House Portrait

I have to confess that work on the book has been my "art" priority for the past several months.  It's almost finished though -- just a few pages to finalize and we'll be on to the next stage.

I did recently take a little break from the book to work on a portrait...

The request came from Margaret.  This is a little convoluted, but here's the story...Margaret's husband Bob had contacted me in the fall of 2008 and asked me to paint a traditional watercolor memorial portrait of their beloved dog Shammy, for his wife for Christmas.  Bob provided me with photos of Shammy and we spent the next several weeks emailing photos, drawings, drafts, and progress paintings back and forth.  In the end, Bob had the portrait framed and presented it to his wife for Christmas. 

Margaret contacted me after Christmas and shared the following:

Dear Deborah I just wanted to tell you how much I loved the beautiful painting you painted of my Shammy. You captured his essence, and I feel closer to him each time I look at it. Thank you for all the hard work you put into the painting - I absolutely love it, and it means the world to me! When I received it from Bob, there were many, many tears, but they were good tears. Thanks again, Margaret

Well, fast forward a year and I received an email from Margaret, inquiring about a house portrait --  A surprise painting, to give to a friend who had shared her home when Margaret and Bob were in the process of relocating.  Well, Margaret provided me with several photos and a sketch of what she had in mind for the portrait.  This portrait had a time constraint, so instead of a traditional watercolor painting, Margaret opted for a digital portrait, so we could speed up the process and not have to wait for paint to dry between layers, and didn't require flattening at the end -- which requires an additional 2-3 days for drying.  Anyway, the emails flew between Margaret and I, and photos, drawings, drafts and proofs were exchanged for the next several days.  This is probably the fastest portrait I have ever completed, but we got it conceptualized, painted and framed in the matter of a week!

It was very fun working with Margaret -- she knew what she wanted and once again I was happy to be a part of such a special gift. ~Deborah

I HEART You!

and it's not even February! 

This past year has been filled with a number of friends and acquaintences being diagnosed with heart disease -- unfortunately for some, the diagnosis came as a result of their autopsy.  Morbid yes, but the reality is heart disease is real -- it impacts our lives, whether directly or indirectly. The good news?  There is much we can do to help combat it. 

You know what is coming, don't you...yes, with minor modifications to our daily routines, we can make positive changes to help prevent heart disease.

I recently took part in the French Hospital HeartAware program, a FREE cardiovascular risk assessment that took about 7 minutes to complete and:

•Assessed my current cardiovascular health status and identified those medical or lifestyle conditions that may lead to development of the disease.

•Shared what I could do to take action to reduce my level of risk, including making you aware of the many services available through French Hospital Medical Center.

•Offered FREE continuing education via e-mail about my specific cardiovascular health and risk factors, if I so desired.

In addition, at the end of the online assessment, I had the option of obtaining a FREE 1/2 hour consultation with the HeartAware Coordinator.  The consultation included a review of my assessment findings, a FREE cholesterol check and the opportunity to have a $99 calcium CT scan to check for any potential problems with my arteries.

At the end of the day, my heart is fine.  I have however taken some steps to ensure that my heart stays healthy -- I stopped eating sugar about a month ago, I have cut out my daily caffiene habit, I'm eating a lot more veggies & whole grain foods, and a lot less junk! 

So what is next on the road to the healthier me agenda?  Walk more!  This is where you can help!  I (along with my dog Zoe) have joined the FzioPed's HeartWalk team to help raise awareness for Heart Health.  The walk will be in October and will benefit the American Heart Association.  Until then, Zoe and I will be preparing for the walk and raising funds to help support the cause.  If you would like to support us in this endeavor and either walk with, or donate to the cause, please go to our Heart Walk web page. As a special thank you for caring, Zoe and I will be making a special PawPrintArt HEART card that we will send to each person who signs up at Heart Walk web page.

Thank you for your support!  ~Deborah & Zoe

Cake Decorating 101

I shared previously that I attempted to decorate cupcakes for a bridal shower. The cupcakes weren’t bad, but definitely not what I envisioned in my head!  So, what to do, what to do…that’s easy, sign up for a cake decorating class! Thankfully my local Michael’s store offers Wilton’s cake decorating classes, so I signed up and spent the last 4 Saturday nights learning the basics of cake decorating.

I purchased the “Class 1 kit”, which included just about everything needed to begin this new endeavor, including:

7 Decorating tips:

Round decorating tips #3 & 12 – these tips are used for outlining, lettering, dots, balls, stringwork, lattice, lacework.
Open Star Decorating Tips #16 & 21 – these tips are used for “star” techniques, drop flowers, borders, and whole host of decorations.
Leaf Decorating Tip #57 – in addition to making leaves, this tip can be used for “shell-motion” borders.
Petal Decorating Tip #104 – used to create realistic flower petals, dramatic ruffles, drapes, swags and bows.
Drop Flower Decorating Tip #2D – used to make….drop flowers.

3 Decorating bags - 2 reusable and 1 disposable. The bags hold the frosting and are MOST important to the decorating process!

2 Standard Couplers - The couplers are made up of two parts the coupler and the coupler ring - the coupler fits inside of the decorating bag.  A decorating tip is placed on the outside of the bag, over the coupler, then the coupler ring is screwed on over the decorating tip to hold the tip in place. The couplers make it very handy to change decorating tips without having to use a new bag filled with frosting each time.

1 Flower nail – used to make roses, daisies, carnations and other flowers

1 Practice Board – used for just that, Practice, Practice, Practice! It is a vinyl covered piece of cardboard with a clear vinyl overlay. The overlay lifts so you can place a practice sheet beneath and copy the various shapes and decorations. It is a very handy little tool for testing things out before actually putting icing on the cake!

1 Decorator art brush – used for “brushed embroidery” work

1 Tip Cleaning Brush – essential for getting all of that frosting out of the decorating tips!

1 Straight Spatula – used for mixing, stirring your frosting,. It can also be used for frosting your cake, although a bent spatula is better…and a special Cake Frosting Decorating Tip is even better!

You will notice that I said the kit contained “just about” everything needed to begin cake decorating. Other supplies needed were:

• Gel food coloring (I had the liquid type at home, but learned that the liquid thins the icing too much and makes it impossible to use for decorating. So stick with the gel type – you will get MUCH better results!)
• Toothpicks – for dipping into your gel food coloring and coloring your frosting. Note, it is important that you use a toothpick only once – you can contaminate your colors AND “mess up” your gel food colorings if you use the same toothpick to get more/another color.
• 1-1/2” squares of wax paper – these are used to put on top of your flower nail when making flowers
• Double stick tape – used to hold the wax paper onto the flower nail
• Scissors
• an Apron – definitely needed!
• Extra couplers and disposable decorating bags
• Paper towels
• Buttercream frosting…lots of it! The instructor provided us with a recipe, however I must confess that I used Wilton’s premade Decorator icing throughout most of the class!
• a Turntable (or lazy susan) – we learned that it is MUCH easier to decorate a cake when you could turn IT rather than have to move your body around it.
• Bent spatula (easier to use than the straight spatula when smoothing the frosting on your cake)
• Cake boards (to put your cakes on)

And so, with supplies in hand, I showed up for the first class. The instructor passed out the Wilton Class 1 book, which included frosting recipes, cake baking/preparation tips, icing coloring tips, and a number of how to’s for creating lines, dots, borders, flowers, and other fun decorations.

I love it when people are totally into what they do, and this instructor certainly LOVES what she does! She handed out a number of frosting recipes, cake recipes, a pricing sheet so we would know what to charge for the beautiful cakes that we would ONE day create, a sheet which provided the number of servings per cake, popular websites, flavoring company information, etc.

Once we were loaded down with information and everyone was as fired up as the instructor, we began…

She showed us how to cut the tip off of the bag, place a coupler inside, place a tip over the coupler, secure the coupler with the coupler ring, fill the bag with frosting, and finally how to burp the bag. (click here to go to the Wilton site for a visual on how to fill the bag).

With filled bags in hand, we were ready…or so we thought. We quickly learned that there is a right way and a wrong way to hold the bag, and “position” is everything in cake decorating. Rather than fill up more space with the particulars of bag positioning, click here to go to the Wilton site for a visual on proper bag positioning.

With proper bag positioning behind us, we pulled out our practice boards and started in on stars, zig zags,  the Fleur de lis, Shell border, and the Basketweave.

Each session is 2 hours long, so after practicing the above, we had just enough time for the instructor to show us how to frost a cake, so we could bring a frosted cake to the next session.  She placed the cake on a turntable and showed us two methods for frosting a cake: 1 using a bent spatula, and the other using a special cake icing tip...

I have to confess, I like to take the easy route and when I saw that you could fill a bag with frosting and essentially squeeze out the frosting in three easy steps

and the instructor had that cake frosted in a matter of minutes, I knew this was the method for me!  So I went out and bought tip #789, baked my cake, let it cool, leveled it, placed it on a cake board, and put it on my turntable for a "quick" frosting -- HA!  What I forgot is that the instructor has YEARS of experience and what took her just a couple of minutes to do BEAUTIFULLY, took me too many minutes to confess here.  Have you ever seen that episode of "I Love Lucy" -- where Lucy and Ethyl are working at the candy factory?  Well, I felt just like that! 

I did eventually get my cake frosted, however it didn't look nearly as smooth (or balanced) as the instructors...

And that was just the cake...I will share more about the actual decorating next time.  Until then,

Today's Quote:  "I went to the store to buy a candleholder.  They didn't have one so I bought a cake."  ~Mitch Hedberg