rooftop with props, made for an interesting journey! My sister has always dreamed of travelling to Paris - a gift my older sisters and I realised we couldn't make come true so we did the next best thing and brought Paris to her. We threw a Parisian Café/Pâtisserie themed party for her with all the trimmings we could. As the crafty sister, I volunteered to make the props so I've got quite a few tutorials  and how-to's to share with you in upcoming posts and the first one is these glittery Eiffel Tower table decorations. I did a practice run of these before diving into the final ones and I'm glad I did because I saved myself hours of work. The prototype was m...

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