The Flower Cupcake Box

Next up is a cupcake decorated with a wooden flower.  The inspiration for this design were these cupcakes:

The wooden version looks like this:

To make the lid, I used 1/4” thick yellow heart and decorated it with petals cut individually with the grain from 3/16” thick padauk, shaped by sanding.  You could also cut the petals as a segmentation, but you'd lose the grain effect.  For the center, I drilled a hole ½” in diameter in the middle of the petals, and cut a matching plug, which was sanded and covered with fabric paint dots.

Here's the pattern for the flower:

The Baseball Cupcake Box

The second in this series of cupcake lids looks like a baseball.  Here's a picture of a cake I made several years ago with a baseball theme.

Here's a picture of actual baseball cupcakes.

And here's a picture of the baseball cupcake box.

The lid is cut from ¾” thick aspen lid, and the markings made from red fabric paint.  Since aspen is porous, seal it well with shellac or lacquer before you add the decoration so you can remove any paint mishaps easily.

To position the "stitching", cut two equal sections of the ring from the cupcake base pattern and use them as a guide to mark the location for the "stitches".  

Off in a new direction

Always wanted to try to replicate the look of gum paste flowers, without having to rely on carving.  This is my first attempt, using petal dust, a cake decorating supply, to add a touch a color on the tips of the petals, bloodwood for the center, and fabric paint for the yellow "stamens".

The box was made from pieces left over from another project.  Pretty good use of scraps!

Work in process

I've been working on some new projects using a texturing compound that dries hard like wood, but can be applied with a piping bag and tip.  Before doing an actual project, I experimented with the compound, and also with fabric paints, to see what the limitations were.

Here's a picture of some of the preliminary effects I played with, and some wood that's been prepped for an actual project.  When I start off in this way, I never know where I'll end up, and I already have quite a punch list of things to try.  Those that work will probably end up as published articles for everyone to enjoy, and those that don't are still a learning experience!

Working with fabric paint

A while ago, I shared some of the problems I had while trying to use fabric paint to decorate my bed box project (see blog post of 5/13/12).  Since my paint dots have definitely gotten better, I thought I'd pass along some tips that should be helpful, passed along to me by Kim Braa, a woodworker who does amazing things with paint.

1. Buy only bottles with squeeze tips.  They are small and easy to handle, and pipe a nice sized dot.
2. Shake the bottle well to mix the paint thoroughly.
3. Do some test drops on scrap wood to determine the pressure you'll need.
4. If you get any air bubbles, pop them with a pin.
5. If you need to redo a dot, you can remove it while wet with a damp paintbrush, followed by a damp cotton swab.  Or, you can wait until it is dry and use a craft knife to scrape it off.

Bed Box #2

I figured it was time to try out those fabric paints that have been hanging around waiting to be used.  The bed is a larger version of the one I posted previously, with a slightly different headboard and footboard.  I used a pattern for the "bedspread" that was similar to ones that I've used for cakes (with icing, not paint, of course!).  Now to figure out what else I can add to my "furniture suite".