Gingerbread Creation Showdown: Gum Paste Sculpting and Color Mixing

So as it turns out, I am not the Cake Boss! 😉  They’re having a gingerbread house competition at my son’s school and since I have gotten better at sculpting miniatures I had Cake Boss dreams of sweeping the floor with my competition after winning the pumpkin decorating contest in October! 😂😂  So I decided that I would make a Grinch Who Stole Christmas entry and sculp him with gum paste (modeling chocolate).

Since I like to try new things, but am always trying to lower my cost I tried to substitute powdered food coloring with Jell-O – BAD IDEA!  Definitely just use gel food coloring.  I am lucky I had some on hand.  The Jell-O concoction is grainy and pale.  I’m not sure what the trick to this stuff is, but my four and a half years old was impressed and since the judges are his peers my fingers are crossed that I have a shot at winning.

Did the decorating of the house with my son and made Max the dog to sit on the roof.  We used a premade gingerbread kit since these are not my forte and it’s not a rule violator.   The icing bag broke and made a huge mess.  I guess I will have to make my own later on, oh well.  Happy crafting and Merry Grinchmas! 😉

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You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch

I saw the cutest plank wood Grinch project on Pinterest and I have been dying to try it.  The only problem – I don’t have that materials on hand right now but I do have several large tongue depressor sized crafting sticks so I can make a miniature version of my own! They’re cute, easy to make, and work well as a wall hang, door knob hang or ornament.

MATERIALS NEEDED:

• Crafting sticks (large tongue depressor sized)
• Acrylic paint in red, lime green, white, yellow, and black
• Scissors
• Green feathers
• White pom-pom ball
• Green floral wire
• Hot glue and gun
• Fine tip paint brushes

1. Add hot glue to the edge of each stick, be careful not to get big smears on the front.  Rub it smooth after it cools down slightly. Glue five of the side by side.
2. Paint them red across the top and mix the green with white to make a more Grinch like color.
3. Cut the ends off of one stick to get a straight edge and paint white.
4. Once dry, glue across the top to separate the hat and his head.
5. Cut another stick down and paint it red and once dry glue to the back of him sticking out slightly for the dangling part of the Santa hat.
6. Next glue a white pom-pom ball on to the end.
7. Paint merry in red, Grinch in the green color you mixed earlier, and mas in red on the brim of the hat.
8. Paint the eyes in an pointed almond shape in yellow.
9. Using a fine tip paint brush, outline the eyes, draw the eyebrows, nose, mouth and other facial details in black.
10. Cut green feathers and glue to the rim of the brim of the hat. Trim as necessary so they’re not too long.
11. Cut a few more feathers and glue to the chin trimming as needed.
12. Cut floral wire to desired length and hot glue into place on the back.

These are so cute I am planning on attaching them to the outside of presents for decoration and an additional gifts for my family.  Merry Grinchmas! 😉🎅

Whoville Cookies

As you can tell, I am inspired by the Grinch Who Stole Christmas this year and plan to give out these cookies in addition to my Grinch Cookies that I made last time.

To avoid food coloring dyed hands I used latex gloves when mixing the food coloring for deep color you need to add TONS of food coloring. You can easily see that mine look more pink than red.  Also, this did not yield 4 dozen. I barely ended up with 3.  They also took about 4 extra minutes to bake, maybe I cut them too wide.

After my second batch I discovered that if you chill the dough for an hour they stay round when cut.

Whoville Cookies