Homemade edible confetti: a tutorial

Edible confetti. What’s not to love.

After I had the idea I googled it and it turns out you can actually buy this stuff. Hence the “homemade” in the title of this post. But making it yourself means you can control the colours and the additives. And spend time when you should otherwise be doing mundane housework enjoying the meditative qualities of kneading fondant icing and flexing your punching muscles.

What you need:

• Fondant icing (I use Orchard brand, available in large supermarkets here).
• Gel food colouring (I use Americolour and Wiltons brands).
• Icing sugar and a sieve
• Baking paper
• Paper punch (a handheld circular punch works best for this project)
• Rolling pin
• Cake cooling rack (good but not essential).

What to do:

1. Start by sifting some icing sugar through your sieve onto a corner of your workspace. Make a little pile of it. You’ll use this to dry the fondant out a bit as you knead it.

2. Tear off a golf-ball sized piece of fondant and knead until smooth and pliable. If it is too sticky, add some sieved icing sugar.

3. Add a drop or two of food colouring. These gel colours are very intense and you only need a little. Better to add a little and more as needed.

4. Knead the colour through the icing until it is even, adding icing sugar as you go to keep it soft but not sticky. It tolerates quite a lot of icing sugar being added without compromising the texture or colour so don’t be afraid to add a fair bit if required.

5. Roll out your ball of fondant as thinly as you can between two sheets of baking paper. It doesn’t have to be paper-thin – just thin enough to get into the paper punch.

Peel your flattened fondant off the paper and place on another piece of baking paper on a tray to dry for a few hours. When it is dry and you can lift the whole thing off the paper without it drooping too much, transfer it to a cake cooling rack if you have one to let the air get to all sides of it. If not, just leave it on the tray and allow to dry for 24 hours.

Once the icing is stiff enough, get punching.

Try not to do this:

That’s it.

I am loving how this looks. Quite “spectacleear”, as my 4 year old would say.

And there you were thinking your paper punches were limited to use with paper, washi tape, masking tape, soap and fabric. Oh, you!

This is a post in twirling betty’s paper punch-a-palooza series. If you enjoyed it, you might also like:

1. Paper punch stencils

2. Paper punch fabric luggage tags

3. Paper punch washi tape stickers

4. Paper punch fabric confetti

4. Paper punch sparkly snowflake envelope

5. Paper punch soap confetti

6. Paper punch washi tape cake stand decoration

7. Paper punch stencilling on clothes with masking tape or freezer paper

A singlet for a new babe and a dotty bag.

A lovely friend of mine recently had a little girl and I made her a weeny heart singlet for her new love.

Baby singlets kill me.

I love the way tiny babes look like shearers in them. Heart singlets are sweeping the shearing sheds of Australia this year, by the way.

I have touched on using paper punches as a stencil in this earlier paper punch-a-palooza post, but it’s always worth coming back to because it’s such a quick but satisfying way to get  templates onto fabric.

You can either punch through freezer paper, or if you don’t have that, use painter’s masking tape on baking paper. It can be a bit trickier to line up strips of tape and so on but generally works equally well.

Also, a little tip: if your punch is not, like our friend Kanye West, the sharpest tool in the shed, place your masking tape and baking paper between two sheets of normal paper and then punch. Your paper. Not your partner. I cannot condone domestic violence.  No matter how many times they try to make you watch Top Gear.

I didn’t need to do that with the smaller heart punch, but my big circular one struggled. These are the stencils I made with the latter.

And the finished product.

It’s a Springy bag, I feel. Perfect for market trips to collect the ingredients for my favourite Spring dish.

I was cavalier with my application of paint on my teeny singlets (because that’s how I roll) and, interestingly, the masking tape made for a marginally sharper outline.  I did not expect that. Indeed, I imagine my feelings were very similar indeed to Louis Pasteur’s as each chicken recovered. Very similar indeed. And I don’t want to get too cocky, but I am preeeety sure that my results might have an even larger effect than Louis’ eventual discovery of penicillin. You heard it here first.

This is a post in twirling betty’s Paper Punch-a-palooza series.

If you enjoyed this post, you might like the other in the Paper-punch-a-palooza series.

If this has got you in the mood to crack out your supplies and punch something  – and then pull our your paper punches and make stuff  – then you might be inspired by these other posts in the series:

1. Paper punch stencils

2. Paper punch fabric luggage tags

3. Paper punch washi tape stickers

4. Paper punch sparkly snowflake envelope

5. Paper punch soap confetti

6. Washi tape cake stand border

Someone thinks I’m super. And a star.

If you’re not already familiar with it, Cut Out And Keep is a treasure trove of amazing craft, fashion, beauty and food tutorials; a repository for heaps of awesome stuff. And I am totally honoured and flattered and pink in the cheeks to be their most recent Crafty Superstar.

Here’s a link to my virtual trailer. In case you’re wondering, it’s quite a large trailer with heated toilet seats and a well-stocked bar. Knock loudly if you’re coming in, the plush carpets tend to mute outside noise.

Cut Out and Keep has a great online mag called Snippets.

 

Every day this week the lovely Cat, who runs the joint, will be posting a different twirling betty tutorial. And there’s a bit of a blurb about me as well. Including an embarrassing musical taste admission (although it’s not so much the music as the man himself) which for any long-term readers of this blog will come as no surprise but may make others vomit a little into their mouths. The thought of which, in turn, makes me giggle.

I hate the word “giggle” by the way. What am I? A 5 year old? But chortle makes me sound like Rumpole of the Bailey and laugh is too general. Maybe snicker is what I’m looking for. Only without the mean connotation. Any and all suggestions for the appropriate word gratefully accepted.

You know what I mean.

Just go on over and look at my superstarry-ness will ya?

————————

2 other things:

1. Remember these Due Punti rings I posted about a while back? Kate from Bensimon Diamonds saw that post and got in touch to let me know they have an introductory offer of 2 due punti rings for $99. That, my friends, is a good deal. I’ve already availed myself of it and two more friends have Due Punti rings in their future. Preciousssssss rings.

2.  I posted about our family photo shoot recently. Fi Mims, photographer extraordinaire, has posted some more photos of our family on her blog. I highly recommend Fi if you’re in Melbourne and in search of someone lovely to take some family snaps.

And just so we are totes clear, as always, those are not sponsored plugs. I just think 1. is a genuinely good deal on something I love and 2. is a doll who takes great photos.

Although if any cool company wishes to sponsor me….I’ll be in my trailer. In a negligee. Listening to Slippery When Wet.

Washi tape cake stand border: Part VI of the Paper-punch-a-palooza series

It’s been a while since we punched stuff together hasn’t it?

This is a bit of cheat really, as I’ve actually already shared this method of using a border paper punch on washi tape in this earlier Paper-Punch-a-Palooza post. But this is a whole new thing to which to apply it: cake stands! Obviously, you could do this on anything with a rim really. But keep it clean please. Inanimate rims only thanks folks.

Here you can see that I made my border a little deeper by starting with a strip of unpunched tape  and then stuck a scalloped strip slightly overlapping the bottom  edge of that. It’s easiest to prepare your border first and then stick it on, by the way. It saves quite a bit of screaming from frustration.

Cute, huh?

This is a post in twirling betty’s Paper Punch-a-palooza series.

If this has got you in the mood to crack out your supplies and punch something  – and then pull our your paper punches and make stuff  – then you might be inspired by these other posts in the series:

1. Paper punch stencils

2. Paper punch fabric luggage tags

3. Paper punch washi tape stickers

4. Paper punch sparkly snowflake envelope

5. Paper punch soap confetti

Punch it up my aggressive little possums, punch it up.

Sparkly snowflake envelopes: Paper punch-a-palooza: Part 4

My girls finished their letters to Father Christmas last week. They spent so much time on them I thought it only fitting that the envelopes were a bit special too.

If you just slip some aluminium foil behind the snowflakes, they sparkle and glitter like mad in the sunlight. It’s such high reward for such little work. My favourite kind of craft with kids.

Washi tape stickers: Part 3 in the Paper Punch-a-palooza series

What do you get when you combine a paper punch with Japanese washi tape? Why you get homemade stickers that are almost as cute as a dwarf rabbit in a sock.

It’s a really simple process and I actually came up with the idea months ago when I was trying to work out a way to decorate my sewing machine. What? Doesn’t everyone decorate their sewing machines? Of course you do.

Anyway, I googled the idea to see if anyone else had come up with it, and they had. A wonderful blog called Creature Comforts did this post on making Easter stickers back in March. So while I can’t claim to be the first person to combine washi tape with paper punches (although apparently can lay claim to the hilarious title of being the first to combine washi tape with magnets  – my most popular tutorial EVER, btw) , I have come up with a slight variation or two on the theme.

What you need:

• Washi Tape (duh)
• Paper punches (double duh)
• Baking paper.

What to do.

1. Lay strips of washi tape onto the baking paper. Ensure the edges of each strip of tape overlap just a fraction so that the sticker will stay together when you peel it off the  backing.

2. Punch it up my friends. Punch it UP.

I decided to see how a border paper punch would go.

It went beeeuuuutifully.

As I mentioned above, I decided to decorate my sewing machine with some of these stickers. The results make me happy.

There’s a sneak peek at the Christmas centrepiece I’m working on in the background, too.

And as I’m in complete love with my jumpo tag punch, I decided to give him (yes, he’s a big, strong male of the species) a run while I was at it. I must confess that the tag punch didn’t come out quite as neatly as I’d hoped and I trimmed the edges a little bit to neaten it up. But it wasn’t too bad. You can see the rough edges in this photo in which I’m peeling the sticker off the backing.

If you do have trouble getting the punch edges to bite cleanly through the tape and baking paper, you could try layering your stickers between two sheets of paper. This gives the punch something more papery to bite in to and seems to help.

Given the season, here are a couple of other ideas for wrapping your pressies – or making cards.

What? You’ve never heard of Christmas bunnies? Eeeeveryone knows about them. They run around in a flurry of silver snow flakes being very Christmassy indeed.

I had to pop that silver paint pen in the picture because I just bought it yesterday and it makes me very nostalgic for my childhood. It was probably one of the few crafty supplies I had as a kid. I loved my gold and silver paint pens deeply, used them sparingly and, worryingly, inhaled their heady, painty scent with glee each time I pulled the cap off. So I was transported back to my childhood as I uncapped my pen yesterday and inhaled deeply. And passed out dizzy on the couch. Joking.

Sharpening paper punches

A commenter on the fabric luggage tags post asked me a good question about sharpening paper punches. And given the abuse I often subject my punches to, she raises a really good point. If your punch edges do dull, there are a couple of things you can try. The first, also mentioned by aforesaid commenter, is to punch through some tin foil a few times. But if you need to bring out the big guns, I find punching through thick-ish sand paper a few times works really well. Just ensure the rough side is faced onto the cutting edge.

This is the third in my Paper Punch-a-palooza series. If you enjoyed this then you might also like my first two Paper Punch-a-palooza posts:

1. Paper punch to make stencils

2. Paper punch to make fabric luggage tags

Paper punch-a-palooza 1: paper punch as stencil maker

When you use a paper punch, have you ever thought about the negative space it creates and how you might use that? No? You had better things to do like live a full and interesting life? Well, while you were off having quality time with family and gorging on Umbrian truffles, I was thinking about the negative space a paper punch left.

The donut hole, if you will.

These bits.

Christmas is coming (hooray) and so what better project to start with than these stencilled napkin ties.

So here is my first exciting way to use your paper punch: to create a stencil template

What you need:

• Masking tape/painters tape
• Greaseproof paper/baking paper
• Paper punch (duh.)
• Fabric paint/fabric texta (felt tip marker)/fabric crayon. ie, something to draw on fabric with.

What to do:

1. Lay a strip of tape along some baking paper and punch out shapes through the tape.
2. Peel your tape off the baking paper and stick  it to whatever takes your fancy.  In my case, that was sheer fabric.
3. Use fabric paint ( I like the Pebeo brand) to fill in the stencil template.
4. Allow pint to dry (or not if you’re impatient like me) and carefully peel off masking tape.

Stay tuned for the next installment in the paper punch-a-paooza series.

Paper punch-a-palooza!

The humble paper punch: an underrated, under-appreciated piece of manual machinery. But not for much longer.

Paper punch-a-palooza is a series of (either occasional or consecutive – haven’t decided yet) posts showcasing the marvellous possibilities of these little workhorses of the craft world.

Formerly confined mainly to the domain of hardcore scrapbookers and card makers, not to mention sadly type-cast by their name, I’m bringing these little guys out of single-use obscurity and putting them firmly in the spotlight. I’ll show you a whole host of new ways you can use your paper punches.

This is not a series for the faint-hearted. No. I am going to take you and your punches on a journey to some occasionally controversial places. I am going to punch holes in materials that some might consider just sheer recklessness.

So you’ve been warned. Walk away now if you don’t think you’ve got the intestinal fortitude required for such hard-core punching. But if you’re as excited as I am to see just how this humble tool consistently punches well above its weight (boom tish), then come. Take my hand. Let’s plunge into this festival of paper punchiness together.

Paper-punch-a-palooza Part 1 coming very soon…