Christmas is coming!

24 November, 2013 by Neets 2 Comments

Ok, the Christmas tree is up. Yes, I know, it’s still November. Mr Fussy makes it his mission to wear me down until I am exhausted and the Christmas tree goes up Show weekend. It’s been up for just over a week. It doesn’t make me feel at all like Christmas is coming.

Despite all that, this week I tackled a few Christmas projects. They were more to see how much I still need to refine, and allow me time to do just that. Plus I’m putting off making the Poinsettia gumpaste flower which I have planned for my Christmas cake. I did however get the red gumpaste made. And then used some of it to try my first “human” figurine.

I give you a very ample bossomed barrel chested  Santa. Needless to say he needs some a lot of refinement.

And he has a friend. I made Mr Penguin first, he’s a portly little fella. He’s 7cm tall and possibly almost as round. I’d say he’s had a few too many Christmas Mince Pies.

There’s shots of every angle. And while it took me a while to figure out what didn’t quite make sense, you no doubt have figured it out quicker. His belt is a little insignificant for his waist and well, his waist isn’t anywhere near where his belt is. Yep, this is one of many things I’ll do better next time.

Friday night I baked up the last of the VanillaVariation Cookies. I’ve had the dough in the freezer since August I think. I made the dough for the cookies for Cel’s maternity luncheon.

After they baked I rolled some fondant (and put through the pasta attachment) and then cut them out in the same shape as the cookies. You can see the dough really doesn’t spread. Those with fondant I piped last night. I didn’t really know what design to use, but they turned out mostly ok given my limited abilities and lack of imagination 🙂

Today I got the airbrush out. My first foray into airbrushing. I’ve watched a few Craftsy lessons, enough to give me a head start. It’s quite tricky to know where you’re pointing given that distance to the object changes how much colour is being sprayed and just where.

These cookies are a mix of airbrush and royal icing, and for some I managed to mix the two mediums. I’d love to add more colours. That would require me spending more time protecting parts of the stencils. I just lacked patience for that today.

Royal Icing gives a nice sort of velvet type look to the pattern. Getting the icing applied equally was a bit tricky. As I’d swipe the little flat plastic spatula type thing it would sometimes remove just a bit too much royal icing. I really didn’t think that would happen. I had some mishaps. The managed to get a little royal icing on and then nudged the stencil. Lining it back up caused some smudging. And then there was some bleeding (the red ornament). As for airbrushing, I got a bit too carried away on the bucket of the Christmas Tree and applied way too much. I tried to tidy it up by putting royal icing on it to help. And it did, even though it still looks a bit messy.

Then I thought I would try and make the edges of the flooded cookies a bit tidier. My ability to pipe a nice fluid circle leaves a lot to be desired. However I’m such a novice trying to pipe boarders. It is what it is, and it could be worse. Given how long it’s been since I last made an effort to pipe boarders with royal icing, I’m going to give myself a 6/10 for improvement 😉

Mr Fussy has a lot of things to eat this week. There’s still Christmas Mince Pies, the Butterscotch cookies, now these cookies and the raspberry cupcakes.