Jingly Pearl And Gold Bracelet Take 2 – Tutorial

by VioletLeBeaux | Feb 17, 2014 | Craft, Other-Accessory-Tutorials, Tutorial

My obsession with pearls and gold chain continues today with another bracelet. This version is much more jingly so people will hear you coming ^_^

You will need:

Chain
Pearls
Clasps
Wire or thread

To begin with, cut a piece of wire around twice the size of your wrist and attach a clasp to one end of it. Make sure it’s nice and secure because it will be the weakest part of the bracelet.

Slide the end of the chain onto the wire, then a pearl and then the chain again a little further down. You can vary the amount of chain you leave between pearls for different effects, I chose to thread it every 10 links.

Continue alternating between pearls and chain until it’s as long as you want it to be.

Once you reach the end just tie off the wire, attach the other part of the clasp and then snip the extra wire.

Such an easy bracelet to make but it’s so effective and looks really expensive!

What do you guys think?

I love it! Now I’m thinking of perhaps making a matching necklace too!

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Epic White Chocolate and Raspberry Chocolate Cake Recipe – Cute Food

by VioletLeBeaux | Feb 14, 2014 | Baking, Cooking-Tutorials, Tutorial

First cute food recipe!! I made this cake for Celina’s birthday. I had promised her to make a Black Forest cake as she couldn’t eat any when they were in Germany. The thing is neither her or myself actually like cherries… So this is bastardized Black Forest cake… Which is actually mostly white. And delicious.

You need:

Chocolate cake mix
Eggs
Milk
Raspberry flavour
White chocolate
Cream cheese icing
Raspberries
Whipped cream/cream to whip

So I’m cheating for a lot of this cake by using pre-made ingredients because it’s more about the decoration than the cake making part >_>

Mix up your cake mix and pour a little bit into the cake pan, just enough to cover the base.

Sprinkle raspberries evenly into the cake base and then pour in the rest of the cake mix.

Bake the cake and then repeat with a second layer.

Put the cakes aside until they have completely cooled.

Now we need some whipped cream for the middle. Pour the cream into the mixer and start whipping, start adding a little sugar at a time until it puffs up into delicious fluffy peaks. Make sure to taste it along the way to make sure it’s not too sweet… yeah that’s the reason to taste test it >_>

Place the first cake on to the cake tray and pipe a line of cream cheese icing around the edge, this will prevent the whipped cream from seeping out the sides. Then spread whipped cream all over the top.

Place the second cake on top of it and chill so it’s nice and firm.

Now ice the entire thing with pre-made cream cheese icing. Be nice and generous with the icing and make sure there are no gaps.

With the cake setting in the fridge grate up a bunch of white chocolate into tiny pieces to cover it with later.

Now is a good time to make the other decorations too. I decided to use my new Daiso chocolate tray and I made some chocolates filled with raspberry filling. Basically I made each half by melting chocolate in the trays and chilling. I then mixed icing sugar with some crushed raspberries and sandwiched them together.

This next part is a little tricky. Take the cake out of the fridge and cover the entire outside with the chocolate shavings. To get it on the sides I used a spoon and kind of just threw it on. At the end I dusted the extra off the cake stand so it looked cleaner.

Now it’s time to decorate. I put the rest of the cream cheese icing into a piping bag and went around the bottom edge to hide it. I also did a ring around the top and then extra swirls on top. I added in the filled chocolates, some extra raspberries and the rest of the raspberry filling on top.

And that’s it, it seems very simple when it’s all written down but it looks really impressive!

I only have one cake pan so I had to cook each half separately, if I could do them both at once this really wouldn’t have taken that long to bake. And it looks freaking awesome!

Having things turn out so cutely makes me really happy!

Now for the second most important part… The eating!

It’s certainly not even close to being a traditional Black Forest cake but soooo yummy. I love raspberries and I love white chocolate so this for me is much better!

Let me know if you try it out!

How To Draw Bergamot Bunny

by VioletLeBeaux | Feb 12, 2014 | Art, Artwork-Tutorials, Tutorial

A little bit more of a fun and silly tutorial today!

Let’s draw Bergamot bunny!

Start with a big round oval. Bergamot has a huge head so make it pretty huge.

Next add two big sausages for ears to the right side of the head.

Now add a round body with some little sausages for feet. The body should be a little shorter than the head. The top of it was basically like a circle with a flat bottom

Of course Bergamot has a V tattoo 😀 Her hands appear in this step as well, they are just U shapes.

Now the details. The ears have little hearts and the bow is just in front of the ears.

And the eyes, Bergamot has big circular eyes with 2 eyelashes. Make sure to put some white highlights inside too so it’s extra cute.

And the rest of the face. Her triangular nose is just a little lower than her eyes and the blush spots are the same level as the mouth. The blush spots go right off the cheeks too.

Lastly the fluffy little tail!

Now you just need to colour it all in! WINNER!

And that’s it, Bergamot is easy to draw and sketch 😀 Give it a try and send me your drawings!!

How To Make Icing Roses

by VioletLeBeaux | Feb 10, 2014 | Baking, Cooking-Tutorials, Tutorial

Ok so you guys know I’m obsessed with cake decorating at the moment. So much so that James went and bought me a BUNCH of supplies for Billy Idol Day, extremely awesome… except that it just makes me want more and more and now I’m custom piping my own icing roses… #obsession.

So I figured I would show you guys how to do it because it took me a little while to get right.

This is the end result:

To do this easily you will need the correct piping tip, it should look like a thin tear drop.

You will also need royal icing or butter cream (this will be squishier in end result though) and a “flower tack”. A flower tack is a round piece of metal with a nail in the bottom, this is what you pipe the rose on to. I tried making my own or just using the bottom of a cup to pipe onto but it really is a pain in the butt so I would really suggest just spending the $4 and buying one or else you’ll probably have frustrating results like I did XD

Rose on the tack:

You hold the nail and spin it as you work making it easier to control the end result.

Ok so let’s get started. You want stiff royal icing but no so stiff it can’t be piped easily. Place a small square of baking paper on the flower tack. You can hold it in place with a little bit a of icing.

Pipe a big round lump onto the middle of the baking paper. This will determine the shape and height of the rose so make it fairly tall and big. You can see my icing was a little too dry for the middle section below so it showed cracks.

Holding the piping bag with the thin part of the tip upwards pipe a little circle on the top of the middle lump. This will form the bud of the rose. It’s much easier if you rotate the tack rather than trying to rotate the piping bag.

Ok let’s start making some petals. Make the first petal over the join in the middle bud. To make the petal, pipe with the thin side of the icing tip upwards in a large upside down U shape. The thin part of the tip will make the tip of the petal look feathered and more like a real petal so you shouldn’t have to do much work at all.

Add the next petal in the same way overlapping the end of the last petal.

You can see from the side that these petals are really quite high up on the middle ball. This is good because it leaves room for lots of petals.

Continue making petals around the outside in this same way, overlapping the previous one.

How-To-Pipe-Icing-Roses427

The more petals you make the more it will look like a rose. If you find that it’s melting a bit then you need to use thicker icing next time.

Looking good!

Keep going with the petals until the thick bottom of each petal is touching the baking paper. You can keep going to make it huge but this is a nice size.

Once you’re done, remove the baking paper from the tack and leave the roses to dry.

And that’s it! It sounds really complicated but once you understand the basic motion of making a petal you can do these really quickly. After some practice, a rose like this takes me around 1-2 minutes.

Cuuuute! Learning how to do these yourself is great because you can match the colours to whatever you’re making perfectly as well as saving money from buying them pre-made.

Super happy that I can do these now! Let me know if you give it a try!

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DIY Chain and Pearl Bracelet – Tutorial

by VioletLeBeaux | Feb 5, 2014 | Craft, Other-Accessory-Tutorials, Tutorial

I’ve been wearing a lot of gold jewellery lately. I’ve always been a silver girl but for some reason I’ve been so drawn to gold chains. Gold and pearls.

I actually prefer to make my own jewellery because I find it hard to get things from stores that fit my wrists without just slipping off. Having a bangle fly off and hit someone in the face while you’re gesturing wildly while having a conversation isn’t something that you really want to repeat…

So anyway…. let’s make a pearl and gold chain bracelet today!

You will need:

Chain
Pearls
Thin wire
Clasps

Cut a length of chain which can wrap around your wrist.

Lay out the chain and the pearls, you want to place a pearl in every second chain.

Add clasps to the end of the chain.

Now let’s start with the pearls. Tie your thin wire securely to one end of the chain.

Thread a pearl on the wire and then thread the wire back down through the chain.

Weave the wire through the chain again so it’s under the next link, then when you go up again add another pearl. There should be a pearl on every second link.

Continue down the chain until you run out and then tie the wire off securely.

Done!!

And now you’ve got an adorable bracelet which actually fits well!

This also looks perfect stacked with a bunch of other bracelets!

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Gel Nail Polish Tutorial

by VioletLeBeaux | Feb 3, 2014 | Beauty, Nail-Art-Tutorials, Nails, Tutorial

Gel nail polish is my current obsession. Obviously I’m a big fan of nail art but I have also been really short on time lately so I’ve been lax on painting my nails. I hate having to remove or repaint when my polish chips so I decided to give gel polish a try.

Gel polish is basically what it sounds like, a hybrid between regular nail polish and full gel nail systems. Systems like shellac and gelish are the same thing. The point is that they last for much longer than regular polish, most of them advertise 14 days with no chipping or scratching etc with the idea being that you don’t need to remove them until the nails grow out.

The lovely Celina bought me a gel lamp for Christmas so I ordered some polishes from GlazeMe.com.au.

So what is the process?

First you need to gather all of your materials and prep your nails.

You need:

Top coat
Base coat
Colour
Hand sanitizer or rubbing alcohol
Gel uv lamp

Shape your nails using a file and then use a buffer to smooth out any ridges or unevenness. My nails are quite uneven after a few of them snapped 🙁

Clean the nails with rubbing alcohol or hand sanitizer so it will create a good surface for the gel to adhere to.

Paint a thin base coat on to the nails. I find it easier to do one hand at a time but it will also depend on the size of your gel lamp.

The gel polish won’t actually dry as soon it’s cured in the lamp so if you go over the edges you can just wipe it off. Make sure to clean off any gel which is on your skin or cuticles because it will make the gel more likely to flake later.

Cure under the lamp for the amount of time recommended on your bottle. Keep in mind that different lamps are different wattages so the curing time will differ depending on that too.

Once the base is cured do 1-2 coats of the colour. Make sure that you apply polishes to the tips of your nails as well, when the gel cures it shrinks slightly so if you don’t tip them they might show through.

Do fairly thin coats. Because the gel doesn’t dry until it’s cured, if you do thick coats it might drip into odd shapes before you get a chance to cure it.

I did a coat of pink plus a coat of glitter flake over the top and cured between each coat.

Next apply the top coat and cure.

Gel polish is dry as soon as it’s cured so don’t worry about bumping it afterwards. It will have a sticky film over it but it will be dry.

Wipe the nails down with some more hand sanitizer or rubbing alcohol and they will shine up nicely!

That’s it! While it does take a little while to do, there’s no annoying drying time so I actually found it much quicker than doing my nails normally. I was very happy with the quality of the polishes and prices from the glazeme website as well so I will be ordering some more colours soon!

In my experience the polish did last around 2 weeks but I tend to get a bit bored with my polish after a week so I tended just to peel it off and start again (bad! Don’t peel your polish off, it’s bad for you!).

Anyway it’s a big thumbs up from me to gel polish, it’s very convenient when I’m feeling rushed and lazy. Now I need to get myself some actual gels to start experimenting with extensions again.

My next experiments though, are going to be whether I can sandwich regular polish between gel top and bottom coats and have the same long lasting wear. I’ll let you all know how it turns out.

Hope that was helpful, let me know how it goes!

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Want to download this tutorial in one handy file?

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