Go Team GB!

The last few days have been exhilarating, with Team GB bringing home gold after gold after gold. I've been glued to my screen all day, so have not exactly done anything "productive", but I have managed to eat a lot of patriotic cakes!

Rain, rain go away

Oh for goodness sake, please stop raining! All I want to do is have a few hours of dry weather in order to get outdoors and take some photos of my new range of melamine cake stands. Instead, all my spare time is spent jumping over puddles and waiting patiently for a dry day. At this rate, no one will be able to use my cake stands on picnics, going glamping, or at garden parties.  

At least sales of my other cake stands are going well over at the Wendy House in Caversham. I've just totted up my sales and realised I've sold more than I thought, which makes me smile. :)

Today I did another shift in the shop and met another fellow crafter who gave me some great tips on local craft events I could exhibit at. I must now look into getting public liability insurance and signing up for events later in the year.

Lovely Jubilee!!

Busy busy busy times my friends! I've barely had time to sleep recently, let alone blog. Rubbish I know, but hey, sometimes life just all seems to happen at once. I've still found time for cake though!

June started off well, with a birthday adventure for Jackie, my mother in law. She loves cake stands almost as much as me, so it seemed only right to take her for afternoon tea at West Green House. The gardens were really impressive, but I have to be honest and tell you the afternoon tea was not especially up to much. Although the food was very tasty, the portions were minuscule, and the cake stand it came on was plain and boring, and chipped! I might just have to get in touch and see if they need some of my creations!
The mini jubilee cup cakes were rather good though, and the edible flowers on the stand were a nice touch.

The Jubilee weekend then carried on with more foody things. I watched the river pageant over at a friend's house whilst making patriotic pizzas smothered in red white and blue ingredients. Yes, that is blue mozzarella on there. Less said about the Lambrini the better....

I was lucky enough to be at Buckingham Palace nomming on a lip smackingly tasty picnic in the afternoon the following day. Check out the gorgeous chocolate cupcake that came in the picnic! How it survived the palace concert afterwards I'll never know, but it was a truly brilliant day.

Oh, and this is the fab picnic basket that it came in. God Save the Queen!!

The Jubilee is just around the corner

Time to start waving those union flags and to get the bunting up, because the Diamond Jubilee is only a week away.

I'm a little late jumping on the tacky souvenir bandwagon, but I thought it wasn't too late to make some tasteful souvenirs from some lovely patriotic plates I found. They are so pretty and are dotted with shamrocks, thistles and roses.

  

I recently picked up some gorgeous fine bone china plates which have very pretty blue flowers on them. They were just crying out to be turned into a cake stand set, so voila! 

These cake stands, and many many more are available now from my shop

Just signed up to do another event

Some times I just love the web, and how it can connect people and lead to new things.

Late last night coming home on the train, I saw a facebook post from Frock & Roll, which is a lovely looking shop in Reading. They mentioned that there will be a roller disco at the Hexagon on 3 June.

This morning, I had a look at the web site and realised the roller disco is part of a big vintage fair. So I did some detective work and tracked down the organiser. Next thing I know, a lady called Storme calls me up and we have a nice little natter, and I've got a stall booked.  I guess that answers my own question about what I'll be doing for the jubilee!

So, I post my news on my facebook page, and a next thing I know, another vintage crafter is thanking me for the link, and she might sign up too. Yay for the power of social networking.

Here is the link to the Real Vintage event 

Now all I have to do is convince everyone I know to come to the Roller Disco!! When I was a kid, me and my brother used to go to the roller disco every week and skate around in circles to Agadoo and Ghostbusters. Love it!!

A new venture in Bourn

Anyone else get drenched today? I got absolutely totally 100% soaked to the skin hanging out in a bird of prey centre in Biggleswade. Me and the Mr were finally taking advantage of one of our Christmas presents, which was a bird of prey experience day, learning a little bit of falconry.  Anyway, by the time we had a right old "hoot" flying with some owls and a harris hawk, we were cold and very wet and in serious need of some lunch.

At times like this it seriously helps to have a cousin a few miles away that runs an award winning gastropub. Shaina and Craig and the crew at the Willow Tree Bourn came to the rescue with some delicious artichoke risotto for him, and fish and chips for me.

The Willow Tree does a rather excellent range of themed events, and are offering special afternoon teas at the moment, so it only seemed right to drop off a few cake stands.  

They also have a cabinet of lovely gifty things for sale, so you can now pop by and buy some!

Project light box....or maybe not!

Yuck! It's still effing raining! I love a bit of precipitation usually, and heaven knows the garden really needs it too, but there are days when the weather just gets in the way. I had planned to spend this weekend taking photos of my cake stands outdoors, so that I could add more alfresco shots to my Folksy shop. But, it became obvious yesterday that that was never gonna happen. So, time to investigate what I could do indoors instead.

Yesterday we bought a new lawnmower (ooh exciting, I hear you say!). Well actually it was, because it came in a large box. Last night I enthusiastically chopped up the box, and set about trying to make a light box, after an excellent tip from Monkey and Squidge who had pointed me in the direction of this set of instructions. 

http://www.ninthandbird.com/2011/12/diy-photo-light-box-take-better-photos.html

Well, after about an hour of scoring, cutting, and getting sticky with masking tape, I had a sort of light box to test. Not 100% the same as the instructions, but the best I could do without spending any money or heading to a fabric shop. No sooner had I pointed my lamp at it, then I realised one massive flaw in the plan. The cake stands are massive and way too big to photograph in the box, without the sides showing. After all that effort, the results looked rubbish. Doh! 

So, time for plan B. AKA the " lets just try something else" approach. So, I rolled out some white paper, pointed my light at it, and hey presto...no sides! 

The rain was still coming down like crazy outside and the sky was so grey that the light is still not right, but I'm reasonably happy with these. What do you think?