Shirley's party advice part 3 - in which Shirley may make a guest appearance

[stealthsquiggle]

We appear to have filled another thread

Tee Hee

Mine is in Engineering.

I am just trying to come up with a construction method which doesn't have DW running for the hills...

DSis has an engineering degree, is a DT teacher and lives around the corner from DW. If she weren't on maternity leave, I'd be getting her to knock something up.

Is the cake on the top going to be that big? That's a LOT of Krispie treats!

That second one really is a bit rubbish IMO. this is better and they did Pascal as well

Mine is in... No wait, i went to work for bt for an age instead. What use has it served me now i need to construct a cake? Come on people!!! I basically need a way of slotting a preprepared tower into the cake dont i? Maybe i really should resort to fimo!

The second picture has a smaller tower, id that what you're going for?

Thats it thats it. Thats my cake!!! Except i want the green cake contoured up the tower base. But thats exactly whats in my head.

And no i'm not bothered about the tower etc being edible i was happy to ice the dowel/pipe and make the cottage part from treats. Thats why i thought if i made it like a hat i could just pop it on?!

I see what Stealth means about the cake not holding the tower up then and would agree that you need something fixed to the base.

Hmmmm

I think you'd probably be best if you screwed a piece of thick dowel through the bottom board. It might even work through a cake board if you used a wide washer to spread the load.

Then I'd lag the dowel with something (kitchen roll stuck down with sticky tape would do) until it was thick enough to fill a piece of plastic plumbing pipe snugly. Glue on old CD or something to the top of the pipe with a glue gun to rest the krispie treat cottage on. You could then use stealth's toffee suggestion to stick the icing to the plastic pipe.

You would then transport the cake in 2 parts - the hill and the lagged dowel and the cottage on the decorated pipe - before assembling once you got there.

All the bits should be easily picked up in B&Q

I like it! A sleeve!

If you are going that route, I would definitely make the towers icing "rocks" (blobs) so that you can easily take a repair kit with you in case of any damage to masonry during assembly.

Oh god stealth dont!!! I refuse to lose sleep over it again tonight. I only have to drive .5 of a mile so hopefully it wont get too damaged!!

I didn't mean to be scary - just practical! My cakes always travel with a repair kit - and losing a stone or two would take seconds to repair.

Sleep well - we'll work it out in the end, and it will be an amazing cake.

My dragons body is now finished and stuffed. Tried to do the details on the wings but my machine doesn't seem to like it The needle has snapped on this attempt and sawn a hole right through the wing! Going to have to make a new one I think which means buying new wadding as there was only just enough.

Got headaches and tummy cramps because of my new iron tablets too and so feeling fairly ropey.

Ok what dragon are you making?

Deep breath, walk away, think of a solution. Can you carry on and tepair the hole after? (mind you ive nearly kicked my printer to bits as it keeps going offline after every print. Then ran out of blue. Again!)

My machine didn't much like doing those seams on the wings either.

Could you unpick the wing and salvage the wadding? It wouldn't matter that there was a hole - it would be covered by the fleece.

I'm making a green dragon the same as the pink one Stealth made for her DD's birthday.

The wing is beyond repair I think but there is enough spare fabric left in the kit to make another. Unpicking it to salvage the wadding might work, I'll give it a go. Need a trip to Hobbycraft before I can do any more sewing though as I don't have any spare sewing machine needles. In the meantime I can close the neck hole and sew on the head and arms. Considering buying some fabric paint to do the wing detailing with. I've tried it twice now and it's gone horribly wrong both times.

I think DD is going to love it though, she was reading Zog with DH tonight and amazed us with hoe many of the words she knew. He kept going quiet at the end of the lines and she was filling in for him :)

Either that or I'll post them to my Mum to do on her bomb-proof 50 year old Singer. That thing can sew anything!

How is the Tangled panic going DW?

Marking my place again, although we need to think about yet another thread soon...

Yep, 30 messages until this one is full. Did Shirley ever make her guest appearance?

I've just been to Tesco and got 3 lots of 5m rainbow bunting for £1 apiece! Can't decide whether to buy more and just do bunting and balloons as my decoration or whether to stick with my paper chains idea and do 3 x 5m chains of those too....?

I got balloons too and a set of rainbow Happy birthday letter candles and a white, glittery 3. Have realised that candles plus a peg dolly in a combustible ribbon dress might not be the best mix on top of the cake though so now I need to work out how to combine the two without having to call out the fire brigade. Candles are what it's all about when you're 3 so I need to have them. Considering making a wide cake to sit the rainbow cake on. I could then put the candles on that. I'm not sure icing the board would give me enough depth to sink the candles into. Either that or peg dolly gets relegated to the board to stand next to the cake?

I have a denim needle to re-sew the damn dragon wings with again and will have a go at rescuing what I can when DD is at preschool tomorrow. I'm really stuck for present ideas for her but have her present from us sorted. I'll finish the Dragon and have bought her this, this and this to go with it. The middle one was a suggestion from Stealth and the Dragon's are dreaming is from the same series as a Stealth suggestion because I couldn't get the exact book. They arrived this morning and all look lovely.

Why not make little rainbow-coloured blocks for the candles to sit in round the edge of the cake?

Hmmm. I'd need to make 14 blocks for H-A-P-P-Y-3-B-I-R-T-H-D-A-Y and it'd probably be cheaper to make and ice an extra cake than buy 6 or 7 different lots of coloured sugar paste to do a rainbow.

Unless you know of somewhere cheap to get Sugarpaste?

I was thinking of scraps from other bits of the cake - if you are not using the colours elsewhere, then clearly not worth getting them just for candle blocks - maybe you could make 14 little elephants to hold candles instead?

Cheap sugarpaste - no, not really - sorry! I used to buy it from local sugarcraft shop, but since they went bust I have to buy it online, generally - no cheaper, and it takes longer, but at least I can place orders at 1am!

This week has been a write off so far - DC and I have had food poisoning - hopefully I will get at least one of them back to school tomorrow, and feel a bit more human myself.

Oh no! Sorry you're ill Stealth and mini-stealths. I hope you're all better soon.

I wasn't going to use sugarpaste on the cake at all to be honest. I was going with as-white-as-I-can-make-it frosting over the coloured cakes. I was wondering whether I could get a polystyrene board - from the Hobbycraft floristry section maybe - and cover that in sugarpaste...?