Organizational Day Cooking

Have a event at my husbands job tomorrow which required a little baking. Being the ambitious through back that I am I looked on my handy dandy iPhone program iFood for two recipes that would be nice to take. Here is what I came up with.

Below in the photo on the left is three Blueberry cheesecake torts that I just put in the oven. After an hour of cooking at low heat they turned out nice and tasty lookinh, as shown in the right picture. All that is left is depaning and they are ready.

The other item I'm making is a simple chocolate cake. After it cools over night I frosted it in a nice orange cream cheese frosting. Because the orange was so strong I added a little melted simi-sweet chocolate to smooth out the overall flavor.

A New Start

Started a new 3D bead project last night. These little triangles can be shaped in to two shapes shown below.

A New Piece

Trying a new medium today I made this nice new necklace that is going into my jewelery box. This piece is eight glitter stones embedded with glass flowers. The metal chain and flower links are made of antic brass. Overall it is a nice affect for a casual piece. Though not a lot of people who have viewed it liked it. The lines were not as nice as they would have liked. Though the stones were well received.

- FKB Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Insanity at Store.

.... Sitting here at store to buy fabric to make a dress. Never ever take kids to a fabric store. That is my advice for the day.

Left is the dress pattern that I found that I liked. I'm planning to make the dress without straps or sleeves. I just hope the dress turns out nice for my husbands military ball. So I guess taking the kids wasn't a complete loss since I did find a good pattern in my size.

.... The silk in the photo looks brighter the it does in person, but has nice depth for use in a evening gown. I just hope I can pull of this shade of color. My original plan was to use the black chiffon to tone down the scarlet color, but my pattern look horrible on me when I practiced it in cotton. So with the new pattern and enough luck I will have a better dress to wear. Now I just have to cut it and sew it. I wish it wasn't two pieces though. That is the the only thing I hate about this pattern. If I was a truly good at this I'd fins a way to fix this.

.... The sad thing about formals is that topically you only get about one wear out of them. Maybe someone needs to start a second round swap formal wear shop on post. Just think if such a shop existed, all those wives swapping dress instead of purchasing new ones. It would definitely save on the pocket book. Plus there would always be a place to go looking when you need a dress.

~FKB Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

First Batch of Soap

OK so I tried to make a test batch of soap. I designed the recipe to smell and look like a Blood Orange. I wont know how it turns out till I unmold it tomorrow. But to celebrate the first batch I tool a few photos.

1. First I made lye. Because lye is so dangerous I have not taken any photos.

2. I measured out all my ingredients and melt them in a large crock pot. In the photo to the lest you see coconut oil melting down. Coconut oil is used in soap to help control oil skin and make great lather. If a bar of soap is made of pure coconut oil and nothing else then it will lather even in sea water, but it will severely dry out your skin.


3. After all the oils are mixed and heated I slowly pour in the lye. Again due to safety I have no photo of this step.

4. Next I use a hand blender to mix the lye and oils to light trace. It took me very little time due to the heat. Plus since it was my first batch I over did the blending. After the fact I discovered that the term light trace is when the soap just verily holds the shape of the bottom of the stick mixer when lifter away from the soap. I noticed I over did it when the spatula left patterns in the soap as I scraped the sides and bottoms.

5. Next I heated the soap, or better thought off as cooked it through a sold phase and back into a soft scope-able stage. After that I added FO of blood orange. Not a lot since the stuff was expensive and this was a test batch. Then I divided half the mixture into the mold box and colored the other half blood orange red. Scoping the last on top I used wax paper to press flat.

6. After a night of cooling in the mold, I removed the wax paper and cut small bars to test out. To be safe of the curing stage I let it sit on a shelf for a two week period. Just to be safe that the lye cured out and the bar harden just a little more.

Not Right For One, But Right For Another

In the spirit of crafting and friendship I worked on a nice simple piece of jewelry that someone asked me to make. I love practicing my wire work, so was excited to give the piece a try with subdued black painted material and sparkly glitter stone embedded with glass flowers. The black chain and wire is one of my harder mediums because the paint can chip off if I over do the pressure and the wire bending. So it is always a challenge to form perfect wire wraps that don't lose paint. After a few hours I managed to get five stones onto wire and connected to the chain. Which made a nice long larent. Only it turned out that the piece wasn't large and gaudy enough to fit my friends taste, or at least that's what she told me when she saw the piece. So like a good soul who hates to wast supplies I re-worked the chain and formed a multi strand piece. It was my son, Colin, who decided after seeing me take the completion photo that the piece looked like something Nana would like. So we took it over to her place to see if she wanted the piece. Colin was definitely right, the piece did suite Nana much better. I still haven't made a gaudy piece for the friend yet. Even though I have more of the stone left. I just cant get into massive gaudy pieces.

Simply For Family

This piece was made for a a family member who end up at the hospital. I was shopping at my local bead store when one of sales clerk started talking about how stones have healing and emotional properties. Ive heard this a few times before, but never bothered to put faith into it. But thinking of the rough time a family member has had in the hospital, I thought I'd take her advise and make a piece for her. The stone is amazonite. According to my rep at the supply store it is believed to be the "Hope Stone" and is very lucky. If you put faith into the meanings of stones then this one is believed to promote kindness, balance, practicality, and physical stamina. All off which she needs in her time of healing. The other reason for the stone, I love the color of soft green. I paired the stones with simple wire and beads. In the beads I added jade, jasper, and earth greens to balance the stone. Since the necklace turned out so nicely I added a set of earrings so that they could be a complete set. In fact I loved the piece so much that I've since purchased two more sets of the stones and beads in case I want to make another couple of sets.

Formal Necklace

Saw a pattern of jewelry I liked on some website, which for the life of me I cant remember the name of. I liked the simplicity of the lines and beads. Only I wanted to jazz it up a bit. Make a more formal piece and use a little of my fire polished glass pendent beads. After a lot of modification and thinking I managed to rework the piece to include strings of beads that have glass beads at the end. The piece is very very musical to wear as the glass loves to move around. Its definitely not a piece you would wear every day. Though my daughter did try to claim this piece. She loves the sound of the glass as she moves.

A Long Time~ Bangle Inspired

OK I started this piece back when the Bangles were scheduled to make the play offs. Hence the orange and black color. The rope alone took me a lot of time to complete because I just kept getting bored with the piece. After I finally had the right length, which isn't shown in the picture correctly since I coiled the rope for it all to be seen, I made a 3D poinsettia flower to attach. The black beads for the flower base was just for showing off how nice the orange beads look as a trim. Since this was my first attempt at making 3D bead work, I'm storing this piece in my jewelry box. If the team ever make the playoffs again, I'll pull it out and wear it with pride!