Losing my Whoopie Cherry!

Now that we’ve decided to DIY a portion of our dessert buffet I’ve made it my mission to find simple and tasty recipes that even a non-baker like me could whip up. My first attempt came in the form of these tasty morsels-

bakerella.com

Now I know whoopie pies aren’t new on the wedding scene but after whipping up a batch of my own I can honestly say that I understand the hype! These damn things are tasty and super simple to whip up even for a kitchen klutz like me!

My foray into the world of whoopee pies began with the book Whoopie Pies by Sara Billingsley and Amy Treadwell and these so adorable it hurts heart shaped whoopie pie pan from Wilton’s.

After looking over all the recipes in the book I decided to keep it old school and go with the classic chocolate cake with a butter cream filling. I was really pleased with how quickly the recipe came together and even more pleased with the tasty results.

According to the book the whoopie’s can be made up to a month in advance if frozen properly. Since we’ll be incorporating several small bite desserts into our buffet I’m estimating we’ll only need about 3 batches or a total of 48 pies, which shouldn’t be too hard to whip up the week before the wedding.

If you’re interested in baking up some pies of your own there’s a couple handy tips I picked up during my experimentation-

• The book specifically refers to mixing your ingredients with a standing mixer with a paddle attachment but if you’re like me with little to no fancy kitchen equipment a basic hand mixer with standard attachments will do.
• I definitely recommend investing in a pastry bag and tips if you’re looking to get perfectly stacked pies with a plump cushion of filling. The pastry bag is super simple to use and the results are top notch.
• When the book says 10 minute cook time it means 10 minutes! I accidently left a batch in for 11 minutes and my cakes came out super dry on the other hand when I tried to take them out a minute early the cakes ended crumbly and refused to hold their shape.
• You don’t need a special whoopee pie pan to make whoopies but if you choose to invest in one I recommend spraying your pan with cooking spray before loading it up with mix and using a tooth pick to remove your cooled cakes after baking.

So tell me friends do you plan to bake/cook anything up for your wedding or do you think I’m crazy for planning to DIY part of our dessert buffet?

DIY Photoshot on the Coast

Oh my can you believe it’s been almost a week since my last blog entry? Thanks to a glitch in our DSL connection J and I have been without internet wince Wednesday of last week. Couple that with a weekend away to Santa Barbara to see one of our favorite bands and you got 6 days away from emails blogs and all thing wedding.

But even the dreamy sounds of my man Paul Banks could keep my mind 100% off wedding. The beautiful beaches of Santa Barbara screamed take a picture of me and we decided to take advantage and stage a DIY photo shot in hopes of getting some quality images for our wedding website.

Armed with a tripod our Cannon 30D DSLR and couple of inspiration pics we headed off to find the perfect location. Our first stop was a park off of Cabrillo Blvd were we tried to recreate this picture.

Yea that was a total fail.

We quickly decided to leave this shot to the professionals and moved on to the vintage carousel.

Much better, We originally wanted to get shots of us riding the carousel but unfortunately there was a 2 dollar charge per person to ride and we only had 2 bucks cash on us. At this point we noticed our camera battery was running out of juice and we decided to head down the coast to get some shots by the beach and possibly some Pictures like this with the our little roundie.

We were lucky and found a deserted scenic turn off right off the 101 freeway with spectacular views of the ocean and the beach. It was here that we got some of my favorite pictures of the day.

I’m so happy with the images we were able to capture in the short amount of time we were shooting. They are by no means professional photos but compared to our previous eyeball only pics they are a 100% improvement.

If you’re interested in staging your own DIY photo shot there’s a couple of things to keep in mind before you head out

· Clear off a couple of hours on your calendar to dedicate to your shoot. Setting up each shot with the tripod can suck up a lot of your time so you want to make sure you have enough time dedicated to your shoot.

· Do your homework. Scout out possible locations prior to heading out for your shoot and research potential possess. Heading into your photo shot with a good game plan will help you maximize your time while you’re out on location.

· Don’t get to ambitions. Focus on perfecting a few shots rather than getting a lot of mediocre shots. J and I focused on nailing a few image and ended up with about 7 workable images out of the over 30 pictures we took.

· Your equipment doesn’t need to be high tech all you need is a simple point and shoot with a delayed timer; a tripod and a good working knowledge of your camera and you will be able to get a quality image.

And above everything else have fun! If you’re having fun it’ll show in your images and no amount of posing or expensive equipment can duplicate that.

Interpol pic courtesy of interpolnyc.com Inspirational car pic courtesy of ruffleblog.com

One of the very first projects to be added to my DIY to-do list was these Yay! flags originally posted on Wedding Bee by OG bee blogger Mrs. Lollipop.

Looks simple enough right? A little bit of muslin, some wood dowels and bam instant yay! flag! Yea, that didn’t happen. For this girl simple little Yay! flags involve 7 yards of muslin, 2 mesh screens, 3 different inks, a sewing machine, some dowels and lots of glitter and glue.Oh but aren’t they pretty? In my opinion they are totally worth it. If you think so too keep reading for the step by step instructions on how to make your own.

The Supplies

-Muslin

-Screen printing supplies or iron on transfer paper and printer*

-dress maker sheers or rotary cutter

-yard stick

-self healing mat

-wood dowels

-wood bead

Wood glue

-glitter

-Martha Stewart decoupage glue

-optional for double sided flags

-quilting fabric*

-sewing machine*

-contrasting thread*

*not pictured

First take your muslin, sheers/rotary, mat and ruler and cut your fabric down to size. Ours came out to be about 8x5 inches but depending on the text for you’re the flag yours may be smaller or larger. In order to make printing easier for us we chose to cut a rectangle large enough for 4 flags first than after our text and pattern was on our fabric trim it down to our final size.

With your fabric cut screen print your image on using the method out lined in this post. If you don’t want to screen print your text you can follow the instructions listed on this website for iron-on transfers.

If you choose to make your flags double sided like ours you’ll need to sew both pieces together prior to attaching them to your dowel. This can become pretty repetitive; to reduce some of your work I recommend you only stitch the 3 sides that will be visible when your flag is complete. For some crazy reason I chose to top stitch ours which I strongly discourage. I seriously doubt our guest will notice the extra detail and although it only took about 20 min to top stitch 80 flags after sewing turning and pressing 80 flags I was kind of over it.

It’s now time to assembling your sticks. Take your wood dowel and bead and dry fit them together. If you find that it’s difficult to join them together take a small exacto knife and carefully whittle away the excess wood on the inside your bead.

Once your bead and dowel fit comfortably dip the end of your dowel into your wood glue and join both pieces.

Repeat until done and allow to dry overnight.

Once your dowels are dry take your decoupage glue and apply a generous amount of glue to the bead on top of your dowel. Sprinkle your glitter onto your newly applied glue and allow to dry overnight. Once completely dry apply a second coat of glue to your dowel. This will seal in your glitter and prevent it from getting all over your guests.

We’re almost done! All that’s left is to attach your flag to your dowel with your decoupage glue. Take your dowel and cover the 1/3 with glue. With your dowel in hand take your flag and gently role edge around the coated dowel and hold for 30 seconds.

If you find that the 2 layers of fabric won’t adhere to your dowel simply take your glue and run a thin layer of glue onto your fabric before joining your flag to the dowel. Allow to let dry and stand back and admire your handy work!

first image courtesy of weddingbee.com

Screenprinting a Primer- Part 3

Hi Guys! I apologize for the lateness of this post; I’ve been deep in wedding DIY and planning and haven’t had a second to sit down and write a blog post in a couple of days. Today is my last installment of my DIY screen-printing tutorial and I hope I’ve inspired some of you to set up your own at home screen printing workspace. This post is a hodge-podge of helpful hints cost and resources to hopefully make your introduction into the work of traditional screen printing a bit easier. First up is a cost breakdown!

Some of the everyday craft items such as scissors and printer are not included in the cost since you would have to purchase them separately regardless of if you purchased a YUDU or went the traditional screen printing route.

Cost breakdown-

-Hinge Clamps-$22

· Aluminum or wood screen-$15

-Fee for burned artwork- $10

· Squeegee large enough to fully cover your art work-$15

· Water based ink-$5 for 4oz bottle $10 for $16oz

· Tape-$5

· Pallet adhesive/ temporary spray adhesive-$5

· Ink Fixer (for textiles) - $5.00

· Transparencies/ velum-$19 for 50 sheets

· Opaque black marker-$4

Total-$110

At a total of approximately $110 bucks traditional screen printing will run you about 1/3 of the cost of a Yudu machine and when comparing supply cost traditional screen printing wins out every time. Take for example a new YUDU 110 mesh screen will run you about 18 bucks on amazon about 3 dollars more than a traditional screen.

Helpful Hints-

Screen printing is an art form and like all art forms there is a trial and error period before you truly become comfortable with the medium and each new project will bring with it a new set of challenges that you will have to work through to be able to get a perfect print. Listed below are some helpful tips that I’ve picked up along the way that will hopefully help you with your printing and eliminate some of your beginner frustrations.

-Always buy extra printing material than needed. I like to give myself a ¼ cushion to work with to account for print error and to give me some wiggle room to be able to pick and choose my best prints.

-In order to prevent ink drying in your screen when working with water based ink make sure your working in a cool place if that is not an option ink extenders are available to retard the drying time.

- One of the biggest factors in getting a good print is your squeegee speed and pressure. Experiment with your squeegee speed and pressure to get the best print.

-If while printing you notice your printing material sticking to the mesh feel free to spray your work surface with a light mist of temporary adhesive. Let dry for a couple of minutes, your prints should now stay put during printing.

-work with a buddy! J and I have a system down were one of us prints while the other hands the printer new printing material and removes completed prints for drying. This helps reduce the amount of time printing and will reduce the risk of your ink drying in your screen if your using water based inks.

Additional reading and resources!

For those of you interested in trying out screening printing there’s a lot of resources available online and in your local bookstore. Some of my favorite resources are listed below but I encourage you to do your own Google search and take a look what the World Wide Web has to offer you!

-Printing By Hand by Lena Corwin is the amazing book that first introduced me to the world of screen printing. The book is beautifully photographed and Lena instructions are super simple to follow.

-If you’re the type who learns better by seeing this video from Etsy is for you!

- http://www.silkscreeningsupplies.com is a great online source for supplies if you’re unable to find any local suppliers. They also offer a screen burning service and there website is chock full of instructional videos.

- http://www.t-shirtforums.com/ more geared towards entrepreneurs in the business t-shirt forums offers great tips and advice from people in the business.

That’s all I got folks! I hope you guys have been inspired to get your DIY butts in gear!

Screenprinting a Primer-Part 2

Its day 2 of my crash course in screen printing! As a refresher here’s the list of supplies needed-

At this point you should have your screen burned and ready for printing and your clamps are set up on a stable work place next up will be taping up your screen to prepare it for ink and inserting it into your clamps.

Take your roll of tape and scissors and cut a piece approximately the size of the inside of your screen mesh side down. With tape in hand stretch your tape so it begins to curl and create a 90 degree angle at this point you want to lay your tape down with ½ on the mesh and the other on the aluminum frame. This creates a seal between the ink and frame and prevents any ink form seep out and onto your work space.

You are now ready to insert your screen into the clamps. Make sure that your clamps are super tight and your screen is unable to shift. If you’re worried about damaging your screen with the clamps you can take a small piece of cardboard and sandwich it between the upper clamp and your frame. With your screen securely in the clamps take your stir stick and tape it onto your work surface directly below the free end of your screen. This will give you the offset needed for you to get a clean print.

With your screen Taped and secured in your clamps you can now take your print material and your art work and register it to your screen. To do this take your original art work and tape it down onto a piece of whatever material you choose to print on. Lay your material with your artwork now taped to it and place directly below your screen. With the screen down slowly move it back and forth until the artwork lines up directly with the image above.

Your print is now registered. Lift your screen but do not move your print material! This is where those expired gift cards come into play, take a strip of tape and lay it over the entire card leave one long end uncovered. Take your card line it up the corner of your print material tape down. Do this for the other corner so you create a 90 degree angle. You may now remove your artwork.

Your screen is now ready to be inked. I prefer using Versatex screen printing inks. They are a water based ink which allows them to air dry without any heat curing and can be made wash fast by using a fixer. Traditional water base inks require you to heat set textiles prior to washing. Take your ink and lay a generous bead of ink extending the full length of your art work.

You are now ready to start printing! Take your with both hand squeegee and place it directly behind the bead of ink you laid down at a 45 degree angle. With slight even pressure slide your squeegee down your screen, stop once you’ve reached the end of your print.

With the squeegee in the same position slide your squeegee back to its original position. You’ve just made your first print!

Lift your screen and take a peak but do not move it your print. If you notice that your print is a bit blotchy lay the screen down and run your squeegee over it a second time. Since you did not shift the print below you should have no registration problems.

Repeat these steps until your done with all your prints admire at the sea of drying prints that now surround you! For cleanup you may use a natural bristle brush and mild dish soap. Spray the screen with a water house and gently scrub until all your ink has been washed out. If you notice some staining on your mesh don’t fret some inks will stain your mesh but as long as you are able to see through the mesh while it is held up to the light your screen should be fine to use again.

Want more? Up stay tuned for the final installment of the series which will include helpful hints, resources and a cost breakdown!