Birthday Beer Box

My boyfriend's Dad's birthday was this past weeked and as part of his present we'd bought him a few bottles of beer. Andrew asked me if I could do something with the bottles to make them look a bit more 'gifty'.

All I needed was a cereal box to make this birthday beer box. Ok...and some extra card and paper. But mostly a cereal box.

First I cut the cereal box to the height I wanted. The cereal box happened to be just the right width to fit the bottles in. I measured the length of the three bottles and cut the box accordingly, using the excess to make a new side on the open end.

As the bottles were quite heavy I used some corrugated card to reinforce the cereal box. I cut four pieces of card and stuck them to the inside of the box.

 To decorate the box I cut some brown packaging paper to fit around it.

Before I stuck the paper to the box I wrote the message. To make it look fancy I just googled 'birthday calligraphy' and traced it straight from the screen. I used a black felt tip to go over the outline and then fill it in.

I think it's a great way to make gifting bottles a bit more special. Perfect for a Dad. But if it was my Dad the box would be filled with ginger beer!

This Week I...

...celebrated my birthday!

I had the day off on Friday so my parents took me to Hunstanton beach. The sea was surprisingly not cold so we had a paddle.

We did classic British beach things like 2p machines and crazy golf.

On my actual birthday I made cakes and watched a lot of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt with my boyfriend because that's what 26 year olds do.

How was your week?

Party Decorations

For my birthday party I made these big gold numbers for decoration.

To make them I cut out a 2 and 5 from corrugated card.

I sprayed the card with spray glue and stuck them to this glittery wrapping paper which I bought from the Scrap Store for 50p. What a bargain.

I cut the excess paper so it would wrap around the card and glued it in place.

The numbers were so much fun to pose with and I'll be able to use them again in 27 years when I turn 52!

The other decorations I made were tissue paper pom-poms. So Pinterest!

I made 6 pom-poms from one 49p pack of tissue paper.

I used more of he gold paper to add to the pink paper bunting I already had.

I also hung up some photos of me throughout the years,

And finally I fancied up some plastic disposable cups by gluing pink glitter around the bottom,

This Week I...

...had quite a busy one!

I had a job interview on Monday, was offered the job, had my birthday on Thursday, had the last day of term and my last day at my current job on Friday and then Saturday was my birthday party! 

To celebrate my 25th birthday I had a small garden party with some friends.

My cake was a simple two tiered sponge decorated with pink icing and an attempt at piping. It's tricky to do on the sides!

I bought a 2 and 5 sparkler to have instead of candles and after a few hilarious failed attempts to light them I managed it and they looked awesome.

I also made 25 shaped sugar cookies in case anyone forgot how old I was.

The best parts of the party were having our Christmas net lights up (even though they're indoor lights!) and the word search table cloth which kept everyone entertained for pretty much the whole night.

How was your week?

Paper Cut Birthday Card

For a recent friend's birthday I decided to make her a special card.

I wanted to do a paper cut card so that I could use my new craft knife which has a rotating blade, specifically for cutting around curves.

I drew out my image on blue card and then got to cutting. I had to make sure each element of the picture was connected so that it didn't fall out when cut around.

When all the cutting out was done I decided to put white paper behind the blue card to make the image stand out.

This is where I had a bit of a fail. I decided to use spray glue to stick the paper and the card, so I sprayed the back of the blue card. Unfortunately blobs of glue got through to the front of the card, there were stringy bits between shapes and the glue stained through to the front in places. 

Don't by cheap spray glue people! Get the proper spray mount stuff!

I stuck the card to paper anyway and tried to pick off the blobs of glue but it still looked messy. So I decided to paint over the blue card completely with blue paint. In hindsight this would have been better done before I stuck on the white paper because I kept getting bits of paint on the white paper which was very frustrating.

But the level of messy this created wasn't as bad as the hot mess it was before so it was an improvement.

And my friend loved the card!

Grand Ole Lisa

Today is my birthday!

And this is my birthday cake.

It should really say 'Grand Ole Lisa' cos, 23, yikes! Haha.

Something Nashville/country related was definitely a top option for this years birthday cake because I still love country music, this year I watched the first season of Nashville pointing out all the places I'd been, and I still start sentences with, 'When I was in Nashville...' even though it was September that I went there.

The main cake is a Victoria sponge covered in fondant icing with the Grand Ole Opry logo on it.

Cutting out letters is not easy. I printed out the logo, cut out all the letters and lay them on top of the icing then cut around them with a knife. I stuck them on the main cake with jam.

The cupcakes around the main cake represent the circle of stage that was taken from the original home of the Grand Ole Opry and put into the stage of the new place so everybody would be standing on the same floor.

I made the candles into the iconic mic stands using paper with the words printed on.

See my previous birthday cakes here, here, here and here!

The prettiest cake I ever did make

And by make, I mean decorate.

My Mum made the cake and I decorated it.

That's how we roll when it comes to birthday cakes.

That's right; today is my birthday and this is my birthday cake!

For my birthday last year my housemates got me a giant cupcake silicon mould and I've finally got around to using it.

Lots of people online have said that they had to do a few trial cakes with this mould, as the instructions aren't very helpful when it comes to cake batter quantities. But my Mum got it right first time. She's a baking pro.

Although, we haven't eaten it yet, but I trust my Mum's cooking skillz.

I went for super cute when decorating this cake so there's a pink ribbon, fondant buttons, and pink and white sugar balls and hearts.

To see my previous birthday cakes click here, here and here.

And I highly recommend that you do, cos I have had some pretty awesome cakes in the past.

CSI cake, pick-up truck cake, guitar cake and so many more.

I'm also on twitter now so hit me up @lisaharrold

I'm back!

Panic over people, my laptop is back.

It had a virus (eep!!) but the folks over at PC World made it all better.

Anyway, right before that all happened one of my very best friends turned 21.

Her boyfriend made her the most awesome cake. A giant cupcake with many little cupcakes around the edge.

And it tasted goooood.

Here's the card I made her.

I thought I'd give 3D decoupage a try.

I printed out the same photo four times (taken from our Cromer beach trip).

Then cut out more and more sections out of each photo and stuck them on top of each other using sticky pads.

I think it makes a regular photo look a bit more special.

Photo Scavenger Hunt

As well as eating cake on my birthday, my friends and I had a photo scavenger hunt.

I'd seen the idea online somewhere and thought it would be something a bit different to do.

I got my sister to write up a list of 21 things that we'd have to take a photo of around my town.

Me and my friends split into two groups and gave ourselves a time limit of one hour to find everything.

 Then we came back home and went through the photos with my sisters judging them.

The other team won but it was still really fun (but unfair since it was my birthday haha!)

This was the list; 

1) A red car

2) A small child or equivalent

3) Something Mexican

4) Make your own crime scene

5) An interesting piece of litter

6) A prime number

7) Alcohol

8) A kissing gate

9) A blue door

10) Something a bit country

11) A closed sign

12) Reenact a moment from Doctor Who

13) A timepiece

14) The fanta cat

(It's an in-joke between me and my sister)

15) Something that Lisa will like

16) An interesting cloud

(It's a shark!) 

17) A piece of fruit

18) A piece of graffiti

19) An action shot

20) A funny looking house

21) Something you wouldn't find in Stotfold