Just like the shrinky dinks you played with as a kid, but cheap and good for the earth!

Check it out!

• Part 1: HOW TO- Doodle Charms – Jewelry from recycled plastic
• Part 2: What would happen if..? (The Shrinky Dink Test Lab)
• Part 3: More experimentation in the Shrinky Dink Test Lab
• Part 4 of the Shrinky Dink Test lab: Successful sealing.. maybe
• Shrinky Dinkies – Special Edition : Make Wraparound Wine Glass Markers

As promised yesterday, here are more details on the Doctor Who Dalek Cake.  You know I’m a big believer in showing you that YOU can make a really cool cake, and I do one every year for the Boy’s birthday.  Past years: Angry Birds cupcakes, Dragon Cake,  Perry the Platypus Cake, and Clone Trooper cupcakes.  So, today I’ve promised some of the details of how to make this cake yourself.  Tomorrow I’ll try to get up some of the decor, and a wrap up :)

By the way, these techniques can be used to make any kind of Robot like cake, not just Dr. Who themed Daleks :).

This cake is really make in two parts.  The Daleks on top are ‘toppers’  and they are put on the cake at the end of the process.  They aren’t made out of cake, but
they are (almost) completely edible and tasty.  This makes everything much
simpler, as you don’t need to be able to store a really tall cake like this, and you don’t have to worry about it getting messed up before presentation.  I created the base and the toppers separately, and just assembled it the morning of the party.

So what are the Daleks made out of?  Well, the main body is an ice cream cone, the head/neck is chocolate, and it’s decorated in candy and fondant.  Neat huh?

Here are some action shots!

So, first we’ll talk supplies, then  how to construct your Dalek body, then how to decorate it, and then I’ll go into the cake base.  So let’s begin!

The Dalek Cake Toppers: Ingredients/Supplies

Makes 4 Daleks.

What you’ll need:

• Cake Ice cream Cones (like these).  I used the Publix brand, the ‘jumbo’ size which is a little larger than standard.
• 1 batch Marshmallow Fondant(Hint, use small marshmallows, and reserve 4-6 for future use.)
• 1 package White chocolate flavored candy coating
• Spray Food colour (I used Wilton Master Color Mist Food Color Spray in Silver.  If you’d like your entire dalek in metallics or black, you could get gold, black or other colors as well.  I just used the silver for accents. )
• Food coloring.  For mine I used some bright colors and black – these are good (Wilton Primary Candy Color Set)
• Icing (whatever you used to frost your base cake – you’re just using this for glue in a few places, you don’t need much).

Supplies:

• Clean styrofoam egg carton (or something similar to the shape of egg carton cups- used as a mold for the dalek head – you could also use a candy mold)
• Toothpicks (I used colored round ones)
• Microplane Zester/Grater (optional, but useful)

Candy I used – you can substitute similar:

• Mike & Ike (Tropical Fruit) (8)
• Dum Dums (4)
• White Tic Tacs (8)
• Melted chocolate
• Candy Dots on Paper (a bunch – 128 individual dots)
• Trader Joe’s chocolate Callets (you could probably substitute a similarly sized wafer cookie for this)
• Small marshmallows (4-6)

Prep Work – Dalek Bodies

Fondant:

We’ll be using Marshmallow fondant for this cake, and I’ve gone over how to make it and work with it in previous tutorials, so I’m not going repeat myself here.  Here’s all the details on how to make up a batch: Marshmallow fondant .   Do this the night before.

Split up your fondant (use a scale to make it easier, you’ll need about 2 oz for each dalek body/head, in the colors of your choice).  Go ahead and knead in your food coloring to the desired color for each 2 oz ball.  You’ll also need a ball of gray fondant (black foodcoloring) (maybe 3-4 oz).   Save the rest for covering the cake, and making up for mistakes.

Using paper, make a template for the top and bottom grey strips.  You’ll want a width of about 1/2 in for the top strip, and around 1 in for the bottom, but since cone sizes vary, templates help.

Roll out the gray fondant thinly, and use your template to measure and mark out the strips (4 of each size) on the sheet of gray dough (but don’t cut out yet).  You’ll probably want to add a 1/2 inch to the length of the strips to allow for shrinkage or sizing mishaps, particularly if you’re doing this over several days.  Spray the gray dough with your silver spray.  Remove the excess-even if it has silver on it, and knead back into a ball for later use.  Once the spray dries, cut out your strips.

Cones:

Melt your candy coating according to package directions in a tall cup.  You’ll be dipping your cone into it, so plan accordingly size wize. Dip each cone to cover the outside, and let dry.  The coating doesn’t have to look perfect, but it should be relatively smooth.

Head bases:

You’re going to use a styrofoam egg carton as a mold.  Pour a spoonful of your leftover candy coating into 6 cups (4 dalek heads plus 2 spares), to about 1/2 inch.  You’ll want the diameter of the exposed candy to be approximately the same size as your neck wafers.  You can trim later if necessary, but get as close as you can.  Refrigerate, and after the candy is solid, you can use your microplane to smooth up the top, and to flatten out the bottom to size as necessary.

Dots:

My dots were going to be silver, so I needed to spray them with silver spray.  If you spray them while still on the paper, they are much easier to do, but be aware, you’ll waste more spray with overspray.  If you peel them off, however, the force of spray can knock them around though.  I decided to use half yellow dots and half blue dots, figuring that if the spray didn’t completly cover, I’d have a consistent color.  (I used the yellow on the yellow & orange daleks, and the blue on the other 2).

“Neck” Chocolates:

Stack 3 chocolate callets, gluing them together with icing (reserve some from frosting the base cake).  Mist the stack with silver spray.

Assembly

I recommend doing 1 full Dalek first, so you can get the technique down, then doing the remainder assembly line style.

Assembling the Body.

Roll out one of the colored pieces of fondant, and using ~3/4 of it, cover your chocolate dipped cone.  You can trim off excess at back and bottom, I didn’t worry if I had a seam in the back.

Place one of the wider silver strips on the bottom of your cone, just under where the ridge is.   Orient the strip so that the ends will meet on the seam side of your colored fondant.  Use water to adhere to the colored fondant, tucking the edges under the bottom of the cone if necessary.  Overlap the ends if necessary.  BE CAREFUL because the water you are adhering with will cause blotchy-ness on the silver painted side if you touch it with wet hands.

Place one of the skinnier silver strips along the top of the cone, leaving about 1/4 in of the colored fondant showing at the top.  Adhere with water, overlap the ends if necessary.

Adding the Silver Dots

Hopefully, you have room for 4 rows of dots between the top and bottom silver strips.  My first one, the white one, did not – so it only has 3 rows.  I modified strip placement on the subsequent Daleks to allow for 4 rows.  3 is fine too, of course, and is a little easier to do, but I personally liked the look of 4.

Put a small amount of icing in a dish to use as glue.  Using your finger, tap out 1 column of glue dots down one side of the body.  Place a silver dot on each one to adhere it.  Apply another column of Dots on the exact opposite side of the body.  Then fill in the rest of the top row (between your two columns) with 3 Dots, then continue down to complete the side.  Turn over, and fill in the rest of the top row on the other side with 3 Dots, then complete that side.  Let dry, and set aside your body.

Assembling the Head.

Place your molded candy head on top of an overturned shot glass.

Cover with a circle of colored fondant and gently smooth, tucking under the ends.

Use your icing glue to attach the head to the stack of chocolate wafers that make up the neck.  Let dry and set aside.

You’re now ready to add the final touches.

Final Assembly and Decorating

First we have create the eye stalk, the manipulator arm, and the gun stick.

Eye Stalk (make 4 of these):

Melt a small amount (~1/4 c) of chocolate or chocolate coating (you can use the white coating from previous if you like, and just spray it silver afterwards, but I had some chocolate so that’s what I used.)

Cut the pointier end of your Mike and Ike candy (the blue one) off, so you have about 2/3 of the candy left.  Using a toothpick, carefully stab through the center of the rounded end, so you can dip it in chocolate.  Dip most of the way, but leave the rounded end exposed, so you still see the blue.  Let dry.

Remove the toothpick, and reinsert it in the other end.

Use scissors to cut off the end of a small marshmallow, making a disk.  Stab it onto the toothpick and slide up.  Repeat so you have 2 marshmallow disks about a 1/4in from the eye.

Gun Stick (4)

Basically, take a blue Mike and Ike candy and insert a toothpick into the wide end.  I then painted on stripes of chocolate, meeting at the pointy end.  Let dry.

Manipulator Arm (4)

For the arm, My Handy Husband suggested a Dum Dum lollypop, cut in half.  He took a Dremel with a saw blade attachment and cut it, smoothly up any rough edges with the microplane zester. I then turned it cut side down and dusted the outside with silver spray (which was pretty much empty at this point!). If that’s too much for you, you can always use half a round chocolate candy impaled on a tooth pick.

Extra Fondant Touches

Using your leftover gray/silver fondant, add a small pea sized ball in the center front of the head where you’ll place the eye stalk, and a strip with two small balls on the front of the silver strip where the arms go.

Assembly

Using a toothpick to make a pilot hole, insert the stick of your Dum Dum into the left body fondant ball.  Stab the right fondant ball with your Gunstick toothpick.  Both should stick straight out, and will be held in place by the structure of the cake cone.

Wet the end of a tic tac, and carefully press into the head, one on either side, to make the lights.

Then press your eye stalk toothpick into your fondant ball in the center of the head, sticking straight out.

Using some icing, glue the head assembly to the body assembly.  Let dry.

Place your daleks in a cool dry safe place (do not refrigerate) until time to assemble your cake.

The Cake Base

The cake is simple a tall round cake in my example, but you can of course use anything you like, since you’ll be topping it with Daleks.  In fact, feel free to cheat and buy a purchased premade cake if you like–the Daleks are enough work, you won’t feel that guilty!   But me?  I have to make mine, because I just don’t storebought cakes that much.  So I’ll walk you through what I did, and you can modify it to your own needs &/or time constraints.  Note, you should make the cake first, even though it is last in these instructions.

For my cake, I did ‘cheat’ and go for boxed cake mix.  I can (and do!) make cake from scratch, and it’s not significantly harder or more time intensive, but in this case, I was saving my effort for the decorations.  So, 2 boxes cake mix.  I split into 4 layers, coloring each layer differently with candy color, just for fun.

Supplies:

• 2 boxes cake mix plus extra ingredients, baked into multiple layers.
• 1 batch cream cheese frosting (1 pkg cream cheese, 1 stick butter, 1 lb of powdered sugar, dash vanilla extract – combine in mixer and beat well)
• Part of our fondant batch (maybe 12oz?)
• Vanilla Wafers sprayed with gold/silver spray
• Gold food spray

Level the layers as necessary*, then stack and ice each layer with a thin coat of frosting. Don’t worry too much about how it looks, just get it as smooth as you can.  You’ll be covering the whole thing up anyway.

*Now, I was being quick and lazy, and didn’t level off my cakes after they cooked… which you can get away with if you only have 2 layers.  But LESSON LEARNED you really have to level out when you’re stacking 4 layers.  So I had cake failure, when the Crack in the Universe manifested itself on the top of my cake.  

After my cake failure, I removed the top two layers (set aside for later eating, they still taste great!) and replace with another batch of cake.

Let the icing on your cake dry out a bit so it’s not wet to the touch (I waited until the next day) and then you’ll cover the whole thing with your marshmallow fondant.  I colored my fondant with a little bit of yellow food coloring to make it a better base for the gold spray, but in retrospect I don’t think it was necessary.

So, we’re now going to cover the whole darn thing with our marshmallow fondant.  This takes patience and time, so don’t skimp on either.  Role out a thin sheet of fondant large enough to cover the cake (good tips on how to size here), and carefully place centered on the top of the cake.

Gradually smooth out the sides, flaring out the fondant, so it covers without wrinkling.  This is really hard to explain so I just found a good video on how to do this.  Watch this first, then try it on your cake.  Mine wasn’t near as neat as the one on this video, but it was close enough.  I added snake of fondant around the bottom to hide any sins.

I’ve never covered an entire cake in fondant, but it worked pretty well for a first time.

Also, you could just skip the whole fondant thing, and just ice the cake as you normally would.

I then sprayed the entire cake with gold food spray.

Final Cake Assembly

The morning of the party, I used icing glue to attach a row of gold/silver sprayed vanilla wafers to the side of the base cake, just for fun.

Place your Daleks on your cake, pressing into the fondant layer to steady them.

Since the top of my cake was a little bit rounded, I also used a vanilla wafer under the front of each Dalek to level it out.

And there you have it!  The completed Dalek Cake.  If you’re going to try this yourself, please read through all the instructions first.  I’d suggest planning to do this over several days.  Day 1: Bake & ice your cake, and make your marshmallow fondant.  If you have time, go ahead and dip your cones.  Day 2: Do all your prep work.  Day 3: Assemble everything else.

Let me know if you have questions!

Published on: Jun 20, 2012

Here are the cookies I made as shower favors.  They weren’t overly difficult, but a tad time consuming. I’ll post the recipe in a later post if anyone is interested, but basically it’s a non-leavened sugar cookie, covered with royal icing.  With small skewers for sticks, inserted before the cookie is baked.

The octopus is drawn on freehand, and it doesn’t take artistic talent… Everyone is cute, unique, and just a little bit ‘wopty’!

See below for the how to.

The Base

First just ice the white circles.  There’s many good tutorials for this, but they generally involve using a stiffer icing around the edge, and filling in the center with a more runny version.  I didn’t do that neat a job with mine.  Let that harden before you do the octopus.

Here’s a great tutorial from Wisdom of the Moon on working with royal icing, with a ton of pictures, so you can get the idea.

How to draw the octopus head and arms.

You’ll need your royal icing to be a little runny (but not as much as fill icing typically is), so that it will expand to fill a little bit, but not too runny or it will just flatten out (leading to fat legged octopuses without as much dimension).  Add a little water to thin, and practice on a spare cookie or parchment. Let them dry before you move on to the real ones, as it may take a few minutes for the icing to flatten.  If the icing doesn’t merge together when you draw two lines next to each other, then thin it a bit and test again.

Now, here’s a picture of how to draw the octopus – it’s just 4 lines.  The head is created when the lines merge together.

Adding Accents

You can decorate the octos any way you want, but I’d suggest at least adding eyes.  Here’s what I did.

Eyes: 2 large drops of white icing, topped with tiny dots of blue.

Spots:  Random drops of blue

As you can see, they are all different, and not quite perfect, but that really added to the charm.

If you try this, I’d love to see!

You might also like…

I just realized I never posted the actual finished invitation, but the illustration for the invitation is here, along with instructions on doing a quick neat photoshop coloring job:

Published on: Feb 2, 2011

My FedEx Out of Office blog post is up for March, and I almost forgot to share it with you guys before St. Patrick’s Day!   This is a fun printable (with Dot artwork, naturally!) that your kids can fold up and have fun sharing with their friends.

You remember these from grade school, right?  You would make them out of a piece of notebook paper, then play with them telling fortunes until they were confiscated by a mean teacher!  We always just called them fortune tellers, but according to the internet, they are also known as Cootie Catchers.

I’ve got the printable and the instructions on how to fold it up, if you’re a little rusty, over at FedEx Out of Office.

EDIT: Apparently the FedEx blog is kaput, so here are the instructions! 

Continuing the highlights from yesterday’s Skylander’s Cake, I just realized I never posted the invitation to the Skylanders Party.  I wanted to do something a little different, and most of the invites I’d seen in my travels around the web were just repurposed graphics of a selections of popular skylanders.  And while cute, I figured why not give the Bad Guy a starring role in the invitations?  So here is Kaos, inviting the Skylanders to come to a party.  And really, he promises it’s not a trap.

So, if you’d like to use this yourself, here’s a free download, because Dot is just all kinds of sweet that way!  Here’s the graphic with a more generic “you’re invited to a birthday party” message, that works for anyone child’s name (Click for large):

Just right click and save: http://dabbled.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/skylanders-invitation-dabbled.jpg

OR, if you’d prefer to personalize the banner that Kaos holds, you can download this blank printable, add your own text either via a graphics program and print, or by hand, and have the invite color copied. (Click to see larger)

Just right click this link and save the file: http://dabbled.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/kaos-skylanders-dabbled-blank1.jpg

Of course, if your kid’s name is Dominic, you’re welcome to use the real invitation :)

More highlights to come!

We have a GREAT sunroom. It’s got a huge vaulted ceiling and french doors on both sides and lots of windows. But, we also have a computer at a desk in the corner, and the light from the windows can cause a glare on the screen. Hence the need to occasionally cover up these gorgeous windows with some sort of curtain. And curtains or shaded on french doors are really a pain in the butt to me. They either get in the way, or they are clunky and unattractive, so I had avoided doing anything about the glaring window til forced to by nagging husband and kiddo.

So, I wanted a solution that would be easy to make, easy to remove, and look nice while it was up there. So what’s the secret? Well, note the 5 lovely buttonholes at the top of each panel. Does that give you any hints? It’s a shower curtain! We found a pretty black cotton waffle weave shower curtain at Target for less than $20.  And it’s held up by buttoning the button holes onto pushpins stuck in the door.  I used clear ones, but you could also do this with some really fun and funky push pins.

Materials:

• 10 clear (or interesting) push pins.
• 1 standard size shower curtain of a nice material, like cotton, with 10 holes at the top. [I originally wanted one with grommets at the top, but didn’t find one, and I think the button holes by themselves work fine.]
• Sewing machine (or a needle and thread and a bit more time and patience than I possess.) Pins, Scissors, matching thread.

How to do the transformation:

1. Cut the shower curtain in half down the middle.
2. Starting with the Left half:  Measure the distance from the left seam to the first button hole.  Fold your right seam and pin all the way down, the same distance from the 5th (last) buttonhole.
3. Noting the size of the hem on the left side, stitch down the right hand side with a similar size hem.
4. Trim the excess fabric.
5. Repeat with the right half.
6. Hold up your curtain to the door and determine where you want it to hang, and mark each button hole.
7. Stick pushpins where you marked, then just slide the buttonholes onto the pushpins!
8. Easy peasy mac and cheesy, you are done. The curtains can be folded back on themselves to let in light, or removed altogether, easily.

There are some really cool shower curtain patterns and fabrics out there, so you can really get creative with this project.  Just make sure you pick one that has 10 evenly spaced holes, meant for inserting the shower curtain rings.

That’s all there is to it…  hope you’ve enjoyed this tutorial and it inspires you to make something cool !  There are some more sewing type projects in the Related Posts box below, so if you like this, go check them out too…

cheers,

dot

The book has a bunch of really cute creatures and scenes you can create with needle felting – everything from a silly science lab, to a sweet shop, to a pirate island… with easy to follow instructions.   It looks like it would be a good introduction to the craft of needle felting, you don’t have to already know how to do it.

Tutorial: Big Purple Alien Blob

Huggable and utterly lovable, this friendly alien blob loves making friends, playing sports, shopping, and taking long walks along the lunar landscape.

Download the Full Tutorial : Alien Blob from Wee Felt Worlds

Or… buy the whole book of projects (use the link below to support Dabbled!)

Enjoy!

This is a fun project if you’d like an inexpensive way to make your own “canvas print”, and you like a retro, old fashioned feel.  It makes a great gift, too (like the one used in the tutorial, a great wedding momento!)

I did this for my December post on FedEx’s Out of Office blog.  It is easy to do, but be warned it is a bit time consuming when you get to the final step of removing the paper from the canvas, so I wouldn’t go any larger than 8×10″ for this project.

The photo for this project is by the fabulous Sarah Howell, of Kimball Bates Photography (recently relocated to North Carolina, for my readers up there–I highly recommend her!)

Tutorial Summary: Retro Canvas Print

Basically, you just need an inexpensive canvas, acrylic gel medium, and a image you want to use.  For the image you’ll need it slightly larger or the same size as your canvas.  Use an image editing program to reverse the image (so you have a mirror image) and to size your image appropriately.  Then you can have it color laser printed or get a color photocopy.

You’re going to adhere the image to the canvas (face side down) using the gel medium.  When it is dry, you’ll remove the paper from the canvas, leaving just the color.  You’d definitely have areas where the color doesn’t stay, hence the weathered, retro look.  You can then cover the whole thing with gel medium for a finished look.

Full Instructions, with photos (and Lessons learned)

I’ve got all the step by step instructions up at the FedEx Out of Office blog: Retro Photo Canvas Tutorial.

Also, a few lessons learned, based on trying this a few times:

• Like I mentioned, smaller is better due to the time consuming nature of the final steps.  It can take multiple (like 6!) times of rubbing the paper off the canvas.   Let it thoroughly dry after you think you have it all removed, then you’ll see more paper fibres.  Keep rubbing!
• Try a small test piece first.
• Experiment! You might find that it’s better to let the paper NOT dry all the way, and then just try peeling the paper off.  When I’ve done similar projects before (but with B&W photocopies) I’ve found that it was much easier, and worked just as well.  But with color I think it’s better to wait til it’s bone dry, which means much more work getting all the paper off.  But, it’s worth a try to attempt some experiments and see what works best for you.
• Related to that, here’s the technique I’ve used where you don’t let the paper dry all the way: Wooden Photo Ornaments

It’s a little simpler too, if you’re just starting with your photoshop skills, it’s a great one to start with.  The principle is the same, take old vintage photos and in this case, combine two to make one creepy photo which contains a ghost!

Head over to Fed Ex Office blog to see all the details on how to make them yourself, or if you don’t have time or inclination to make them yourself, you can download the sample printable photos!

Update: Related technique and more downloads: Ghost Portraits!

Did you know Great Aunt Gertrude was a zombie?  Or Ancient Uncle Elrod was a tad undead?  Unfortunately for my Halloween décor, I don’t really have ghouls in the family.  But we can fake it with a little photo manipulation.

These creepy portraits will look great hung on a wall, or in small frames on your serving table, at any scary Halloween party.  You can either design your own, using the instructions provided here, or you can download the set provided here.  Then just have them printed in whatever size to fit your frames, at your local print shop on on your home computer.

How to make your own creepy vintage photos

Supplies:

• Photo-editing program.  These instructions assume you are working in Photoshop.
• Vintage photo image files.  Portraits work best, and the larger the better if you want to print big versions for your walls.  You can scan photos of your own relatives, or you can find public domain photos online. [You can find photos from public archives like the Library of Congress with no copyright restrictions here.]
• Skulls:  You’ll need a transparent photographed skull image. The simplest way to get the skull you need is to use a skull themed Photoshop brush set, of which several can be found online for free.

Method:

This is how to add a creepy skull effect to your photo.  There are of course many other possible spooky details you can add.  More detailed instructions can be found below the photos.

1. Open your photo file.
2. Create a new layer, and determine what skull size and shape will best fit your portrait’s head.  Place skull in new layer.  It should have enough transparency to see through it to the portrait layer.  If not, you may need to increase the transparency of the skull layer.
3. Line up the skull with the portrait head as well as you can.  Resize and move as necessary to get the mouth and eyes of the skull lined up with your portrait.
4. Next, fit the skull to the face.  Select the skull.  Under the Transform menu, use Warp.  Drag the dots around to fit the skull to the angle of the face.  In this example, I dragged the right jawline of the skull out to better match the portrait jawline, and pulled in the left side of the skull.  I also moved the nose to match up with the portrait nose.  It doesn’t have to be perfect, but you need the eyes, mouth, nose and jaw to match up as well as possible for best effect.  Don’t worry about the outline of the skull, we’ll be erasing that in the next step.
5. Finally, erase the outside of the skull.  Use your eraser (a soft feathered brush) to erase anywhere the skull exceeds the face (like on the left side in this example) and pretty much all the edges of the skull image, leaving the features intact.  You can also erase any shading that doesn’t fit with the photo.

Once you have your final files, just take them to your local FedEx Office and have them color printed in whatever size you need to fit your décor.

Download the Files

Want the look, without the work?  Click here to download a zip file of the images featured in this post, plus a few extras.