Tiger Cupcakes--They're Grrreat!

Looking through my Google Photos, I found some cupcakes I hadn't shared anywhere except Instagram!  I figured it's a good time to post these, since America seems to be hypnotized by a certain Netflix show to which I still haven't succumbed... 

I made these last year because the newly-built school where I'd be teaching Kindergarten had a tiger mascot, so I made tiger cupcakes for the orientation potluck!  Here's a little step-by-step, and I was thrilled with how they came out!  (You know when you have an idea for something and then you do it, and it matches with exactly what you'd pictured?  That's the feeling I got.  I DO NOT get this perfect match-up of expectation vs. reality all the time, which is why I was so pumped!)

Here's a photo of all the stuff I had ready (ended up not needing the yellow candy melts):

I started with a box mix (because sometimes you just want to decorate) of devil's food cake, and put some vanilla frosting as a base on top of the cupcakes. 

I then added a ring of orange frosting from a pouch, and smoothed it out/blended it with an offset spatula, leaving some white in the middle for the snout:

Next, I stuck on 2 orange Froot Loops for the eyes, black sprinkles for whiskers, 2 spots of black gel icing for eyes, and a big pink heart for the nose!

I then used the same black gel icing for one little, curved stripe along the sides, and 2 on the forehead:

And that's it!  I just had to do the same thing over and over a couple times to make my full set, and then pray the hot, humid weather wouldn't make the gel turn streaky!  But everything worked out just fine!  There were so many desserts, only a few people had my tigers, so I was able to share them with my local Starbucks baristas, since I was going there ALL THE TIME over the summer to make sure I got out of my apartment!  The best part of making cupcakes is sharing them with people!

easy there miss cupcake

If you read my holiday post, you saw a bunch of cupcake-themed gifts I received :) One of them was a vinyl "miss cupcake" named "kabluey." I think it's really cute.


Well, my friend Jenny got me a DIY miss cupcake for my birthday! It's in one of the pictures from my last post. All white, begging to be painted. I was snowed in today, so I decided to paint! I wasn't sure what colors to use, and then when I decided that (pink and yellow) I wasn't sure which one to use as frosting and which to use as the wrapper! Fortunately, one of my Christmas gifts was this cute cupcake punch:

This was perfect for little cupcake templates! I punched out two of these little sets and colored them in (lightly because the colored pencils I used came from some kid book and weren't very... effective). This way I could see what placement I preferred as well as how to draw the little face!

Here (above) are all the little pieces. The packaging also suggested using the icing piece as a cloud! Here they are assembled:
The candle kind of looks like an afro pick :) I chose the one on the right to paint! But before I show you how that turned out, I just want to show you this other, smaller cupcake punch:


So cute!! I really should have put my hand in this picture to show you the actual size... I'd say the tiny one is about the size of my thumb.

I thought this looked nice :) the paper I punched from.

Well, here it is!
I just love it. I used acrylic paint and then a felt-tip pen for the face. Here he is with kabluey:
Hello, friend!
I highly encourage getting a DIY miss cupcake--it's so fun and the result is unavoidably cute.

david & hiro's wedding

My brother, David, got married to his boyfriend, Hiroyuki, on December 28 in Lenox, Massachusetts!! They asked me to be their justice of the peace, so I officiated their wedding! I was flattered and the wedding was amazing and perfect and so beautiful! I did a bunch of crafty stuff for it, too, so I have an excuse to blog about it ;) For instance, I made their cake topper (above) out of two wooden "boys" (the package said "boys" but they were really just wooden pegs), tiny plastic hats (that I just so happened to have laying around the house from, I guess, some other project I had meant to do), and the top of a cardboard heart-shaped box that I painted white. I painted the suits 2 days before the wedding when they were out of the house, by which time I knew what color their tuxes would be.

The bow wasn't actually attached to the topper, I just put it there for effect. I did attach it to each wedding favor, though (above)! I got them from this wonderful etsy site, Little Spark Creations. It was a small wedding (22 people in all) and I couldn't find a site that would custom-print ribbons without buying 50 or more! Little Spark Creations offered custom ribbons at a 25 count for only $10! What a deal! Not only that--they came out exactly how I wanted, and I was able to tie them into the most perfect little bows for the wedding favors!

Here is where the edible stuff comes in...

A tiny chocolate cake!!! Made from melting chocolate wafers :) Does it get any cuter than this? Everything I needed came in this kit at AC Moore. This big box included 25 fold-up boxes and lids, 3 or 4 bags of chocolate wafers, 25 blank tags (which I ended up not using), and a mold for the tiny cakes :)

My 11-year-old cousin Jack thought it was delicious :)

Here is the cake!!


The happy family:
A candid moment:Bro and sis:

Yay! A perfect day for love.