Hobbycrafts Craft Fair and Cake International

7 hours stacked full of craft and cake - a great day.

I got on the 8.12 am train to head down to Birmingham to meet my friend Celeste and use our £6 worth Tesco Club Card Vouchers for entry to both the Hobbycrafts Craft Fair and Cake International shows.  We met up at New Street Station and took the train to Birmingham NEC (it was a bit of a crush and apparently you can get charged for First Class tickets if they find you just in the vestibule area - cheeky!).

We started off with the Cake International Show and went straight over to look at all the amazing cake competition entries.  Everything bar a few internal supports and dummies is made entirely from sugar and it's quite overwhelmingly amazing just how clever people are.  

I took over 100 photos which is far too many to post here, but here is the link to the whole album.  However, here are a couple of my favourites:

This one was in the Handbags and shoes category - I was really impressed that it's literally been knitted/crocheted together with icing.

This one was in the cupcakes category - I had thought that cupcakes would be a fairly straightforward entry,but I was really impressed how creative some of the entries were.  I particularly liked the typewriter in this one.

These two were in the wedding cake with "at least 2 tiers category" and there were so many entries and they were all amazing.  I liked the Halloween themed cake and I also loved the really tall square tiered cake as it was really different.

This category was flowers made from sugarcraft and they were startlingly realistic.  I was really impressed with the tiny detail on them.

These two were in the "Sculpted novelty cake category".  The Roast chicken looked really realistic and the glaze was really convincing.  Slimer was great too, the shaping was really clever, but there was also some sugar "slime" as well.

These two were in the younger category and I loved Oscar who was in the 12 - 18 year old category - really realistic, fun and reminded me of my favourite Sesame Street character.  I apparently insisted to my Mum when I was about 2 years old that it was "arsker" and not "Oscar" as she was trying to get me to pronounce it.  The Dinosaur was in the Under 12 category and was more impressive than I think anything that I might be able to manage! 

This was my favourite cake - Hagrid's house.  The detail was incredible, the pumpkins, the toadstools and best of all even inside Hagrid's hut had amazing detail.

I'm in so much admiration of these cakes, I'd love to have the time and energy to be able to create something so detailed and impressive - not sure that I would be able to bring myself to be able to eat it though after so much work!

We stopped for some lunch and I showed Celeste some more photos from my trip to Bali and had some Sushi and Edamame beans.

Next we walked around the sales stalls and I bought some chocolate "melts" in purple, red and brown (peanut butter flavour) some cellophane bags, purple and red lolly sticks.  I also bought some cellophane with patterns on them that you put melted chocolate on and when you peel off the cellophane the patterns stay on.  I'm going to be making some Chocolate Lollies for Christmas Presents that I learned at the Living La Vida Cocoa WI workshop in October.   I also bought some edible glitter to make them all a bit more exciting!

We then went into the Hobbycrafts, Crafts for Christmas and Arts Material Live section of the show.  

I bought a couple of goody bags as they are always pretty good value for money - the Prima bag was pretty good with some magazines and an OPI crackle nail polish in black which is itself about £8 and the whole bag was only £3!  The other bag was £6 and had loads in it, lots of card making papers and letters and some ribbons - apparently the value was circa £50 and I can believe it!

I then was enticed to buy some more nail polish after an impressive demonstration when I had a strawberry, flowers and a French Manicure drawn onto my nails in seconds using a set of 10 polish pens from Nails Supreme.  This morning I've turned all my nails into a French Manicure, they are great and really easy to use.  I paid £20 although apparently they are usually £30, but a quick google search revealed that you can buy them for £20 online.

I bought 4 balls of Rico Can Can yarn to make scarves to sell on the stall at the Buns & Roses craft stall.  I've used Rico Can Can before and it's so easy to use - cheat knitting really as it knits so fast and I will make it into scarves that look like this:

I can make a scarf up in about an hour or so in front of the TV, so it's a really good craft for winter nights sat watching my favourite programs from Sky Plus like The Bill, Fresh Meat and and of the CSI or Criminal Minds series.  It also only needs someone to know how to knit basic knitting and cast off, you don't even need to know how to cast on!

I then bought some really good value fabrics for patchworking - 4 pieces for £6 and then some Christmas smelling oil - cinnamon, clove, orange - really smells like Christmas!  Here is my haul!

Someone else was very interested in my bag when I got back in, not sure why as there was no fish or meat in my purchases!

Living La Vida Cocoa!

So I might just have mentioned before that I'm on the committee of Buns & Roses WI which is a lot of work, but really good fun.  This evening for example we had a chocolate making workshop courtesy of York Cocoa House which was brilliant.  Unsurprisingly our workshop was fully booked and so we had 34 lovely ladies together to make and enjoy some lovely chocolate.

First of all we got to taste the chocolate we were using which was gorgeously creamy milk chocolate.  This was then made into a ganache (chocolate + butter + double cream heated to boiling point, poured over and mixed together).  We piped out the ganache into what can only be described as "dollops" and then they went to be cooled.  We then tempered some more chocolate for using to make chocolate lollies and dipping our ganache to make truffles.  What do you think we used to melt the chocolate?  I can bet that you weren't thinking hair dryer!  Surprisingly this worked really well and we used melted chocolate to make lollies which we decorated with orange, lemon and strawberry flavoured chocolate buttons - yummy!

After making a lot of mess "shaping" the ganache and then dipping in chocolate we then put our creations into  plastic presentation bags (sampling quite a few along the way thank you very much!).

Laura from York Cocoa House was a great presenter, really engaging.  And I think it was great value for money - £12 for members and £15 for non members.  My friend Jenny also started off the evening really well by giving me some fudge that she'd made for me to try.  

I also have finished my embroidered art picture and so Hayley very kindly stretched and stapled it onto a frame for me - here is the finished article.

A day of stitching and motor bikes

This morning I was supposed to get up very early (about 5.30 am), load up the car and do a carboot sale near Leeds Bradford Airport, but when I finally woke up my phone said 9.40 am which was far too late.  

I got up (eventually) and then headed over to my friend Hayley's house for a day of stitching and crafting.  On the way I picked up an apple pie milkshake and a pineapple, strawberry and cherry smoothie from Shaky Jakes, some Bakewell Tart from Costellos and some porridge with raisins from Love Rouge Bakery strangely served to take out in a coffee cup.  All of these things were yummy (although can't personally comment on the milkshake because that was for Hayley as part payment for personal stitching tuition.)  

I first met Hayley at Buns & Roses which is an amazing WI Group based in Leeds City Centre (I might be slightly biased now as I'm on the committee, but I do believe it's awesome).  I was very disappointed that I couldn't go along to one of the workshops in August which was called Night of the Living Thread and the blog post is here if you want to read about it.  Hayley very kindly offered to teach me and so I took up far too much of her Sunday learning how to do some English Paper Patchworking, Fussy Cutting, Blanket Stitch as well as lots of other hints and tips like how to sew on sequins and spray paint fabric.

In between stitching, Hayley and Flower also introduced me to Moto GP (apologies Hayley if it wasn't, but I think this is what it was called) which I found far more interesting to watch than usual car racing.  The riders go around corners with their knees literally on the floor to take the corner as tightly as possible - this is not something that I have ever seen before!

Anyway, I've not yet finished my stitching project, but here it is as a work in progress - Hayley is going to help me stretch it over a canvas when I've finished it.  It's very orange, neon and covered with owls and skulls.   Thanks Hayley for all your help - I had a really lovely day.