Ask Carrie Craftster....

Like all good agony aunts, Carrie Craftster can improve your life greatly, so if you've got your knitting all knotty, your stitches in a tizz or your cakes aren't rising to the occasion, ask her how you can make it better.
Send her your craft to:
sugarpaperzine@hotmail.com
(with the title ASK CARRIE!)

fruity!

So, what I thought was not that long ago (but is probably a few months!), I went blackberry picking, but they weren't quite ripe enough yet, so today I went again and was shocked to see they were all shrivelled up until I realised IT'S NEARLY OCTOBER!!! where has 2K10 gone?

I persevered and got this pitiful bunch:

In other news the apple tree my sister planted (with pips from an apple) in a yogurt pot back in the 80s in a flat in Bradford is bringing out some juicy ones this year:And I've just made my first batch of lemon curd (something I usually leave to my mum) the recipe will totes be in Sugar Paper #6.

This looks pretty sweet....

Therefore everyone should go!

cARTft Idol!!

A month ago Kandy and I went on a birthday day trip. We started the trip off by going to the
Intuition (The Musgrave Kinley Outsider Art Collection) at The Whitworth Art Gallery.

The exhibition was really good and I enjoyed seeing so many of the works (particularly seeing some of Henry Dagger's work up close and personal!!).

Some work we really liked and was that of.....

Madge Gill
The work of Madge Gill is very intricate and enticing yet seeming quite dark. This may have something to do with her not so smooth upbringing and later becoming very spiritual to the point that she claimed all her work was guided my a spirit named MYRNINTEREST.

Now the reason we want to call her a cARTft idol (that's me trying to put the word art and craft together!) is because not only was she handy with a pen but with a knitting needle, crochet hook and needle and thread.

In the exhibition is also some embroidery that is a huge piece of work and extremely detailed, after learning she did a lot of her work in bed by lamplight and with the vision of just one eye, I was in awe!

It inspires me to see needlework classed as art as it something I am trying to work on myself and so often thing needlework and other crafts can get passed of as just that without gaining extra merit.

Novelty Cakes

So it seems I have managed to get to the end of National Cupcake week without eating, making or even sniffing a cupcake, this must be some sort of crime!! I had every intention to knock a few out and get them on here, but my week has been full (and not of cupcakes), working, making zineing and watching The Runaways film (finally) have taken up all my time, and therefore made for a pretty shoddy week of cupcake blogging, find a much better one here from the cool Carla.

As it's getting late (ish!) and I get bored of trawling the net for pictures after like 3minutes, I shall post a few of my favourite novelty cakes (because you all know how much we love novelty!):

two things I loved as a child (and still now, Mario and Lego)

check out those bad boys!!! They're taken from the book Hello Cupcake, that should be landing on my doorstep any day now, so when I eventually get some free time, expect me to knock out so real (novelty cake) beauts!!

Inedible cupcakes!!!

Right now you're obviously thinking what an absurd idea, a cup cake you can't eat, well look at these bad boys....

And what goes best with cupcakes? A cup of tea of course...
(Cup cake beenie, cup cake lip gloss from Fred Flare, cupcake cushion from Knit And Destroy, teapot and cup necklace from Helpless Romantic, teapot and cup brooch from Hannah Makes Things)

It's big..but is it the biggest?!

In case you forgot..it's national cupcake week, so I've been looking for the world's largest cupcake...a pilgrimage following a trail of sprinkles, edible glitter and icing...and I think I found the most recent 'world's largest cupcake'.. I found lots of images claiming to be 'the one' but then went to the trusty source of the guinness book of records, and I think this is the one...

Baked on 15th August 2009 in Detroit, they were making an even bigger one than this but it expanded and broke the oven...DAAAMN..I'm not surprised though! They were determined to do it and 'baked through the night' to beat the record that had only been set one month previously, the cake weighed 555.197kg

Here's the official with his tapemeasure..oh aye, it's a big un, we'll give em the record! The one that they beat the record for was pretty special cos it was for Spongebob's 10th anniversary, here it is on top of a tower of cupcakes.

Totally small compared to the above effort but it was a one-woman feat, no 'gourmet team' on this job...and it was for spongebob!

Now I feel like breaking a record...any suggestions of which record attempt Sugar Paper Gang should try to break on a postcard please.