A Bird Themed Baby Shower

Today my friend Michelle and I threw a shower for our friend Tiffany.  My friend Tiffany is having a baby girl next month and has chosen a bird theme for the nursery.  In keeping with that theme, I made decorations to match.

 Above is a picture of the cakeball tower that I made (thoughts on how I would do things better with that will be at the bottom of this post).  Below, are birds that represent the different members of Tiffany's family.  To make the birds, I used the Winter Wonderland Cricut cartridge.  On that cartridge, the birds actually wear a hat but I cut off that part of the bird because it didn't really match with the theme.  Because it is a baby shower, I put a carriage on top of the tower.  I was able to purchase the carriage at Party City.  It is actually a favor holder but I thought it would make a good topper.

Here is what I would have done to do the cakeball tower better... while at the shower, I was talking to a woman who also makes cakeballs.  She said that what she does is still a toothpick in the cakeball and then stick the toothpick end into a styrofoam tree shape.  This absolutely sounds like a great idea and is something I will look into.  I have been perfecting my cakeball technique of late and really need good ways to show off my advancement.  I recently purchase a Wilton Chocolate Pro and it has saved me so much time!!!  It has made melting chocolate really easy and has kept me from having to use vegetable oil in the chocolate (for smoothness).  I will say however that I do have to use the vegetable oil for the white chocolate (for whatever reason it ended up being really chunky).

On my next post, I will put up a picture of the invites and the party favors that I made.

Paper Turkeys

I made this turkey using the Accent Essentials cartridge for the Cricut machine.  This was my very first craft using the cricut machine and I have to say that I am very pleased with the results.  Below is a step-by-step account of how I cut the shapes to later assemble.

For the body of the turkey:  Cut a 3 in. shape using Accent 31s.  Cut 2 of these for each turkey (one is for the front of the turkey and one is to be glued onto the back of the turkey after the feathers have been added).

For the feathers of the turkey: Cut a 4 in. shape using Accent 26s.  Each one of these shapes will yield you four feathers.  I used a cutting board to cut the shape into 1/4ths.  I made enough feathers to have one of each of five colors of feathers for each turkey.

For the eyes:  Cut a 1/2 in. shape using the Accent 1s.  You will want 2 of each of these for each turkey.  For the pupils of the turkey, I drew on black circles with a pen.


For the nose:  Cut a 3/4 in. shape using Accent 29s.  Cut this shape in half on a diagonal.  This will yield two triangles which then become noses for 2 turkeys.


For the tongue:  cut a 2 in. shape using Accent 25s.  Cut each tendril off the shape.  This will yield 6 tongues.


For the message in the mouth: Cut a 1 1/2 in. by 1 in. rectangle using a cutting board.  The Happy Thanksgiving message is written in by hand.

After all of the shapes were cut.  I then went about gluing the shape together using glue dots.  First, I glued the two outside sets of feathers together and then joined the two sets together by gluing on the middle feather.  I then glued the set of feathers to the back of the first body piece.  After that, I glued down the back side of the body.  Then it was just a matter of gluing the face together.  One key is to make sure that the tongue is secured under the Happy Thanksgiving message.