Recent creating fun

So besides dipping my toes into the art fair market at the Steveston Salmon Festival, I've been busy trying out all sorts of ideas and projects. I'm currently trying to learn my Wacom tablet and Corel Paint Essentials and although I'm liking the results I'm getting, I still feel as though I'm fumbling around. I'll be asking for Corel Paint 12 for my birthday though as it looks amazing. Way over my head amazing.

I've also been starting some vision boards over at Pinterest. There are so many beautiful images that it's easy to lose and hour or two on the site. If you're on there you can see my boards here. I'm big on following craft and DIY boards. I found this great picture of a fruit salad bowl of a turtle made from a watermelon and I knew I had to try it out. Below is a picture of my version of the turtle. The instructions on the blog don't tell you that you need to use a strip of watermelon along the center for the head and tail but I figured it out.

I also did a couple birthday cakes recently. At the end of April I did a Great Valley cake for my niece who has a thing for dinosaurs. I made a "Butter Beer" cake in a slab form and used some chocolate cake that I had in the freezer in the shape of a cone for the volcano. This cake was really done on the fly but my niece was still really thrilled to get her dinosaur cake.

I also created something for my eldest' spring fundraiser cake walk this year. You had to know that I would jump at the chance to create a cake. This year's entry was "Hungry Man Dinner" which can be found in Hello, Cupcake!. I love the idea of cake disguised as savory food and this was so much fun. With the help of candies and great simple instructions I created these cupcakes that helped win my daughter an extra prize for the spring fair.

The third cake I did recently was for my daughters 5th birthday and we finally pinned her decision on a make-up bag. This one was from 50 Easy Party Cakes by Debbie Brown, my go-to book. I used a simple chocolate devil's food cake recipe and iced it with buttercream rather than covering it with fondant. I didn't really want to make marshmallow fondant for this cake as I need so little so I used fruit chewy candies for anything that needed modeling. It tasted better too.

So what do you think about my latest food creations? Which one is your favorite?