Let's Have an Art Party!

This year marked my boys' FIFTH birthday.  The big FIVE!  I feel like time has flown by.  I did, in earnest, ask if they could revert back to their 2.5-3 year old selves instead of turning five and they both adamantly refused.  Sigh - I guess I'll just have to deal with it.

I think turning five is a big deal.  It's probably the first real birthday party that I can remember myself.  And since it is their last year at their preschool, I kind of felt obligated to invite their school friends over for their birthday (we've attended SO MANY birthday parties in the past two years for their school friends...don't ask about this whole obligation business).

Anyone who knows my kids knows that they are as opposite as opposites can be.  Even their pediatrician says that they're not really twins - they're more like siblings.  They are so different.  I have one child that loves super heroes and sports.  I have another kid that loves animals and playing toy food.  So where is that happy medium for a good theme for a birthday party?  Art...of course.  It's SOOOO obvious, isn't it?

All kidding aside, I chose to have an art party theme because I wanted the boys and their friends to do something fun and creative. I also wanted the kids to have something fun to bring home.  I also failed to notify the boys that they were even having a party because (BECAUSE) I did not want to deal with 1) threatening to have no party if they were being bad, 2) specific requests for what they wanted at their party...like a bouncy house with a slide, and 3) I didn't want them to keep talking about it for weeks on end with everyone. So when did they find out they were having a birthday party?  About 30 minutes before start time.

Drawing from ideas that I saw on Pinterest, I had purchased 8x8 canvases from Michael's - I got them on sale so stocked up on 20+ canvases.  And the bottles of paints were also on sale at the time.  And I bought some six-color paint palettes from Amazon and colored smocks from Oriental Trading.  It was all coming together quite nicely.  I had originally wanted to purchase little easels for the kids to bring home so they could display their canvases but there are no easels specifically made for that size (I actually ordered a bunch and sent them all back).
So what were the kids going to do on these canvases?   This was hard - would it be free paint?  Would it be 'follow an instructor' like my Crafty Momma friends do during Sip-n-Paint?  No.  I settled on initials!  So I purchased some Green Frog (this really is the best) painter's tape and taped out each child's first initial on the canvas. By having this done ahead of time, the kids could go right into painting and go play for the rest of the time.  And it also minimized any work I needed to do the day of so I could focus on helping kids or doing a last minute canvas taping.

One of our guests hard at work painting his canvas.

So I'm thinking that painting each canvas would take like 30 minutes - and then the kids could let them dry in the sun and go play and eat and have cake.  WRONG!  When you're four to five years old, painting (and egg dying for that matter) takes five minutes TOPS!  This equated to more drying time for the canvases.

Drying painted canvases on the front lawn.

Overall, I think the kids had a great time.  I made sure there were buckets of water available for dirty paint brushes.  We had a utility sink ready for the kids to wash their hands and thankfully (and this was one of my worst fears about hosting an art party) no paint got anywhere besides the tablecloths and canvases.  Whew!  Just to tell you how much I had to step out of my comfort zone for this party...I tarped my driveway, where the kids would be painting. This is how afraid I was.  But they did great and I can chuckle about it now...ha ha ha.

Tarped driveway, paper covered tables.  Everything was disposable.

By the time the party was over, paint was dry and the tape could be peeled off to reveal a pretty awesome piece of art!

Finished products - S, M, and L

As a cute goodie bag idea, I purchased mini paint cans from Paper Mart (online) and filled them with paint tubs, paint blotters (both from Oriental Trading) and a few pieces of chocolate kisses and snack size bars. (SIDE NOTE: I purchased those strips of paint tubs that have six colors in them - and cut all the tubs apart from the strip and filled each paint can with three different colors.) Outside of the paint can, I attached a chubby brush (from Michael's) along with a favor tag I found on Etsy. The same Etsy vendor made the invitation, thank you cards and our birthday banner.  It was so cute and well done.

I've already had a few friends say they are going to do the same party theme for their kids - glad I was able to start a local trend! It really was a fun time - fun to plan and fun to relive through pictures!

I'm really happy with the way things turned out.  The boys were happy, the kids were happy and they all have a keepsake from their 5th birthday party!

Happy Birthday, Liam and Matty!

Who's Afraid of the Big, Bad Fondant?

Okay, fondant is neither big nor bad - it's actually beautifully smooth and wonderfully delicious (for those of you that have a sweet tooth, like me).  I've always thought fondant wedding cakes were works of art - so smooth with clean lines.  I can't even tell you how many Food Network cake shows and challenges I watched just because I thought the use of fondant was like a special skill - it always amazed me and I continue to be amazed.

I'm not a baker - have I told you that?  I love to cook but baking is not my forte.  I can do basic bundts, cupcakes and sloppy looking (but delicious) pies.  But cakes?  Not my thing.  I didn't think I had the hand for smoothing out buttercream.  And forget fondant - did you read the first paragraph?  SPECIAL SKILLS NEEDED!

So after seeing my Crafy-Momma Friend, Emily, make her daughter's La-La-Loopsy two-tiered fondant cake, I thought that I should just get over my fear of fondant and go for it - make my boys' birthday cake instead of splashing out three figures (yes, three) for a customized cake.

The boys, unbeknownst to them until 30 minutes before start time, were having an art party.  I'll be posting about that too because it was great fun and it was a super success!  (Side note: it was unbeknownst to my kids because I didn't want to go through weeks of them talking about their birthday party AND denying constant requests for a moon bounce with a slide.) So of course for an art party, you needed an art-themed cake and what better art-themed cake can you make than a painter's palette! I got so many ideas via Pinterest and the internet.  There are some seriously talented people out there, by the way!  I decided to model the boys' cake after this one:

I immediately started thinking of how to make the cake - the shape, the paint blotches, the paint brush...and I also immediately started schooling myself on how to work with fondant.  I found some GREAT videos on Youtube, via the HowcastFoodDrink channel, on how to fondant a cake.  It wasn't boring and it was very thorough - all under 20 minutes!  And I think I watched it no less than five times before I felt comfortable enough to try it on my own. This didn't, however, prevent me from having nightmares about fondant-ing a cake.  I had them leading up to the actual act of applying fondant to my cake!

But even before we get to the fondant part, let's talk about baking the actual cake.  I can definitely say that I'm an expert at cupcake baking but a WHOLE cake?  Holy intimidation!  I bought two boxes of Duff's (from Charm City Cakes) tie dye cake.  It's like a color explosion on the inside of the cake!  You can just as easily do the tie dye effect using white cake mix and food coloring - because that is basically what it all is.  I ended up using an oval pan for the palette shape and made the cake two times because the first time was a fail - DON'T FORGET TO GREASE YOUR CAKE PAN!  That is like cake baking - 101.  Major FAIL!  So I actually bought FOUR boxes of Duff's cake mix. ANYHOO....this is what the cake(s) looked like after baking.

Left: flipped over oval cake.  Right: extra cake mix in a round pan.

Cool, right?  Whew...stress one - bake the cake and have it come out nicely...check.  Stress two - I now have to make a filling and layer the cake?  What?!  Yes, I ended up making a chocolate butter cream frosting I found on Pinterest - I don't even think I pinned it but it was good.  So I sliced the oval in half, length-wise, and filled it with a nice layer of chocolate butter cream and then carefully stacked the other half of the cake on top.  Voila!  Stress two - check. Stress three came in the form of cutting out a piece of the cake to make it look more like a palette.  That was not too stressful but we did it.  Stress three -check!

Stress four - will it survive for a week in the freezer?  Fast-forward to the answer?  Yes!
Apparently you just spray some PAM on some saran-wrap and cover the cake with it.  THEN you cover the cake, in the saran wrap, with two layers of tin foil.  And off into the freezer it went for the week.  The round cake actually became my tester cake, with no filling, so I popped that one in the freezer, covered in saran wrap and tin foil and froze it for a few days and tried applying fondant to that cake two days before I had to decorate the big cake.

In the week before decorating time, I watched the fondant youtube video some more, watched some other fondant videos, had my fondant nightmare and looked at what ordinary mamas, like me, used to fondant.  A LOT of bakers and non-bakers recommended Satin Ice Fondant - ready to roll out, after some kneading.  I have to agree - it was easy to use, so smooth and very tasty!  I also purchased Wilton's Primary Color fondant - also ready to use, after some kneading, to help with the color blotches.

For the paint brush, I decided to go with gum paste - so I purchased some Wilton's Ready-to-Use gum paste from Sur La Table.  I had originally bought some of Duff's gum paste from Michael's and it was HARD AS A ROCK from the second I opened it.  This is not suppose to happen.  So I ran over to Sur La Table and tried kneading the gum paste through the Wilton bag, in the middle of the store.  It was still hard but I could manage it and the sales clerk insisted that once I opened the bag, it would be much more manageable.
This paint brush-gum paste thing was completely off the cuff.  I just did it with barely a thought or technique in mind and this is what came out of it (which makes me wonder if I should not think more often?!).

I had to text it to my Crafty Mama Friend: "Does this look like a paint brush or hairy turd?"  I was told it looked like a paint brush.  Score!  The gum paste wasn't too bad to work with - it seemed to harden a lot quicker than the fondant. I used food color to get the brown and black colors.  Mixing in the brown color didn't quite work out as I had planned but it gave the paint brush a nice 'wooden' look, I thought.  I used a pale yellow for the brush and used a toothpick to make all the bristles.  Not too shabby for a first-timer! Would I recommend eating it?  Heck no!

So it was time - time to apply the fondant and decorate the cake!  But before I did all that, I had to ice the cake - at this point, I was so nervous about applying the fondant, I just used store-bought Pillsbury white butter creamy frosting.  After you ice it, just pop it back in the fridge for a couple of hours until it's time for the FON-DANT!

I used all the tools my Crafty Mama Friend, Emily, lent me - the silicone mat (key!), the rotating cake stand (key!), fondant smoother (key!) and the Wilton food colors (key!).  I kneaded and rolled out that Satin Ice fondant like a pro.  I rolled it up onto my (new) French rolling pin like a pro. I placed it gently over the butter creamed cake like a pro! And then I started smoothing it out - using my ring and pinky fingers to smooth out the sides (like the pro in the video), using the smoothing tool to smooth out the top - making sure that the top was smooth and the sides had no visible folds.  Finally it was time to take the pizza cutter (yes, this works) and cut the excess at the bottom of the cake.  No sweat.

Now that i had worked with the larger piece of fondant, the smaller, colored fondant was no problem - and this is what we ended up with:

You can clearly see the primary colors are the four on the bottom. My nephews mixed the blue and red to make the purple. I used some more Wilton food coloring on the extra white fondant to make the pink, brown, and cornflower blue.  My nephew also tried to make an orange out of the red and yellow primaries - it just came out look more red - but it's okay. i thought it looked great!


I did have some problems inside the crevice of the cake - I had to cover it up with some white butter cream icing - but of course I'm the only one that knows about this mistake...well me and the people I decided to rant to (so three total).  They assured me it looked fine so I just had to let it be. This is my FIRST CAKE, people!  I think I did pretty well.

After decorating the cake, I just popped it in a cake box and sat it in the kitchen overnight.  I read a lot of mixed advice on what to do - refrigerate, leave it out - did Duff do it?  I saw Buddy, from Cake Boss, refrigerate.  I left it out.  It turned out fine! And it tasted great!  I got so many great compliments about how good the cake was and how fun the inside was with all the colors!

AND I'm glad to report I am no longer afraid of fondant.  I actually found the whole process quite relaxing even!  I actually cannot wait to make another cake! (flat or tiered only...3D cakes will have to wait)

Cake at the actual party!