pretty paper. true stories. {and scrapbooking classes with cupcakes.}

Ready to go back to school?

Ok, really I wouldn’t mind a bit more summer…but time keeps on going, so we make the best of it. One of the highlights of September has to be that back to school feeling. Even if you’ve been out of school for years, you can buy yourself a new notebook and feel like life is a little bit new.

Learn Something New Every Day is the first class for our autumn term. Over the month of September, we’ll make thirty entries in this small-format book designed to getting your eyes open to observing your world.

Worried about time? Fair enough. It does take time to make an entry every day. But the pages are small (6 inches square) and we’ll use some short cuts to keep your supplies to a nice small collection and we’ll focus on summary journalling rather than documenting each day with a full report. And every day you have the option of just duplicating the example page, so that could even eliminate your thinking time. We’re talking minutes every day here.

In this class, you get:

*An introductory shout-out to get you going

*30 daily prompts with full colour samples

*The chance to chat and share your work with other artists

*Posting access on the group blog

Class begins September 1. Don’t be late!

I’m sorry, this class is now sold out. Please e-mail me if you would like to prebook a place on this class for a future month.

Any questions? Just stick ‘em in the comments & I’ll get an answer to you asap.

Feels great to have something enjoyable for back to school!

xlovesx

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i have a real love for quality advertising. not all advertising by any means, as i am reminded whenever i visit a place with a television or i leaf through any martha stewart publication, trying to separate content from adverts for cling film. but advertisements you remember for ages, or that give you some sort of inner peace. the boy and i were talking about this last night…how proportionately, there are so few good adverts, and how that makes the good ones even better. i still can’t look away from the honda cog. i think of the vw golf every time i see a chair put out with the rubbish. and some days, i really would like to buy the world a coke and keep it company.

{actually, during the last school year i got to sit in on a seminar led by the team that create the honda ads—the cog, as well as ‘what if?’ and ‘hate something, change something’. they shared their process, going from a grumpy engineer and a music video to their animated advert, and so on. these people are just fascinating. it’s no wonder they make good stuff. i try to think of the mix up of their team whenever i am in one of those ‘if you want something done, do it yourself’ moods. which is too often, i must admit.}

anyway, i’ve been keeping an ad related thing a secret and today i found out i don’t have to keep schtum anymore, so i’m not. fiskars make things that cut. lots of things that cut lots of other things in lots of shapes and sizes. obvious things like scissors and paper trimmers, but also the not obvious things like paper drills, garden gadgets and things that make primary school teachers smile all day long. {i’m thinking maybe we should bring back a bit of old fashioned cut and paste to secondary school though. especially in administrative meetings.} last year fiskars started this print&web campaign, wherein crafters of the paper and fabric varieties along with gardeners shared their views on creativity with others via a journal. some individual pages made it to the big time to become glossy print ads. but you can see a gallery of these journals here.

so if my excited and gushy praise of thought-provoking advertising hasn’t made this completely obvious, i filled in this over the summer:

they pick some people (and i have no idea how) and if you say yes, they send you a blank book and some questions to prompt your responses. some i knew the answers to straight away. some took ages to think of anything that would work. the page i like the most looks like something out of a comic. well, a comic that’s in pink and black and has no people. but i’ll post more later in the year, when it appears on the fiskars site. yay.

in other news…there are new things afoot for the website. classes are just the start. i’ve been working SO HARD this week! fabulous. and very pink, i must say.

xlovesx

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blogging from the departure lounge @ keflavik airport, coping with my accidental dreadlocks. we went to the traditional tourist stop off on the way to the airport – the blue lagoon – and they warn you that the water is good for your skin but rough on your hair. mine is drenched with conditioner, and that water is also quite good at stripping hair of any dyes or chemicals. still, trust the icelanders to take the by-product of a power plant and turn it into a tourist oasis.

there is one other icelandic obsession of which i am now fully aware. they love licorice. like so much. there is licorice in everything. they also love marzipan – which is wonderful in my eyes – but they couple it with licorice and chocolate. at the airport shop to my left, there is an entire aisle dedicated just to types of black licorice. if you buy a chocolate bar that was sitting next to the licorice, the chocolate will taste of licorice. i wonder if they translate charlie and the chocolate factory into a story about a little boy from husavik who wins the world’s biggest supply of licorice. (& that would be really exciting if you grew up in husavik.)

between us, we have taken about a thousand pictures, after we deleted the ones that were truly mistakes. my flickr account is going to finally take a bashing of more than 4% its monthly limit.

we should be boarding in the next half hour. i wonder where it is raining the most: reykjavik or london?

xelskax

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we fly home tomorrow. while i will welcome the chance to wear fewer layers, i will miss this place. that wall of rock is just a small part of Ásbyrgi, which has come to symbolise the magic of a place like this. it was a destination already on my list when we planned this trip ages ago. then just by a bit of luck, some people decide to play a concert there. like really, we were that lucky. it was beautiful.

i have also survived camping. i am so proud. am now recovering in a gorgeous hotel in reykjavik. the floor is heated. this makes me so happy.

must go have some dinner. bigger report in two days when am home.

xlovesx

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You know, I really did start making cupcakes just because I liked them and I wanted to cheer up some coworkers. I ask my team to come to work ten minutes early every Thursday to discuss student progress, and I figure if they are all giving that ten minutes, the least I could give was a bit of a treat. And that’s how Cupcake Thursdays came to be.

But cupcakes can be pretty (well, if I manage to make the icing properly, anyway) so I started photographing them and sticking the pictures on my blog. Because, in case the pink wasn’t a dead giveaway, I have a great appreciation for photos of cute things. Like cupcakes. Some like minded friends do too. That’s what blogging is about, right?

And now, I get emails for my cupcake recipes! This humbles me so. I enjoy making cupcakes, but you ought to hear me slamming about and arguing with the batter sometimes. I am not quite at one with the cupcake. But usually they are yummy, so it’s all good.

What you really wanted: The Cupcake FAQ

Do you use a cake mix?
Very, very rarely. I keep one in the cupboard just in case. I think it just makes me feel better. This is partially because we just don’t have many quality cake mixes in the UK, partially because I try to eat (and therefore cook) things without lots of chemicals and stabilisers and partially because I feel more accomplished if I actually mix things myself.

What recipes do you use?
I try lots of different ones. I have a few that are favourites that go down well with everybody, and other times I try various different ones to add in some variety. Sometimes these work (like the mocha variety); sometimes they are very disappointing (like the cherry brandy variety). But I’ll share a few favourite resources.
Online Recipes

*Old Reliable Vanilla Cupcakes

*Billy’s Vanilla Vanilla Cupcakes

*Billy’s Chocolate Cupcakes

*Dark Chocolate to Die for

Books for your Collection

*More from Magnolia

*The Buttercup Bakeshop Cookbook

*Cupcakes!

Do you really make cupcakes every Thursday?
Technically, no. I usually make them late Wednesday night, and we have them with our Thursday morning coffee at work. Which means I only make them when school is in session. And sometimes Wednesday night is either too busy or too hot for baking. That’s when I cheat and go to Krispy Kreme. But it’s pretty rare.

Can you freeze cupcakes?
Yes, if you have a good freezer. I don’t—it tends to resemble a fake snow factory rather than a large subzero space. But yes, you can freeze them. Bake them and let them cool but do not frost them. Wrap in plastic and try to get as much air out of the bag as possible. The trick is in the defrosting—when you want to defrost the cupcakes, take them out of the plastic! Just sit them on a plate for a few hours at room temperature and they will be fine. Then frost them and eat as normal.

Can I find cupcakes on the internet?
Well, yes. I think so. If you want to just look at cupcakes, you’ll want to check out Cupcakes Take the Cake often. If you want to make beautiful, cutting edge cupcakes, check out Chockylit and if you want to eat cupcakes, you might try Eve here in London, Star Provisions in Atlanta, Cupcake Royale in Seattle or BabyCakes at the River Market in Kansas City. {As for other cities…it’s not that I don’t like your cupcakes…I just haven’t tried your cupcakes. I promise.}

...and there ends the ridiculous idea of a cupcake FAQ. Unless you email me with more questions, clearly.

Happy baking.
xlovesx

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greetings from the garden state. internet access is easier and cheaper (not to mention working) in newark airport. not so much for my hotel room in atlanta, but hey…that’s how it goes.

{this is the first flight in ages where i have had a layover that meant i could do something other than run from one gate to the next. i just ate lunch at the garden state diner, where the waitress said no one my age knows what an ice cream soda is – their loss – and they had a suitable in-diner soundtrack, except for this really random playing of ace of base in the middle. so yeah…exploring airports. and listen up youngsters: ice cream sodas = yum. just had to clear that up.}

that’s proof that i actually did some scrapbooking on this trip. in ali’s awesome album track. and you know something is good if i pull out words like…awesome. i must be jetlagged already. those are my tablemates, pj, kelly & meredith. we ate cupcakes and carrot sticks and drank twenty-seven minute wait coffee and talked and scrapped. there will be more proof later.

and that would be just one of the obligatory scrapceleb photos. but seriously. she’s a gem. totally.

now i’m gonna get on a plane on monday, wake up in england on tuesday and fly to iceland on wednesday. there is no way to get me off this high, i tell you.

{there is the fact that i need to drive a manual car in iceland. this will be an adventure in itself.}

more later.

xlovesx

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check it: two more days. 2. one plus one. brilliant.

meanwhile, it’s 100 degrees here and 61 degrees in iceland. in two more weeks – that’s one plus one – i’ll need to find at least a sweater and some long trousers or something. we are also going tent shopping for our camping in the daylight adventure. plus there’s next week—that’s one without adding anything else—in atlanta.

frequent flyer miles are a very, very cool thing. ?

to cap the third-from-last day of the school year, we had a baby shower for tracy and tor. i made a quilt bigger than a pillow, for which i am quite proud. it is simple but soft and play mat sized. maybe i should quilt a sleeping bag for iceland…

and while we’re on the subject of sewing, that two day countdown is also counting until i can sew things for sehrnett, which is also a thing to be super happy about.

it’s orange wednesday. must dash.

xlovesx

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i swear i do things other than make cupcakes. i do. why, over the past week, i have gone to work, pulled through minor health drama and poorly assembled some poorly manufactured flat pack furniture. see? the cupcakes are just more fun.

so much fun that at the weekend, anita in the netherlands emailed me for cupcake info. by the time the weekend was out, she’d made some gorgeous cupcakes in white and dark chocolate, with little chocolate hearts on top. i hope she will post the picture on her blog, as they look super yummy and, after all, i am all about the sharing of good cupcake photos, right behind the sharing of cupcakes.

sorry to cut this short, but i have to go be stern with the annoying neighbours who have left their dogs barking in the flat all night, which explains why i’m posting now. when did i become such a grown up? anyway, i must be awake in five hours and since i have actually learned to sleep, i will go complain and then go. to. bed.

i’m sure you wanted to know.

xlovesx

ps: 9 days!