A birthday fit for a Princess {Customer creations in the spotlight}

My lovely friend Tanya from Tanya Ryff Photography asked me to design a custom princess birthday party package for her daughter Tayla who was turning 14. She was looking for something simple and modern in Tayla's favourite colour purple. I started with the invitation and sent over some backgrounds, design elements and possible lay-outs for them to choose from. The endresult is a completely custom made invitation, combing all of Tayla's favourite elements.

I love how Tanya added her own personal touch to Tayla's birthday invitation by glueing it onto a hot pink background and adding a little sparkle. It really makes the invitation pop, don't you think?

The birthday package also included drink flags, cupcake toppers and foodlabels and Tanya did such a wonderful job styling the party table using the colour purple as the main theme.

 

If you would like to see more photo's you can hop on over to Tanya's blog.

PS: You can find the entire printable Princess collection in the shop here.

Customer Creations in the Spotlight

A little while back I was contacted by the lovely Janice who inquired about customizing the romantic elephantine cupcake toppers for a "Qu" wedding.

Now, I had never heard of a "Qu" wedding before, but Janice explained that she was helping out at her kindergartner's school and that they were having a "Q" and "u" themed wedding to teach the children that "Q" and "u" belong together. When you write words that start with a Q they are always followed by the letter u. So, by joining Q and u in holy matrimony the children understand better that those two letters are linked.  I was so touched that she wanted to use my romantic cupcake toppers for this event.

When Janice was kind enough to send me some pictures I was in awe: just look at those cupcakes!

I like to think that Janice whipped up that frosting in the exact same schade of pink as my cupcake toppers just so they would match. :)

I thought there were over 50 cupcakes and I was already impressed by that number, but then Janice told me that she had baked 150 (yes, you read that right - one hundred and fifty) cupcakes for all the kindergartners in the entire school! It makes me wish that Janice would be volunteering at my childrens' school.

Thank you so much Janice for sharing your Qu wedding with me!

Shop Update: Spring Flowers (and a few more elephants)

March 21st marks the arrival of Spring here in Belgium and when I think of Spring I think of the early flowers that start to bloom. Little dots of colour appearing in the grass and between the trees, making the days a bit more colourful.

Well, Spring is now not only in the air, but also in the shop!

I already posted a little sneak peek on the blog (with special thanks to the lovely Tanya from Tanya Ryff Photography) but I'm happy to announce that Spring Flower cupcake toppers and food labels are now available in the shop in different colour combinations. So whether you like pink or blue, there's certainly a flower there for you... The food labels are blank and can thus be used for any occasion. The cupcake toppers were designed with Tanya's beautiful granddaughter in mind who recently turned two. They can be personalized with name, age and initial of the birthday girl. And I couldn't resist making another set of cupcake toppers with my signature elephant design for an extra sweet touch (complete with flower behind her ear to match the Spring Flower designs!)

I will leave you with a few more pictures...

Sneak preview of some Spring Flower goodness

Here's a sneak peek at a new collection that will soon be listed in the shop!

Photography by Tanya Ryff Photography

Tutorial: cupcake topper assembly

Cupcake toppers are easy to assemble and make your cupcakes look even more delicious (or, if your cupcakes did not turn out great, this will keep your guests looking at the topper rather than at the unfortunate cupcake, brilliant!). Want to add a little sparkle to your cupcakes? Here's how.

First of all, you'll need some tools: with a pair of scissors, a glue stick and some wooden stir sticks or lollipop sticks you have the basics covered.

Of course you will also need some cute cupcake topper designs. These are for my daughter's upcoming Alice in Wonderland birthday party and they can be found in the shop. 

You could use scissors to cut out square or circular shapes, but if you have any punches this will make the assembly go a lot faster and the shapes even cuter. Check your local craft store or search online for circular or scallop shaped punches. A 2" radius is a nice size.

If you don't have any punches you can print out 2 copies of the design. Cut out squares out of one copy and circles out of the other copy.  With a little 3D tape in between they add a lovely 3D effect to your cupcake topper!

And now for the actual assembly of the toppers:

1. Cut away the white strip of paper so you can get closer to the design with your punch.

2. Place your punch so that the design is exactly in the middle and then punch out your shape.

Tada!

Some punches can be used upside down, this is very handy when it comes to punching out shapes where the design has to be centred.

Keep punching and add a little variation in your cupcake toppers by using different punch shapes.

You could even use a corner punch

This would look wonderful as a gift tag when tied to a gift bag with some pretty ribbon. Or use it to make napkin rings!

3. If your printer can't handle heavyweight paper, then you could reinforce your paper with a circle sticker after you punch out the shape. All you have to do now is glue the stick to the back of your topper (you could also use tape) and voila

all done!

Feel free to embellish even further with a little sparkle or tie a ribbon underneath the topper.

And now all you need to do is bake some cupcakes!

This was my first tutorial, I hope you found it helpful.

Colour inspiration from Pinterest

Source: inspirationlane.tumblr.com via Rocajo Studio on Pinterest

I have only been on Pinterest for a few days and have already found so much inspiration!  The colours in the above picture were my inspiration for the Romantic Cupcake Toppers.

I have already added a ton of colour combinations to my Pinterest board for future projects.

A little peek

Here's a sneak peek at some Romantic Cupcake Toppers that will be listed in the shop soon!

Perfect for Valentine's Day or a vintage wedding. The colours are really soft: a powdery pink and a pastel grey. I think I found my true love...