Gilded easter eggs: a tutorial

What you need:

• Metallic craft foil (I used the one I found at my local craft store, Jones Tones, but there are many brands)
• Double-sided adhesive tape
• Eggs

This year I went hunting for white eggs as almost all the eggs you get here, in Melbourne at least, are the brown variety. I tracked some down at the Victoria Market and I’m now obsessed with their creamy, milky purity.

Contrary to popular belief, the shells of white eggs are not bleached. White eggs are produced by certain breeds of chook.

What to do:

1. Blow or boil your eggs.

2. Use double-sided tape to create adhesive patterns on your eggs.

3. Rub the dull side of your metallic foil sheet over your sticky bits – or follow the instructions in your pack. Which all sounds vaguely inappropriate but it’s up to you as to how far you want to take that. I am personally known for taking things one step too far so you can guess where I am likely to end up.

You can use strips of double sided tape applied to baking paper and a paper punch to create tiny bunny stickers as I did in the first photo in the post.

Or for something more ornate, a border paper punch is a little fiddly but creates a beautiful result.

Or you can just cut strips of your tape to create this simple effect.

However, no matter what method you use, there is no doubt that playdough eggs rolled in glitter produce the most spectacular eggs. As Olive’s creation here attests.

 

God, how I love a glittery finger.

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

Washi tape jam jar lids: how-to

 

Ahhhh washi tape: is there anything thou canst not improve?

I have been bottling up a storm lately. Well, when I say lately, I pretty much just mean today. I bought 17kg of tomatoes at the farmers’ market this morning and at this point have 4kgs worth bottled and sitting on my shelf contemplating a saucy life. But more on my direct transition from my thirties to nonna-hood in a later post.

  

For now, I wanted to share another way you can use washi tape; to prettify the lids of your homemade bottled stuff.

I LOVE giving away bottles of stuff I’ve made but I’m always slightly irked by the crappy lids on my oft-recycled jars and bottles. Baking paper and baker’s twine are nice but they are outta there once the bottle is opened for the first time.

Decorate your tops with washi tape and the lids will stay as perty as your preserves within.

If your lids are a dark colour or heavily patterned, pop a small disc of white paper on top before you start to washi (yes, it’s a verb now too) so your tape is light and bright.

Trim overhanging bits with an exacto knife or that surgical scalpel you’ve had lying about in the top drawer.

PS: The stuff in these bottles was meant to be plum jam but it never set. So I called it plum sauce. And it was delish on crepes.