Kids cakes you can afford – Fake Cakes

Most of us want to give our kids the best for their Birthdays and an OTT (Over The Top) Birthday cake has suddenly become the normal requirement.

Even if I could afford to buy a 4 tier OTT $800 cake for my child’s first birthday does it really mean I want to ?

Heck NO !

I can think of many other things to spend the money on including a good bottle of wine that I will need to drink after the 20+ kids run riot through my house.

So why not fake it and fool everyone that you are indeed a “time savvy organized rich mother “.

I must admit faking cakes is nothing new to me, many times I have had to put a fake base on a homemade creation just so it doesn’t topple over but that was more out of necessity them affordability.

So what about the real cake? Well you have 2 options – make 1 tier real (make sure you cut from this tier) or take the cake back into the kitchen and serve up a sheet cake. Everyone will be none the wiser.

IMPORTANT TIP: If your fake cake is colored e.g, blue, make sure the real cake that you a slicing from also has a sheet of the same icing otherwise your cover will be blown.

Here are some bases around $50 a set at Sugarcraft.

Here are a couple of videos to help you with techniques.

Mark Ballard has some great techniques http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BT2pWtOlmEk

Donna shows us how to cover a polystyrene Dummy tiers with icing http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKILPEC3q3Y

Rather fake some cake pops? then check out this post of Faking them too. Faking it doesn’t just start when you get married it can start at the reception too with this article about fake wedding cakes.

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I have not done a lot of big cross stitch projects, but sometimes even with small projects it can be hard to decide exactly where to begin and how to work through the chart if you’re working with multiple colors. The general categories for the possible methods are known as cross country and parking.

Cross country means that you’re working one color at a time, moving around the chart (or the section of the chart you’re working on) until you’re done with that color. Parking means you’re working in a smaller section and doing all the colors in that area, “parking” the threads by leaving them attached to the canvas but out of the way while you finish each section.

Royal Rows is a specific way of parking named by Alison Royal, which is explored in detail on a post on Stitching Daily.

The idea is that you’re working one “tower” of stitches at a time (she uses a section of 10 stitches across by 20 down, but you can do whatever makes sense to you). You work all the stitches of a color at a time, starting at the top left and working your way down. When you’re done with a color you can park it where needed in the section below your current tower (known as the dungeon) or in the “east tower,” which is the section to the right.

There’s also a specific way of dealing with thread ends when you’re done with a color. This is a super simplified version (head to the blog post at Stitching Daily to get all the details) but the basic idea is that you’re working from left to right and top to bottom across the work, parking the threads in the next section when you’re done with them and systematically choosing which color to work with next.

The whole idea of parking is kind of overwhelming to me though I will admit that it makes a lot of sense. I guess I need to try it on a smallish big project and see how it goes. Do you use the parking method of cross stitch? I’d love to hear about it!

[Photo via Stitching Daily]

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