Rainbow cake and newsprint nails

Hello! It's been forever since I've blogged. I'd like to use my trip to Amsterdam/Berlin/Scotland with my sisters as my excuse. We got into some shenanigans, including, but not limited to: clubbing with British boys, beer gardens, red light district, black jack, contemporary art museums, too much walking, hipster bars, electronica club in a squat, and other things I can't write.

Honestly, they are the cutest baby kitties.

On to me being slightly artistic and mostly domestic..... First, rainbow cakes.

Yes, I know, it's a super awesome. If this cake were a person, it would be a hippy.
To make your own, first get a white cake mix, the necessary ingredients to make it, and food coloring. Make the cake batter as directed. Then get several small bowls and allocate equal amounts of batter per bowl. In each bowl, use a different color of food coloring. I prefer the neon colors.

Not too hard. Make sure you have a different spoon for each color so you don't mix them. Then get a cake pan. I've used a round one and a rectangular one before, though I prefer the round shape. Start pouring your first color in the middle of the pan. Then pour the next color in the middle of the first color, and so on for each layer. Play around with it, add some dots or splats, totally up to you. Then bake it!

Before baking

After!

The outside doesn't look too special. You can put icing on it, that makes it even more delicious. Cream cheese icing is my fav. But the inside of the cakes look groovy, man!

My next craft is PREEETTTYYY COOOOLLLL. 

Start by painting your nails the color you want. I chose white.
Then after the paint is dry, you will need alcohol. Rubbing alcohol is great, but if you are a college student and you have vodka around, that works too.

Dip a finger in the alcohol and then press newsprint on top. Do this for each finger.
Once they have dried a bit, paint a top coat of clear polish.

That's it! Easy.

Andddd that's all I have for today.

Fun with Shrinky Dinks

Happy June! I felt like it was time to post something new and my lovely roommate and I recently had a cute little craft day. We went to the Athens Farmers' Market and bought the most delicious bread we have consumed in quite a while. Then we made these beauties!

They're wine glass charms and hopefully they will be put to use as I aspire to become a wine connoisseur. After I turn 21, of course! We had packs of Shrinky Dinks sitting around and wine charms came to mind after pondering over ways to utilize our supplies. Michael's had a wide variety of beads, so we picked green and blue ones of different shapes/shades. We also picked up some 24 gauge silver colored wire.

 The lovely lady drew these, since I have very little drawing talent (I made the cupcake one though, since they are "my thing"). We then used a hole punch to make holes in the paper that was to become our charms. We stuck the Shrinky Dinks in the oven and ended up with these plastic beauties.

Then we used metal jewelry rings (Michael's) on our charms to put them on the wire with our beads. Size your wire appropriately, cut it, and then twist one end for a closed loop and the other end make a hook. We ended up threading the wire through the last bead twice so they wouldn't fall off. And TA DA!

Hopefully there will be more Shrinky Dink projects to come (jewelry maybe?) as well as other fun stuff, since I finally got to bring my sewing machine home!

Lovely Photography

I've been browsing the web during this relaxing (aka boring) summer and I've found some photography that needs to be appreciated. I personally am not a great photographer so I love looking at other people's work (for example my sister is fan-freaking-tastic).
I ran across the work of Jaime Ibarra and I love some of his stuff, check it out as long as you are ok with possible nudity?

Isn't that lovely? The birds and trees in the background are my favorite part.

Elen Kalis is another photographer that I admire, mainly because she shoots underwater. I'm sure that's extremely difficult for both the model and the photographer to get juuuuust the right picture. At any rate, Kalis' pictures emphasize the grace associated with water. Love it.

She also has Alice in Wonderland themed pictures in her portfolio, which make me happy since I love the books and the movie.

"Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!" -Red Queen

That's all for today! Enjoy this Lazy Sunday

Cookie Cake

Hey guys! So last weekend my little sister had a fiesta style birthday party. I knew she wanted a cookie cake but the ones from Great American cost like $234372947398.
Basically I made a cookie cake myself and it was delicious.

You can buy the dry cookie mix at the store or you can try this recipe:

• 2 sticks unsalted butter, softened
• 1 cup packed light brown sugar
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 2 cups plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 cups bittersweet chocolate chips

I had to double the recipe to have enough cookie dough for the large pan I was using. I recommend using a pizza pan lined with parchment paper. Put the dough on the pan and flatten it as much as possible. However, don't push the dough all the way out to the edges, since cookies expand.
Decorate it how you want it to look, I  went all out with the fiesta theme.

And happy birthday, Rachel!

First entry?

Hey guys! I've been wanting to start a blog for a while and I'm stoked that I've finally taken initiative. I'm going to be blogging about crafts, cupcakes, and other cooking endeavors. Waaayyy too tired to write much more tonight, everything in my life ends up being a process rather than an event.