More pics from the Terracotta Warriors

Terracotta Warriors trip

Recently I went on a trip to Liverpool's World Museum to see the Terracotta Warriors and had a fantastic day.

They are amazing and so I thought I'd share some pics with you over a few posts because I took so many!

This is the first thing you see when you walk in

Just in case your wondering what these are...... they are bells

Christmas cakes

Over the last few months at WI craft group we've been working on our Christmas cakes step by step.

In October we put the marzipan on (well apart from me, I have double icing because I'm not a fan of marzipan!)

In November we put the icing on

And in December we decorated them, me being different did 2 of them but one is a gift.

This first one is mine and I have to admit I didn't do the bow, I was getting short of time to get mine done because I did the gift one first so the fellow member that was showing us what to do did that for me.

And the gift one, the person receiving loves marzipan so the decorations are made from it.

For someone that has never decorated a cake before I'm really pleased with how they turned out and there is every chance that we'll be doing them again next year :)

Last Cheshire Show post for this year

Here at last is my completed entry

And the result

Cheshire Show entry

I've been working on my entry for the Cheshire show for the last month or so and a few days ago I realized I hadn't shared anything about it :( so it's time to put that right.

It took a while to first of all pick the colours for it and I had help and useful suggestions from Vicki at Spellbound Beads on a trip there.  Then I spent an afternoon playing about with patterns on paper and they still got changed when I beaded them!

But this is the bit you really want to see, the pics :)

All 24 triangles will be the same 4 patterns although the solid one will be different each time so that the pattern does what I want it to do when it's finished

I'm actually about 3/4 finished now but will break up progress over a few posts so I don't bore you to much or overload on pics :)

Cake decorating

Today was WI craft group and we had one of our members who is a very skilled cake decorator showed us a few basic techniques some of which you may remember from last year

First a basic swirl in buttercream

And then a buttercream rose

Then it was time to play with the sugar paste

First we did a plain base then added flowers from a mould mine's a petunia

Next was a rose and rose bud on a textured background

Then a stencil and dusting powder

Lastly a different type of mould using the left over white from the stencil one above that had been slightly coloured from the dusting powder, I picked a dahlia

And here they are all together

There were cakes left over so I brought a few home along with a piping bag full of buttercream so I can practice a little bit more

Cup Cakes

On Thursday at WI craft club we had a go at decorating cup cakes which is something I've never done before and loved it!  It's a shame I have no one to bake for these days because I'd love to do more.

My efforts all together

First thing we did was a very simple, basic buttercream swirl

Next came a buttercream rose

Then we got to play with sugar paste :)

First of all we learnt how to put a plain circle of it on top, these were put aside for a while while we did something else and then we came back to them and used a stencil.

This is my favourite one

While our plain cakes were set aside we did another circle only this time we used a texture board 

Next came making a rose, cutting out leaves and using edible glue

We were also let loose with the glitter so everything got some :)

Then we played with a mould and I did a Hydrangea.

With this one we also learnt how to paint the centre's using the same powder as the stencil one above

And we had a little time left over so we got to play with other little moulds so I added the butterfly and little square to my buttercream ones and the brooch to the bubbles but it looks more like a sun to me

Beaded pen

I'm off to the WI summer fair this afternoon and decided to make a raffle prize.

The pattern is from Fun Beading Patterns on etsy and it wraps around a standard pen (Pilot G2)

As normal please excuse the untidy bead mat :)

Cheshire Show entries

Wednesday was WI meeting night so I got to bring my Cheshire Show entries home at last

My individual entry was the 2011 Christmas ornament from Robi Lynn and I got second place with it

And for the institute I made this lily of the valley lariat from an old issue of Bead and Button and got full marks for it :)