This is the cake I made for my daughters boyfriend's 21st.

It was a rainbow cake that I had seen on the Internet a few times. The first one I made was for my son's 21st. They were really pleased and surprised with it so I thought I would do another. It is a basic Victoria sponge recipe but with the ingredients trebled.
Cream together 12oz margarine and 12oz sugar until it is white and creamy. Gradually add 12oz self raising flour and 6 eggs alternatively
Divide between six bowls.

.Add gell food colouring Red, yellow, blue, green, purple and orange. Gell colouring is better as ordinary bottled colouring dilutes the mixture too much. Use an ice cream scoop to divide the mixture equally into the sandwich tins. I used two silicone "tins" I bought from the pound shop giving them a quick spray of 1 calorie oil before putting the mixture in.Bake at gas mk 5 for aprox 20 minutes.
When cooked and cooled sandwich together with butter icing (8oz butter mixed with 1lb icing sugar). Just put a thin coat on each layer as there will be five lots of butter icing between the layers as well as all over the cake. Cover the cake with the rest of the butter icing.

To decorate the cake I cut the numbers "21" out using my Cricut but I used the negative placed on top of the cake and, placing a piece of paper diagonally over the stencil, I sprinkled the first colour on. I then moved the paper about a sixth of an inch over and sprinkled over the next colour and so on.
 I then had the choice of either picking off the few sprinkles I had accidentally spilled or adding a few more to the cake. You can see what I decided to do! I put 21 candle holders around the cake and bought some rainbow candles from Asda. They are not on the cake as it had to travel. I haven't seen the inside of one of the cakes yet, although I am told there is a picture somewhere!

I saw a swan in the sea today just to the north of St Mary's Island near Whitley Bay. Apparently it's lucky to see a swan at sea so I will wait and see what happens!

I went for lunch with my daughter to Newcastle. We went to Eldon gardens and this is what we had.

It was a picnic lunch for two and came on it's own little picnic table. A very novel approach and it was all delicious.

Memory Journal

I made this for a friend's Birthday. It's an amalgamation of a few things I have seen and filed away either on my laptop or in my head!
The idea is that you have a journal and when you have a few spare minutes to write you pull a memory reminder out of the jar and write down your memories or thoughts.

I have used an ordinary spiral bound writing book from Asda for, I think, 28p. Cut a piece of brown card to fit the front cover and glue together.Choose about six co-ordinating papers and cut them into oblongs of different sizes to fit the front of the journal. Glue down leaving a small gap between each paper.

 I then downloaded various questions from the internet and cherry-picked what was relevant to my friends life. I grouped them into sixes with a different font for each group and double spacing between each question then printed them out onto matching scrapbook paper.

Cut the papers into strips and fold or curl in a few different ways then put into the kilner/mason jar. I added a tag decorated in the same way to match the journal and finally tied three pieces of matching raffia around the top of the jar. I also covered a pen in matching scrapbook paper to go with it. Again it was a cheap pen from Asda, a pack of 10 for 90. Simply cover with an oblong of paper and stick a flat bottomed jewel on the top.

Double Rainbow

This was outside of my bedroom window one morning.

A Journal

I made a journal for my daughter. She was so taken with it she asked me to cover some more books for her to use when she goes back to university.
I started with a plain note book and just covered it with nice paper. (from Paperchase)

 

The doll is a stamp by Julie Nutting.  I stamped it onto brown paper then stamped the dress onto patterned paper, this way you get the lines of the dress superimposed onto the paper. Glittered shoes and a hair band complete the doll. I printed out the saying and added the embellishments including extra glitter onto bits of the background.

Inside I stuck an envelope for bits and pieces onto the back of the front cover and a paper ruler. On the right is a cut down envelope that belonged to my daughter with her nick-name on it. This holds three different sized tags that she can use to write on or as bookmarks.

Evenly spaced out inside the journal are two more decorated pages. The top one has post-it notes stuck on and the other is decorated with a nice poem and a picture of our dog. When you decorate these paper pages you need to stick about three of them together for strength. Each page has a marker tag sandwiched between the pages as well.

This is the inside back cover. I made a pocket with a cut up sheet of printed paper and printed out another saying.
I enjoyed doing this and may do some more in the future.

Well, I knew this would happen. I am always short of time to do what I want to do. I have been crafting since my last post though and I will try and put them all up as soon as possible.