birthday

Pikachu Cake – Nephew’s 9th B-day

baking, Blog Post

I am very late on posting my Nephew’s B-day Cake (his birthday was in June) lol and will probably be late posting my Niece’s cake as well (her Bday is on October) due to Inktober 2017 & working/helping promote Night Of Fear Festival…Anyway!

Due to some time restraints and strange planning, I decided not to make his cake from scratch so I used boxed cake and icing – I know, I know don’t judge me! its great in a pinch! Because this was going to be a pickachu cake I choose a yellow, Lemon cake (which worked out perfect as it does not contain soy, flax or tree nuts great for those with allergies in the family), the box had enough batter for two 9″ round cakes.

The shape of Pikachu’s head is not a perfect circle with his slightly chubby cheeks and pointy ears, so I needed to cut both cakes to create the right shape of the face and ears. This resulted in quite a bit left over, so I decided to try my hand at making cake balls to later ice like poke balls. Basically you take your extra cake, chop it up into finer pieces then add a fair bit of icing, start mashing them together with your hands to bind the cake together, roll it into a ball and vuala – cake balls!

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Now I did not have any small cake ball sticks, making these were not apart of my original plan, but I did have an abundant amount of popsicle sticks so I used those instead; though the cake ball sticks would of probably worked better, I added some icing to act as a “glue” to better secure the cake in place. Once “sticked” I placed the cake balls in the freezer to harden while icing/decorating the cake and prepping some melted chocolate to dip the cake balls in. If you decide to melt white chocolate, be sure to buy candy melts and not chocolate chips (the white ones do not work as well as the dark chocolate chips – not really what they are for either lol candy melts however work best). Not having a self warming bowl that melts chocolate and not wanting to use the microwave (did not want to keep having to remelt the chocolate) I created my own double broiler using a small sauce pan, colander & bowl. Just add some water to the pot (not too much, you do not want the water to touch the colander or bowl, let the steam do its magic) and place the colander into the pot with the bowl inside. Once this starts to heat up, add your chocolate melts and mix with a rubber spatula until they are evenly melted.

Once this was ready, I removed the cake balls from the freezer and began to dip them into the melted chocolate, sticking the sticks into cardboard (be sure to make pre cut slots, a styrofoam block would if been best) to allow them to dry. I later added red food colouring to the white chocolate (would recommend using red candy melts as the extra liquid from the food colouring slightly altered the chocolate’s consistency) and dipped the top half of the cooled white chocolate cake balls. Once cooled, I coloured some of the leftover yellow icing (used for the main cake) black, placed it into a sandwich bag as a make-shift piping bag and decorated the seam around the poke balls, finishing them off with a white chocolate chip button.

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Once the poke balls were complete, I added my final touches to the cake with fondant. Starting from the lightest colour, working my way to the darker colours; colouring the white to red for the cheeks, then the leftover red to black for the tips of the ears, base of the eyes, nose and mouth. I like to use americolour food colouring for icing & fondant, find it has the best results.

Finally, using some water I “glued” the white eye details to the black fondant circles. If you have ever worked with fondant you know the key is to use confectioners sugar like flower to roll out, colour and shape the fondant to prevent sticking, making a light white dust appear on your fondant, but no need to worry as this can be removed with lightly brushing water over your fondant pieces to give them that nice, clean shine.

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Let me know what you think and don’t forget to follow me on instagram or twitter for realtime posting.

Thanks for reading 🙂

Halo Master Chief

Blog Post, fan art, illustrations

My big little brother is a Halo master! Master Chief CJ, Halo MASTER!!!

He lives, breaths, eats halo & it shows! The things he unlocks in the game & how good he is at playing it amazes me, not to mention his online gamer friends! I wish he would post his gaming skills because they are insane.

REWIND: He is my “Big Little Brother” because he is the baby of the family but is about 6 feet tall. He just turned 20 January 23rd, its hard to believe he is already 20!

So it is clear the inspiration for this illustration (which was his bday present 😛 ) is my big little brother, Justyn.

The Materials:
• Bainbridge Illustration Board
• X-Acto Knife
• Watercolour Paint
• Masking/Transfer Tape
• Faber Castell Watercolour Pencils
• Prismacolor Premier Pencil Crayons
• Steadler Pigment Liner 0.1
• Sharpie Extra Fine Point
• Jelly Roll 08 White Jelly Pen
• Reference Pic
• Pencil & Eraser
• Wooden Board
The Process:


1. On the Illustration board I sketched out the rough image, using reference image, then added the details

2. Outline final sketch & details with Steadler Pigment Liner 0.1

3. Mask off entire sketch with the transfer tape

4. With the x-acto knife lightly trim round the boarder & character. (Be sure to use a sharp blade & do not push down too hard, you do not want to cut the illustration board)

5. Peel the pieces of the tape off the background (only in areas you want to be painted)

6. Painted the background with water colour paints, starting with a light purple, gradually fading into darker a darker shade of purple to blue to black.

7. After 2 layers of this I used a dry brush, dipped it in white paint & spattered it over the entire image to create stars.

8. Once this dries, peel the tape covering the image & start blocking in colour with the watercolour pencils & blend with water, when it dried I did a second layer to add more dimensions with shadows, keeping the highlighted areas light from the start (it is easier to keep the white areas light than trying to add them back in)

9. Once this dried I used prismacolour pencil crayons (they go on creamy & blend awesome) over top to finish adding colour & dimension to the image

10. I did the pencil crayon one section at a time, using the extra fine tip sharpie to go over my existing ink lines to make them pop more, while adding some line work for shading (the pencil crayons pushed the strength of the felt back)

11. Once this was complete I used my Jelly Roll pen to add some texture to the highlighted ares & some stars to the background.

12. Peel off the rest of the transfer tape & framed the image (I made the illustration 8.5”x11” so I trimmed the matting of an 8”x10” frame to showcase the entire illustration)

Let me know what you think of this illustration, & of any critiques you may have. Don’t forget to follow me on my social to see what I am working on in real time!

Thank you for reading 🙂

Happy 20th B-Day Big Little Brother!

baking, Blog Post

My big little brother turned 20 January 23rd…so crazy!!

He is a Halo MASTER!!  – more about this in next weeks post about his birthday present, you probably saw on my social media if you follow me on instagram, twitter, facebook or tumblr lol

Here is his Halo 20 Birthday cake!


The recipe for this is similar to the one I did for my newphew’s 7th Birthday Take Typography Out Of the Box & Play A While except I used a chocolate pudding instead of vanilla or oreo; again using oreo cookie crumbs for the top decoration.

Last year I made him a chocolate mindcraft cake, which was a lot of fun, one of the first cakes I really experimented with that was not for a school project lol a couple of years ago we made a cookbook and had to make the recipe & photograph the outcome, so I had some fun with this making my Red Velvet Raven Cake.

Thank you for reading 🙂