TICK TOCK....

I made this felt cuckoo clock, that doesn't actually have a cuckoo, for Alison's birthday. I and not completely happy with it, wanted it to be a little more detailed, but ran out of time. This is like the only thing I have made this year, feeling uninspired, hopefully this will open the flood gates for much more making!

Kandy is looking so hott right now!

That's because she has this:

Purchased from Urban Outfitters, but designed by her friend Simon Preen.

VOTE BABY VOTE!

On Saturday, it is the start of May (and also my birthday aw yeah!). May, this year is jam packed for me, with many things to make and do. Something important I need to do is VOTE! We touched upon this in Sugar Paper #4:What's that I hear, a yawn?! Voting is in no way boring, it's exciting if nothing else!
Check out these awesome voting related clips:


And if I could find a clip of it, this would be where I would put the voting scene from Pecker!

To find out more abut voting visit about my vote.

Party Ring cake

I made this one possibly last August for my friend Katie's birthday:
Party Ring lemon cake
You will need:
6oz/175g caster sugar
6oz/175g margarine
6oz/175g self raising flour
3 eggs
1 large lemon
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For the icing:
Icing sugar
Red and yellow food colouring
Skewer or something pointy!

Make the cake mixture as for Victoria sponge*, add the juice and (grated) rind of half the lemon to the mixture. Bake for around 30 minutes in a round, deep tin.
Leave to cool.
Make pink icing using the icing sugar, red colouring food and the juice of the other half of the lemon, add warm water if icing is too thick. Make enough to cover the cake. Make a small amount of yellow icing too.
Cut a circle out of the middle of the cake to make a ring.
Smooth over the pink icing and using a tea spoon drop lines of the yellow icing across. With the skewer drag through the opposite direction to what your yellow lines go. Do this evenly spaced around four times, this creates the feather icing look on party rings!

*Recipe in Sugar Paper #1

Paint Palette cake!

So it's almost officially the start of birthday season here at Seleena Sugar Paper Towers, warming up with a couple of friends birthdays in April, followed by mine at the start of May (woooooooooooooooo) opening the birthday flood gates for sisters, cousins uncles and aunts, leading to friends summer birthdays, leaving only a break end of June-July (which is good as that time will be spent watching Eclipse at the cinema!). So this means I will soon be doing lots of baking and cake eating. To celebrate this fact, we are giving you some recipes for our favourite novelty cakes we have made.
First up is the Paint Palette cake I made for Alison a couple for years back.

Paint Palette
You will need:
4oz/100g caster sugar
4oz/100g margarine
4oz/100g self raising flour
2 medium eggs
Food colouring: red, blue, green, yellow
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For icing:
Icing sugar
Strawberry and vanilla essence
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Also:
Paint palette
Bun cases
Astro belt, small bread stick for decoration

Make the cake mixture as for Victoria sponge*. Place 2 desert spoons of the mixture into a small bowl, add red food colouring and strawberry flavour. Put into a bun case. Do the same with each colour. Next orange, mixing red and yellow colouring mixed together and strawberry flavouring. Yellow with vanilla essence. Green with vanilla essence, blue with vanilla essence. {purple, mixing red and blue together with strawberry flavour.
Bake for 20 minutes and leave to cool.
Make icing for each cake, using the colouring and flavourings as used for the cakes. Mix a couple of tbsp of icing sugar with several drops of colouring and flavouring and a tsp of warm water. Mix to a thick consistency. Pour on top of cooled cake, level out so the icing is nice and flat. Leave to set. Mix some white icing (no colour or flavouring). Place a blob on the bottom of each bun case and place on to the paint palette, once set the cakes will stay stuck.
For the paintbrush we used dippers from a choc dip and cut bits off an astro belt and stuck those to the palette with icing!

Stay tuned for Sugar Paper #5 (we're working on it, honest!) which features a recipe of our absolute FAVOURITE novelty cake.

*this recipe is found in Sugar Paper #2!!

WHIP IT, WH-WH-WHIP IT REAL GOOD!

So we had a field trip to see Whip It the other day, I was dubious at first, not being the biggest fan of the main star, but a film directed by Drew Barrymore, about Roller Derby was only ever going to be good wasn't it!

We enjoyed A LOT. I definitely recommend you to all go and see it! And then afterwards get out your Barbie skates from the loft and start skating!

If you want more than just a leisurely skroll(that's a skate stroll) then check out our how to guide to roller derby by guest writer Natalie in Sugar Paper #2!

PS- Kandy and I would now like to be known only as Calamity Pain and Nancy Spew, respectively, thanks!

Craft idol #6

Whitney LeeI first came across this lady when I watched the Handmade nation documentary at and Exhibition in Leigh last year (was it last year?!). I think I had briefly seen her work in Bust magazine before, but I hadn't really studied it.
In a nutshell Whitney makes trashy, pornographic latch hook rugs! But it's so much more than that!
Whitney is a feminist with a sense of humour and incredible talent for latch hook rug making. I have yet to garner this talent, I used to spend a long time making rag rugs with my Grandad and so latch hook is something I definitely want to try out.
Whitney makes and sells kits too for those of us who want to get our latch hook on.
If you want to become a hooker or just want to gawp at the rugs, learn more here. Also check check out Sugar Paper #5 (when it's ready) as our very own alison erika forde has submitted a basic how to on latch hook rugs.

From The Northwest to The Northwest

This time last year I was scooting along the West Coast of America like the totally cool dudette I am:
I wrote a zine about it that apparently wasn't very in depth (mostly about what i cooked for tea! So if you would like to read more, check out Nickie's day by day, blow by blow account here

Mini Make And Do

Would you like to make this?*
Want to know how?

YOU WILL NEED:
-Cardboard
-Scissors
-Yellow yarn
-Orange felt
-Googly eyes
-Glue

First, draw two circles (around 8.5cm diameter) on to your card. Draw an inner circle (3cm in) in the center. Cut out the rings.

Put your yarn into little balls. Place the two rings together and start wrapping your yarn round and round, passing the yarn through the center of the rings.

Do this until you have around 6 layers of yarn covering your ring.

Carefully cut along the edge of the yarn ring, whilst holding the loose threads in place.

With a short piece of yarn, tie round the centre of the cut yarn ring (between the two cardboard rings. Tie a knot and remove cardboard.

Trim any loose yarn and fluff up.

Cut a triangle for beak and foot shapes out of the orange felt. Glue these and the eyes onto the pom pom to create your fluffy pom pom chick!

Why not try a pom pom Bunny too!

*it looks a lot cuter in real life, my camera finally packed in and so had to scan the little thing, aw!