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January 29, 2016
by Jennifer Lori 1 Comment

Making a Pitfall: The Lost Expedition cake, day 03 part 2- assembly

For those following along, at this point in the Pitfall: The Lost Expedition cake process, I had fondant pieces, I had rectangular baked cakes, and I had some cardboard and a brick-wall-looking stand. Now, on the night before the party, was the time to start putting it all together.

Step 1 – cover the cardboard cutouts with tinfoil to use as makeshift cake boards.

Step 2 – Confirm plan. At this point I got a piece of paper and made a note of the order in which I had to do each step, because if I’d gone out of order (like sticking the waterfall down on the top tier before icing the bottom, for example) I’d make things harder on myself than they’d need to be.

Step 3 – carve the cakes. I always use my largest unserrated knife for this, and have a large tupperware or two nearby for collecting the leftover cake (after being leveled or sculpted).

For the top cake, which would become the top of the waterfall, I didn’t level it. My cake had baked up much thicker in the center, but in a large enough area that I could cut a thicker cake in the shape I needed. If I’d leveled it first to the height of the outer edges I’d have had a much shorter cake for no reason. If the cake had been wide enough to cut my oval twice and stack them, I’d have done it, but it wasn’t big enough. I cut the cake from the thickest part and used some icing to ‘glue’ it down to the cake board, then set it aside.

For the lower cake I used the cardboard to carve out the right shape so I could butt the cake right up against the stand. After making sure it fit, I set that one aside as well.

Step 4 – Solidify base. I had my cake boards, 2 of them ‘glued’ together with icing. I needed to attach my base somehow because otherwise the moment I’d try to transport the thing it would tip backwards, being so heavy, and separate from the cake which would be stuck to the board. I stared at it a little while, wishing I had thought to Dremel 2 holes in the base BEFORE decorating, so I could quickly zip-tie it together, when I got an idea. The base sat a few mm above my cake boards (less than 1/4″). I couldn’t use glue or tape because I didn’t have any thick enough, but I did have fondant, and I knew that could dry pretty hard. First I traced the shape of the stand onto the silvered board. I took a few gobs (technical term) of white fondant and moistened them slightly so they’d be sticky all around, and pressed them down around inside the base’s outline. I quickly put the base in position and pressed down on the lowest tier, using a knife handle to get into the back, and really squish the fondant and board and base together. I waited a minute or two then tried to lift the base by the top tier… and the entire board lifted. Success!

(Around this time I’d also cut open and re-taped a cardboard box, as seen above, for transport. It was open at the front but had a closed back so I could carry the cake by supporting the back of the box instead of touching the stand itself when I moved it.

Step 5 – After making sure the base was well-stuck to the cake boards I cut a strip of plastic from my baggie the width of the waterfall I wanted, and used packing tape to tape it down to the bottom of the lower tier. I used a few smears of vanilla icing to glue my cake board down over it, sticking it well to the stand. I didn’t want it able to move at all.

Step 6 – I crumbled some of the leftover cake and mixed it into store-bought chocolate icing to make a rough, earthy-texture, and used that to coat the cake board for the cave floor.

Then I set the healing spring into place. I didn’t bother using anything to stick it down, the icing floor was still wet and the spring was heavy enough that I knew it wasn’t going to move.

Step 7 – Then I taped the waterfall up and into place with more packing tape, making sure it was secure. I knew there’d be a cake sitting on top of it, but still…

Step 8 – At this point I set the cakes into place. I put the lower cake down first, using icing to glue it in place. I protected the cake board with strips of parchment paper, then set the top cake down with some icing too. Putting the parchment around the back and under the front (on either side of the waterfall) was a bit trickier, but I used the tip of a knife to ease the cake forward or up and wiggled the parchment strips into place. Then I gave everything a dirty ice (crumb coat) with vanilla storebought icing.

I just realized the pics are out of order, and that I’d crumb coated the base before adding the top. Ah well.

Oh- I included the waterfall in the crumb coat on purpose. I knew it would later be mostly covered with blue icing, but I wanted there to be some depth to the water so it would look like it was moving. I also gave it a deliberate thick, choppy layer at the base where it reached the cake (as seen in the last pic). Waterfalls often have a churning, frothy spray at the base and this would help imply that.

Up next – the fun/scary part… decorating!

January 27, 2016
by Jennifer Lori 1 Comment

Making a Pitfall: The Lost Expedition cake, day 03 part 1- Pitfall Harry, crocodiles and a healing spring

Saturday morning I woke up bright and early to- *coughs* actually no. Saturdays I sleep in. But I did wake up somewhere around the crack of 10 or so and debated how to plan my day for the cake. I had 2 hours until I had to leave to take Henri to a birthday party, then had some shopping to do with Jakob, and then would have to go back out to pick Henri up, so didn’t think I’d get any more progress done until once I’d returned at the end of the day with both kids. But that was getting close to supper time, which would require clearing the table, so I wouldn’t want anything in progress that would dry up or break if I tried to move it or put it away for a few hours.

Hmmm.

The first thing I did was run downstairs and take a peek at the brick wall/cake stand to make sure nothing crazy happened over night, like the entire back sagging off or something. Luckily, it was fine. I did realize the colors were much more desaturated and ‘natural’-looking, vs the bright greens of the sprinkles I’d bought to use for grass, and the fondant leaves I’d made. Hmmm. They wouldn’t quite go together. So the next thing I did was to thin some of the leftover dark green from the moss (this is why you save your palettes) and brush it over all the leaves that had stems. I later wished I’d done them all, but at the time I figured I’d do the ones I knew I’d use, and come up with some way to salvage the smaller ones later on if necessary. I ignored the long grass strands, having already decided I wasn’t going to use them.

I calculated that I’d have enough time to paint a first coat on the fondant pieces before leaving for the party. Mostly to just block in the colors and give it a chance to dry while I was out.

The healing spring got a base coat of gray made by mixing Wilton White-White with Americolor black gel, first a quick base and then lightly tapping on some darker areas. For the center of the spring I used White-White with a bit of Americolor teal. The crocs got brownish green base coats made mostly by mixing up some of the previous day’s colors together. It’s hard to see from this pic, but before painting the full croc I used a scribing tool to mark a scale pattern into the hardening fondant. For the open-mouth one I blocked in some areas of white and red for the inside of his mouth. I didn’t touch the struggling Pitfall Harry in between his jaws, not thinking I had enough time to pay attention to it before having to stop, get dressed, wrap the gift and shuttle Henri out.

This was the state of my palettes when I left. The artist’s-style one has pure gel colors that I could dab from as needed. (The smear at the top was to help me identify which color was which… the darker ones are difficult to tell apart when in one small glob). The styrofoam piece is what I was really working from, and the plastic hors d’oeuvres palette was there mostly because it still had quite a bit of white left over from the prior day, and a decent amount of brown that was still usable.

Had a minor change in plans – the birthday boy invited Jakob to stay as well, which gave me a few hours of time in the afternoon that I hadn’t expected. I took full advantage, slapping some more paint down so it could dry. The main hazard of painting fondant pieces with this White-White/gel colors mixture is that if you apply it too thickly, the White-White forms a latex paint-like ‘skin’ on the work. If you touch it while it’s tacky (which can last a few days) not only can you leave fingerprints in the work, but I’ve had entire sections of color lift off completely. Not fun.

Here you can see more of the texture in the croc’s back. You can also see the other colors added to make it look more natural and create the illusion of shadowy, raised eyes. I deepened the detail inside the open croc mouth and blocked in Harry’s colors, getting a base coat down so I could finish it with details later.

These are the healing springs from the game. Of course it was only on day 3 that I realized I’d forgotten to make the little side braces that decorate/support the top and bottom. Ahh well. Creative license.

Using the game stills as a guide I darkened the gray with more black and roughed in the decorative areas. The base had its 4 quadrants, the middle bit got some stripes, and I copied the box pattern around the top slab. I did my best to copy the dark areas on the face too, as well as I could with my fondant carving. I left any smudges/smears and added some around the top to make it look aged, like it had been sitting in a jungle for years.

Once the pieces were dry enough to handle I added teal eyes and jammed the head toothpick down through the other pieces. A tiny dab of water was enough to stick them together. Looks horrible with flash but it was the only pic that showed the eyes.

Here’s a shadowy shot that looks most like the game’s version, I think.

And some final beauty shots, because once it goes in the cake it won’t really be seen. For the ‘water’ I mixed together a few large dollops of Wilton clear glitter gel icing, a drop or so of White-White, and a touch of teal. Unfortunately the White-White hid most of the glitter, but there’s just enough of the teal to provide the glow. I really wanted to make the water pour from the head’s mouth but chickened out on actually brushing it down the face. Ah well.

Now on to Pitfall Harry and his perilous predicament.

These stills show both the moment I was recreating (Harry in the croc’s mouth) as well as a clear view of his outfit.

And here’s the final Harry piece. Henri had complained that I’d given him black hair, and ‘everybody knows Harry has brown hair, Mommy’… so I softened it up a bit. I also broke a tiny bit of fondant off the front of his chest, because Yannick asked me why Harry’s curves were so… Madonna-esque. I tried to justify that he was straining, back arched… showed the pic… bent over backwards to show him… but other than laughing at me he wasn’t convinced 😛 I touched up Harry’s details and gave the croc an eye and more depth in his mouth. The very last thing I did was to add a few more coats of white for the teeth, because White-White has a habit of absorbing base colors. To make it opaque I actually used a small dab of thinned Betty Crocker icing mixed with the White-White, and that seemed to do the trick.

Now I had my fondant toppers, two cakes, and an ornate stand. All I had to do was figure out how to put it all together.

January 26, 2016
by Jennifer Lori 2 Comments

Making a Pitfall: The Lost Expedition cake, day 02

Most of the cakes I make are a 2-4 day process. The final 2 days are always baking 2 nights before the party (so Friday for a Sunday cake) and then decorating on the day before the party (Saturday for a Sunday cake). I add a few more days prior if I need to make fondant decorations or anything that requires drying time. This Pitfall cake, for as detailed as it looks, took 3 days.

Day 1: Thursday

When I got home from work I prepared the base stand to get it to look like a brick wall with a cave by covering it with fondant and scribing a brick pattern to match one from the game.

Day 2: Friday

In the morning before leaving for work I gave the stand a quick wash of color. I needed to fill in the grout lines and give it time to dry before I got home. In a small cup I mixed together 1 drop of black Americolor food gel, 1 drop of brown gel, and 6 ml of water. I used a food-only paintbrush to apply the wash to the fondant, not aiming for any sort of pattern, and allowing the color to drip and run a bit before smoothing it around. I let it set for a minute or two then dabbed at it with a paper towel to remove areas of excess, and then used the same brush with only water to remove even more color. The goal was not to paint or finish the brickwork but to allow the dark color to seep into the etched lines and provide some aging.

At this point it looks like a dark, muddy mess.

When I got home from work I rushed to bake the 2 cakes I’d need. I knew I’d have plenty of time for them to cool before I planned to ice and decorate on Saturday, but I often use the oven for storing fondant bits overnight and didn’t want there to be any residual heat left inside it.

pitfall the lost expedition cake day02 01

pitfall the lost expedition cake day02 02

When the cakes were cooled some I wrapped them in saran wrap to set aside for the night.

Then I prepared the table for getting down to some fondant painting. These are the supplies I prepared: in the lid of my color box are a smaller box of Americolor icing colors and a bottle of Wilton White-White, then the contents of the case itself is my collection of Wilton icing gels and some regular, grocery-store-type food coloring. I brought down some cotton balls thinking I might use them for blotting, but testing on a scrap of fondant revealed it stuck terribly to the wet sweet, and I quickly got rid of them. I’ve got a measuring cup of water for rinsing my brushes, a small cup of water and syringe for adding clean water to my colors if I need to thin them any (the syringe gives you way more precision when working with tiny amounts of color than dropping by spoonful or pouring), and a small cup of the leftover dark wash from the morning that I’d kept moist in a tupperware for the day. I’ve got a few sizes of food-safe paintbrushes and some paper towels for blotting, and finally at the bottom is my standard palette, left over from an old pack of hors d’oeuvres.

pitfall the lost expedition cake day02 03

That’s the palette I use most often, and it works great with larger quantities of color, like when tinting icing sugar/water for the fondant toppers I make. However when using tiny bits and blending a lot of shades I find it’s not as practical, and I eventually switched over to an artist’s style palette with small dabs of the gel colors on it, and a small styrofoam tray for blending. The colors bead up on the tray so I don’t lose any to absorption.

pitfall the lost expedition cake day02 04

I prepared the stand by putting it on my lazy susan., These things are SO useful with decorating and crafting! I’ve actually got three – one wood, one glass, and one plastic, depending on my project needs. I stuck a tub of icing in there to help weigh it down. The stand is pretty heavy, especially with the fondant, but that was a precaution.

The first thing I did was to mix up a color that approximated the bricks I was trying to copy. In the game they look like this:

Now that I had the general shape scribed in and the darker grout lines, I needed to lighten the bricks to a faded, creamy, beige-ish color. I began to mix up a color, testing on the paper towel until I had something that looked right. You can see at the bottom of this next pic where I’d tried out a color that was too pale, and I had to darken it up a bit. In the end I used some Wilton White-White as a base, then some brown and black Wilton gel colors, a touch of Wilton lemon yellow, and some of the morning’s dark wash water to thin it out.

pitfall the lost expedition cake day02 05

I painted small dabs of the resulting mix onto each brick individually, blending and smoothing until I got rid of the brush strokes and had something that looked like an old brick wall.

For the first time ever I took a short video of my process. If you find it helpful and want more video tutorials, please let me know in the comments. 🙂

pitfall the lost expedition cake day02 07

After the back was done I moved on to the front. The small amount of mixed color that you saw in the video was enough to paint the entire back and front.

pitfall the lost expedition cake day02 06

The next step was to add some greenery. I knew I’d have a lot of grass and vines and leaves in the cake, but wanted to add more depth to the bricks so I used more of the dark wash and deepened it up with Wilton gels (leaf green I think).

pitfall the lost expedition cake day02 08

I used a messy brush to pounce the color in areas where moss would grow, mostly around the bottom of the back piece and around the top and sides of the front. This is a great reason to keep those brushes that get all messed up, so you don’t ruin good ones!

pitfall the lost expedition cake day02 09

As I added the moss I made sure to keep the brush from being too wet – the effect was supposed to be subtle – and I also periodically touched my brush in different areas of the mix where I hadn’t fully blended, sometimes picking up straight gel from the edge of the palette. This gave me varying shades of green and a more natural look.

pitfall the lost expedition cake day02 10

Finally I used some White-White and Americolor black and a touch of brown to get a nice varying gray shade for the rock cave. Again I resisted the urge to overmix the color, so I could get depth to the wall. Sometimes I touched in a bit more white, which lightened the grays, and then I’d go back in with a more liquid black, getting into the cracks.

pitfall the lost expedition cake day02 11

Here’s the finished support, set aside for the night. The front (above) and the back (below).

pitfall the lost expedition cake day02 12

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January 23, 2016
by Jennifer Lori 1 Comment

Making a Pitfall: The Lost Expedition cake, day 01

For Henri’s 7th birthday party he wants a Pitfall cake. As in Pitfall: The Lost Expedition. As in the old PS2 game all 4 of us at home play, and love.

This gave me a bit of a challenge. The most iconic visuals from Pitfall are, well, the pits. And Pitfall Harry swinging on vines. Pits would be easy enough to make, but vine-swinging? Hmm. This required a think.

My first thought was to make a framework that would go over the cake with vines and a little fondant Harry hanging down, but while I poked around at work, looking at unused frame displays, a new idea struck.

I found a 2-level display that got my creative juices flowing. In order to plan properly (and avoid scale mishaps like in the Diego & Dora cake) I took iPhone pics from a few angles and then printed them out really pale, so I could sketch over them and have a rough idea of what I wanted to do.

It’s difficult to photograph something clear but you can get a rough idea of my process here:

First I sketched my plan onto paper. You can sort of see in the first image that I have a brick wall with a balcony-like upper tier. The blue overhang is supposed to be a waterfall that flows down onto the cake below, and it’s not easy to see unless you click, but there’s a healing spring/fountain hidden behind the waterfall. Once happy with the sketch I needed to see if it would work, conceivably, and so I used some scrap paper and made a quick mock-up of where the actual cakes would go. There’s one layer of cake on the top tier, the ‘waterfall’ hanging down, and then a layer of cake the same height as the bottom tier, butted right up against it.

Okay… maybe there’s something here.

This was Thursday, and his party would be on the upcoming Sunday afternoon, so I knew I had to get started right away. After work I stopped at a bulk candy store for supplies like green sprinkles and extra fondant. I also picked up 2 cake boards. I usually use trays for my cakes but I didn’t know how well the stand would fit and I didn’t want to be limited by side edges. I bought 2 so I could ‘glue’ them together with icing, as I didn’t think 1 board would be strong enough to support the heavy cake.

Here’s the same paper mock-up at home, on the actual cake boards so I could test for fit. What I was hoping for, and am happy about, is that the board is long enough for me to extend the lower cake section beyond the paper template. I plan to have crocodiles in the water but hope for room to put a pit as well, and I think this will give me enough.

Next I cleaned the display stand and wrapped it in saran wrap, and used duct tape to block off the two open edges. I also cut 2 cardboard ovals to fit over the tiers, as they have large cut outs where the products are meant to sit. The top one will be used as a cake board, and the lower one will merely be covered in icing.

Next I tinted some white fondant to a beige-ish shade and rolled out enough to cover the back of the display…

…and then trimmed it to size. At this point I realized that even dampened, the fondant did not want to stick to the saran, and I removed all the coverings. D’oh. I make the mistakes, so you don’t have to.

Water-dampened fondant DID want to stick to the clean plastic stand just fine, luckily, and I covered the back with the large sheet, smoothing it down well against the back and around the edges, blending it out with my fingers. I did the same for the larger areas of the front as well, and then carefully wrapped one thick-ish piece around the open edge of the upper tier, smoothing it into place above and below while being VERY careful to not tear through the open front.

Once the fondant was secure I used a scoring tool to scribe a brick pattern into the fondant. I had to be careful to not pierce the open-fronted balcony edge, but for the rest it was all flush against the thick plastic, and I could press pretty hard if I needed.

For the back and the upper tier I did a rough approximation of a brick pattern found in the game, as seen in the background here:

I did the back first, then copied the dimensions over onto the front. For the lower tier, I wanted it to look more like a cave than a brick wall, so I wet the fondant and pressed on little pieces with my fingers, smoothing and adding more until I had something that resembled a natural rocky wall.

I also used the same beige fondant to cut out shapes to let harden. On the left are a sleeping croc for in the water, round pieces and a tiki head for the healing spring, and a croc’s open mouth with poor Harry struggling to break free. (Or, what I HOPE will look like that eventually). I tinted my remaining beige into a few shades of green and used a leaf-press cutter to punch out 2 sizes of leaves, which I set over the edge of a Styrofoam food tray (saved from buying vegetables) to dry. I also cut a few strands of tall grass but I’m not sure if I’ll end up using them.

At this point it was about 1am and I set everything aside to dry by the dehumidifier and went to bed, knowing the next few nights would probably be pretty late ones to get everything done in time.

October 1, 2015
by Jennifer Lori 16 Comments

How to Make Minecraft Steve and Creeper Heads

Update: This tutorial is now also available as a downloadable PDF here. More details at bottom of this post.

It’s October! That means it’s okay to start talking about Halloween, right?

It is according to Henri- when I woke him up for school this morning he gazed up at me sleepily and grinned “It’s October 1st.” When I asked why that mattered he smiled even more adorably and said “Because now it’s almost Halloween.”

‘Almost’ is relative. (He clearly gets his awareness of time from his father). However his mention of it reminded me that I never showed last year’s costume. So. Now, with plenty of time to get ready for this year’s holiday… here’s how I made the boys Minecraft Steve and creeper heads, and how you can too!

how to make minecraft steve and creeper heads

The boys decided for Halloween they wanted to dress up as their favorite Minecraft characters. They do sell ready-made cardboard heads in stores but they are expensive, and there are a ton of tutorials online. I looked at a few, then worked things out with what I had on hand, and what I was able to find at the dollar store.

What you’ll need:

square boxes (large enough to fit over the wearer’s head)
craft paint in the appropriate colors
masking tape
double-sided tape
scissors
craft knife
paint brushes
something to use as a palette (I used a styrofoam plate)
gauzy black fabric (optional, and I cut mine from a dollar store scarf)
spray sealant (optional)

1. Yannick came home with 2 small boxes he’d found somewhere. Grocery stores often have ones you can ask for, or as a last resort you can buy boxes.

2. I used two-sided tape to tape the outer flaps to the inner ones (not shown) so the inner flaps wouldn’t drop down onto the kids’ heads. Then I used masking tape to fully tape over the top seam, both to securely close one end of the box, and to make the seams less visible once they were painted.

3. I cut the lower flaps off the boxes and then used the same masking tape to cover the exposed edges. It would gave a cleaner look, vs the rough look of cut corrugated cardboard, plus was less likely to catch and tear, which could potentially pull off the paint.

4. I divided the 4 sides and top into even grids. I looked at pictures of the characters online and mapped out roughly how many squares per color/face, and then used a ruler to divide the front (face side) into the grid. Once the face was set, I carried the markings around the sides of the boxes, and finally the top. Because the boxes are taller than wide, the top has fewer squares than the sides do. That’s not what the characters SHOULD look like, but I didn’t think the kids would mind.

5. Once the boxes were plotted I used a cutting blade (also from the dollar store) to slice out the eyehole sections. For Steve, only the dark pupil area was cut out. For the creeper it made more sense with where Henri’s face was to cut out the larger nose/mouth section. After removing those areas I covered the exposed edges with masking tape.

6. Finally it was time to start painting. The paints and brushes were from – you guessed it – the dollar store. The advantage with the Minecraft characters is that if you have to custom mix your paints to get the right colors, it doesn’t matter as much as it would in most projects if you have enough to complete your painting or if you need to mix more and risk not matching quite right. The goal is to have an assortment of shades, so blending colors works perfectly.

That said, if you prefer a more accurate version, I have compiled this tutorial into a downloadable PDF (linked at the bottom of the post) which includes full-color screen-accurate charts for both characters, including the hex codes for each color so you can color-match accurately.

Here’s the four sides of the painted creeper head. I set the boxes to dry on a paper towel roll to hold them off my counter until the lower edge was dry. (I held them up the same way while painting too).

Same goes for our buddy Steve here. I’d only had three shades of brown paint on-hand to work with, so I blended them together with some black for the hair, and then lightened with some white and a touch of red for the face. (I’d actually done the face/neck/ears first, so then I could re-use the same paints but darken them for the hair. That avoided any waste and kept the same unifying overall color tone for the head.)

I had them both on the counter while I cleaned up the dining room table of all my painting gear. Couldn’t resist this dramatic shot. Look out! He’s behind you!

7. The next step was to seal the heads with an aerosol can of clear sealant. I didn’t know what the weather would be like on Halloween and didn’t relish the idea of my hard work being ruined by a few drops of rain or thick snow settling on the kids’ heads. I moved the heads into the garage and set them on some newspaper to protect the floor as I sprayed, and did a few coats, allowing each one to dry for about 20 minutes in between. If you have a dry, open area outside or good, even weather you could do this next step outside, but here there was nowhere I could leave them unattended, so I had my garage door open the entire time I sprayed, and then left it about a foot open during the drying time between coats. Once they were properly sealed and dry to the touch I brought them inside and allowed them to dry for a full day before the final steps.

The last bit in getting the masks ready to wear was to block out the open areas. I bought a gauzy sheer black scarf (also at the dollar store!) and cut off squares large enough to fully cover the open areas.

8. Using the same double-sided tape I secured the black fabric down around the cut areas.

9. Finally I covered all the exposed edges of the cloth with masking tape, making it doubly secure and hiding any rough, cut edges so they wouldn’t catch or fray.

With that, the masks were complete! The black gauzy fabric looks opaque from the outside but from the inside it’s so sheer that it’s quite easy to see through it, making it perfect for this project.

From idea to finished product this project took about 4 days. Halloween was on a Friday last year and Yannick brought me home the boxes on Monday night. Tuesday I did everything up to/including painting. On Wednesday night I sprayed the clear coat, and then on Thursday night I stuck the black fabric in.

They were pretty darn excited!

Halloween night they posed for a quick picture inside…

…then it was time to go trick-or-treating.

Can’t you almost hear the tick…tick…tick…BOOM? The heads held up beautifully and the boys felt like mini celebrities as they walked down the street and people from all over, even in passing cars, yelled out “Steve!” and “Creeper!” and gave them high-fives. The heads have now become part of our dress-up box and are still in great condition, and they wore them for ‘Halloween Day’ at their camp this summer.

*Update in 2020: the heads are still going strong! The boys outgrew them of course, but we keep them as nerdy shelf displays and they look exactly the same as they did back when I made them.

I hope this post shows you how easy and fast it can be to make your own Minecraft Steve and Creeper heads!

You can adapt the tutorial to make any Minecraft mob, and I’ve got an assortment compiled for you here.

As mentioned above, if you’d like an easy-to-print-and-save PDF version of this tutorial, I have made it available on Etsy here. The 9-page PDF includes full instructions with additional details, clear photographs, as well as game-accurate full-color numbered charts for all 5 sides of both character’s heads along with their hex codes for perfect color matching.

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More Minecraft-themed fun:

How to make a Minecraft Enderman head and diamond block trick-or-treat basket

How to make Minecraft Lootbags

How to make Minecraft Mob fondant cake/cupcake toppers

How to make a Minecraft cake

Throwing a Minecraft birthday party

Minecraft Zombie Charts

Minecraft Jack-O’-Lantern Charts

This post may contain affiliate links. This means I might make a small commission on purchases made through the links, at no cost to you.

May 28, 2015
by Jennifer Lori 1 Comment

How to Calculate Yardage Needed for Plastic Canvas Stitching

Sometimes you have a project in mind, and yarn on hand, and boy it sure would suck to get mostly completed and realize you don’t have enough yarn to finish. In my case, I’m impatient. Sunday night I had one hank of appropriately-colored gray yarn, and a gray wrench to stitch, and I would have loved to get started… but first I needed to know if I had enough yarn to fully cover the entire thing.

Here’s how you figure it out.

Step 1- Cut a set length of yarn. In my case I cut a strand of yarn that is 36 inches long. A few reasons for this- 1) my measuring tape is in inches, making that a convenient measure, 2) 36 inches = 1 yard, and yarn labels list yardage, so I won’t have to do any conversions, and 3) 36 inches is a comfortable working length for when actually stitching, so my beginning and ending tails can be reasonably included in these figures.

Note- this will only be a helpful estimate if you use yarn that is the same, or at least the same thickness, as the yarn you plan to use in your project.

Step 2- Take a scrap piece of plastic canvas, the same gauge as your project, and begin stitching.

Make sure to use the same stitch you will be using in your project, as some stitches take up more yarn than others, for example cross-stitch uses more than Continental.

Keep going until the yarn is nearly done, and fasten off as usual.

Step 3- Do some math. My 36″ of yarn allowed me to fill an area that was 6 holes wide by 19 holes high. Yes, I’m counting in HOLES, not stitches. Why? Because some of my pieces are oddly-shaped and the stitches I’m using are slanted and I don’t feel like having to figure out how many stitches will fill irregular areas. Counting the holes is simply faster for me. You can count stitches if you prefer as long as you make sure to count total STITCHES needed later.

So. 1 yard (36″) of yarn will allow me to stitch an area comprised of 114 stitches.

Then all you have to do is count the number of holes in the project (or stitches, if you’re doing it that way), divide that by your swatch yardage (in my case: 114) and the result will tell you how many yards of yarn you need to fill it.

To that resulting number I would pad it based on certain factors- areas where you have to cut excess away, areas where you accidentally used too much to tie-on and get a few stitches short on that piece, etc. So for smaller projects I’d say this is a good way to know if a finite amount of yarn will work. For larger projects I’d say this was a good way to estimate the minimum amount of yarn you’d need.

Make sense?

If you were going to purchase yarn for this project and the count you end up with gives you the yardage of just UNDER a ball of your required yarn, I’d spring for an extra ball. Best case scenario: you don’t end up using it and can return it. Middle-of-the-night-likely scenario: you remember you have that second ball once you run out of yarn. For Sprocket’s wrench, I’m trying to avoid buying yarn. I have two different yarns in an appropriate gray that I can use, but one of them only has one, already-started, skein. I’d prefer to use that one, but I don’t want to risk running short. So I’ll count up how much my pieces will use without padding for any extra. If I see it’s pretty close to the amount of my preferred yarn I have I won’t bother starting with it, and I’ll use the other one instead.

Note– this method does NOT include yardage for whipstitching the edges together. That’s fine with me, because some of my edges are joined with a different color, of which I have plenty, and if I run out of my gray for the sewing-up I don’t mind using a slightly different shade for the assembly.

May 26, 2015
by Jennifer Lori 6 Comments

Throwing A Minecraft Birthday Party

First came the Minecraft lootbags, then the Minecraft fondant toppers, and then the Minecraft cake. Now’s where it all came together – the final Minecraft birthday party.

Once again, this was Henri’s 6th birthday party, from back in January. Jakob just had his own Minecraft party but I didn’t change much except for the cake, and that will get its own post shortly.

There are a lot of ways you can incorporate Minecraft ‘foods’ into your own party. A quick look through Google images or Pinterest will show idea after idea, I pulled some of them out and added my own to get what worked for the small group of kids we had. If you’re having a larger party, or its for a gaggle of teens, you can really go all out with some creative food arrangements. I’ve seen everything from pretzel-grid trap doors to a soda maker doubling as a brewing station!

I didn’t go quite so elaborate. Only 10 kids, a few lingering adults, and I knew the children would be rushing through the food to get back to playing video games (we were at an arcade). The place provided pizza, so I added a quick veggie side dish to the table.

Clear enough? 🙂

I had a little more fun preparing the dessert table…

Regular and Golden Apples…

…Water Buckets… (blue raspberry Jell-O… would have been cuter in plastic shot glasses if I’d thought about buying some in time)…

…and TNT (red licorice bundles with black licorice whip wicks).

Combine these with the Minecraft lootbags the kids got when they left, and it made for a party they could all dig. (Get it?) 😉

Can I just say that I love the dollar store square dishes and platters? Love them.

Henri really enjoyed his 6th birthday party, and I had a lot of fun putting everything together for it.

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You can download and print the images below to make your own Minecraft party. I copy/pasted a bunch onto an Excel spreadsheet so I could fit as many to a page as I needed. The TNT strips were sized at 3″ tall by 5″ wide (the block of 10 strips), the water bucket graphic is 1.75″ wide by 2″ high, and the apples and carrots were 2.25″ by 3″.

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More Minecraft fun:

How to make Minecraft Steve and Creeper heads

April 22, 2015
by Jennifer Lori 10 Comments

How to Make Minecraft Cake/Cupcake Toppers

So last post I showed you the Minecraft lootbags (inventory chests). Today I’ll show you how I made the toppers for the Minecraft birthday cake.

I wasn’t sure what I was going to do for the cake itself, but I knew I wanted to have a bunch of Minecraft mobs scattered about. I didn’t feel like having to prepare enough fondant in the assorted colors, nor did I really want to start sculpting, so I turned to my current favorite technique- hand-painted toppers.

I’ve used this on a number of cakes, which I’ll link to once I post them. With one exception, Nick’s Star Wars cookies, I always painted with thinned-down color gels, and had great results… (especially the Jake & the Neverland Pirates figures) but there were some flaws. The painted pieces too much longer to dry, making it more difficult to do finishing touches, the “paint” was often very wet, which could cause the fondant base to soften and/or get slimy, and sometimes the piece would crack as it dried (like in the Charlie & Lola cake).

For some reason I switched techniques when making Sean’s last Goalie cake, I tossed in some icing sugar to give my white coloring some opaqueness, and then I recalled painting with icing on the Star Wars cookies. It was a duh moment, and I’ve stuck with that ever since. It’s easier (for me), faster (for me), and it dries quicker, so I can add eyes or other details MUCH faster. Plus, because icing is thicker than water, I can play with layers and build up dimensions, if I want, similar to decorating cookies with royal icing.

My first step is to cut out the topper shapes from fondant (or if you’re painting on cookies, bake them and let them cool until there is no heat left inside, I’d wait overnight if possible). You can use cookie cutters or freehand it, I am not above tracing. I’d printed out the mobs (it stands for mobiles for those of you who don’t play… all the moving characters in the game) I wanted to use and scaled them all to the rough sizes I wanted.

I rolled out some scrap teal fondant left over from Jakob’s 2nd Adventure Time cake, the B-MO & Gunter cakes. The thickness of the fondant depends on the intended use of the piece. In my case I needed something thick enough to stand up, and also be thicker than a toothpick. For something that will be laying flat on a cake you can go thinner, and if it was meant to be a plaque that would stand upright or lean at a diagonal I’d go thicker, so there would be a solid base.

Lay the paper templates out on the fondant and cut it up into manageable sizes, then use a knife or your preferred cutter to trace around the templates. In the pic above you can see I’ve almost finished cutting out Diamond Steve. Keep your fondant scraps and store them properly for next time.

Here are all the mobs cut out. I slid a toothpick into most of them while the fondant was still soft, and reinforced where necessary with more fondant. I wasn’t worried about the smaller fondant blobs showing because I knew I’d be painting with icing, which is thick, but if you’re painting with straight color gels you’d rather have a flat surface.

The next step is to let the pieces dry. I mean really dry. At least a day. Two is better. The longer you can wait, the more in-advance you can get them cut and set them aside, the better, because fondant will wilt and melt when it gets wet, and there is a lot of moisture in the icing. Also, larger pieces will take longer to dry through than smaller ones. The Jake & the Neverland Pirates gang were dry enough to paint after 2 days left exposed to the air. I hadn’t given myself enough time with the Charlie & Lola toppers, they were so big and still flexible after 2 days. Or maybe my house was more humid at the time. Either way, they ended up spending 24 hours in a bed of icing sugar to draw out as much moisture as I could get.

Once the pieces are firm, not floppy, they’re ready to paint.

I didn’t take any in-progress painting shots. You can use whatever you like as a palette as long as it’s food-safe and not used for any non-food purpose. (I also keep my cake stuff away from peanut and nut products because I make 3 nut-free cakes every year). I mostly paint with toothpicks but I have some food-only paint brushes I’ll use from time to time, and I use repurposed apple sauce cups for extra water and icing sugar. There are a bunch of tricks I use, like using a medicine dropper to add water to thin the icing if necessary vs a spoon, so I have more control over how much I add, and using those sewing pins (in the tracing pic) to help mark out any details on the fondant cut-outs, in addition to “drawing” on them before I paint.

These are the non-hostiles- a sheep, Diamond Steve, regular Steve and a pig. I chose some of my kids’ favorite characters, leaving out only the Mooshroom because I knew I already had plenty to cover the cake. Plus if I’d kept going they also wanted an ocelot, and a dog, and a bat, and a spider jockey, and zombies, and…

I didn’t plan too far ahead on each piece, though I do try to work in a way that makes sense. Whenever possible I work backwards in color, to minimize icing waste. For example, I didn’t want to have to re-mix black, so planned to work with it last, and do any details if necessary then, at the end. I started with the Steves, and mixed up their skin color (though now they look like Zombie Steves), then added a touch more brown and used the same icing for the sheep’s face and the lighter areas on his hooves. A touch more brown and it was used for the darker areas of the hooves and Steve’s hair.

The same blue used for Steve was also used for the squid’s face, then darkened for his body, and eventually darkened further for the black.

Just like when painting with real paints, when I mix colors I don’t always blend it all in, so if I’m adding more pink to do some shading on the pig, I only mix it into half of the icing, so I still have some light pink to play with.

The hostile mobs- the Ender Dragon, a spider, a creeper, an Enderman and a squid (who probably isn’t technically ‘hostile’). I don’t know why the Enderman’s eyes don’t look purple, I think the light washed it out ‘cus in person they did. The splotches on the spider were made by mixing in some white while the black was still wet, and most of the details on the Ender Dragon were dry-brushed for shading, since I didn’t have to actually paint him black to start.

The final touch was to make a wooden sign and then the gang was all done, ready to set aside somewhere safe to dry (and avoid being eaten) until the party.

For more from the party:

Minecraft Loot Bags

Minecraft Birthday Cake

Throwing a Minecraft Party

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More Minecraft fun:

How to make Minecraft Steve and Creeper heads

April 21, 2015
by Jennifer Lori 5 Comments

How to Make Minecraft Lootbags

With Jakob’s 8th birthday coming up, and likely another Minecraft-themed event, I realized I never posted any of the pics I took from Henri’s 6th birthday, also Minecraft-themed, back in January. I hadn’t returned to blogging then, so they obviously weren’t here, but I also never posted them on my Facebook, Instagram or Twitter accounts, which all link to each other.

I figured it would be fitting for an inaugural post to break in the ‘new’ blog, as well as officially link everything all together.

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So. When Henri had told me he wanted a Minecraft party I a) wasn’t surprised, because my house is ALL about Minecraft (I play too, my mansion has a giant working waterslide, thankyouverymuch), and b) wanted to go a little beyond just making a cake. I generally try to tie in the invitations and the lootbags, for example, a pirate-themed party had eye patches and gold hoop earrings and spyglasses. So I went looking around online.

I wasn’t completely sure what I wanted to do for the cake yet, and Henri kept wavering on if he wanted a giant Creeper, or an Ender Dragon, or a giant Creeper covered in smaller Creepers… so I put the cake off until it got closer to actually having to bake it. I decided to start with the loot bags and get them ready and set aside.

There are a LOT of great ideas online. I took a look at them, and went to a few stores to see what was available to me. I ended up getting stuff at my local Dollarama, a grocery store, and Papillon (a Bulk Barn-type store), because 2 of those 3 are in the same mall and I had limited time/desire to run around. I found graphics of the Minecraft inventory items online and knocked them together in Word, putting a frame around them only so I would cut them all out the same size. I have included the graphics at the end of this post, feel free to download them and use them for your own projects!

Putting everything together, here’s what I came up with:

The lava buckets had me running around to a few stores. My local Dollarama had a mixed-pack of mini Jell-O knock-offs, but only half the pack was orange or red. I was really hoping to find red/orange (for lava buckets) and blue raspberry (for water buckets… which I had printed and managed to salvage at a later point). In the end I found Jell-O cups at my grocery store, and used those.

The small plastic zip-top bags that the rest of the treats are in are craft bags from the dollar store too, and even the tape used to affix the images was from there. Gotta love when you can find supplies as inexpensively as possible! 😀

The melon slices are sour gummies from the bulk store.

The fish gummies are also from the bulk store. For all the inexpensive candies I just grabbed a few handfuls and portioned them out evenly once I got home.

The ‘gold bars’ are Hershey’s Gold Nuggets. They’re a little more expensive so I counted those out. (Plus, um, 2 for quality control… in my mouth).

The sticks are pretzel sticks. Surprisingly my dollar store didn’t have any, so I bought them at the bulk place and eyeballed ‘even’ amounts.

I’d been planning to get the cookies at the bulk store, they have the Voortman’s ones that you can buy individually, but I found a pack of chocolate chip cookies at the dollar store so that turned out to be cheaper, and each kid got 2 (only because there weren’t enough for each to get 3 in the pack).Initially I wasn’t certain how to package everything together. Then I remembered these boxes we’d had laying around at work. They’re supposed to open the other way- the short ends. So I ripped the glued sides open and re-taped them up with packing tape (ALSO from the dollar store) so they opened like a chest would. If I’d planned that in advance I’d have made the chest graphic large enough to cover the whole side, and printed the word “chest” for the top. But, in a pinch, this worked.

Everything fit nicely inside and I heard the kids loved their “inventory packs”. If you try this yourself and can’t get ahold of boxes, brown paper lunch bags would be fine, or if you wanted to go EXTRA fancy you could get each child their own actual chest from the dollar store.

You can download and print the above images to make your own. I copy/pasted a bunch onto an Excel spreadsheet so I could fit as many to a page as I needed. The bag graphics were sized at 2″ tall by 1.75″ wide, and the chests were 2.25″ by 3.25″.

how to make a viking vest

Henri has wanted to be a viking for a while now. Not for Halloween, I mean he wants to be a viking in general. (It’s either viking or pirate, depending on the day).

Jakob got a light-up viking helmet at the How To Train Your Dragon Live Spectacular, and unfortunately when we brought Henri the next day they were all sold out of helmets, so he got a Toothless plushie instead. (Jakob, you’ll remember, got the one I knitted for his birthday…which I think I never blogged. Oops).

The kids share the helmet, and last month when it was time to pick costumes for ComicCon (which I think I also forgot to blog…crap) Henri REALLY wanted to wear the helmet and be a viking, but a quick search through the closets revealed that we didn’t have any viking clothes. All we had even close to a viking vest (like Hiccup wears in the movie) was a gray zippered sweatshirt-style vest. The kids dressed as Avengers instead but Henri had it stuck in his mind that that was his viking vest and he has worn it non-stop ever since. He’s worn it to school on back-to-back days, he’s worn it over his fall jacket, he wears it around the house, and on more times than I can count I check on him at night to find that he’s put it on over his pjs and worn it to sleep.

(Something about a 3 year old with tousled sleep hair in footie-pjs, amirite?)

He stops strangers to point out his “viking vest”, but commented a few weeks ago how “it’s not a REAL viking vest, Mommy, because it has a zipper and REAL viking vests have buttons”. Oh. Right. ‘Cus vikings didn’t have zippers.

I promised I’d make him a viking vest, and yesterday I did just that. I took photos throughout so if you want to make one, you can too.

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I used some fur fabric my neighbor gave me, a sheet of newspaper, a sharpie & a pair of scissors, plus a sharp large-eyed needle, black acrylic yarn and white cotton yarn. The only other thing you need is a vest that fits your child (or you!).

I started by laying the vest on the paper and traced half of it. I used my finger to push down then traced to know where the neckline in the middle lined up.

I knew I wanted to add some length to the bottom and the armhole so it would fit him longer, as well as lowering the neckline to a v-neck, so I made those changes on my template.

I cut it out and checked against the vest.

I decided I wanted to make the neckline more sloped so marked off the changes on the pattern…

…then cut it out and checked again.

I was happy with the shape so I traced it onto my fabric. It’s hard to see, but I traced out the half-vest pattern, flipped it and traced again for the other front, then traced it back-to-back, flipped, for a piece to fit the back. The only thing I didn’t realize is that the fur fabric had a direction to it in which the fur laid flat. I tried to be as economical with the fabric as possible so didn’t have a choice, but you would probably rather make sure you’re lying the pieces with the fur running from up to down, like natural fur.

I cut the pieces out on the porch which was a great idea because there were bits of fur flying EVERYWHERE. I used my fingers to fluff up and pick at all the edges to make sure I’d gotten as many stray cut bits as possible before bringing it into the house.

I used a sharp needle and black chunky acrylic yarn from a big-box store to work a blanket stitch edging around each piece. I eyeballed it, placing the stitches roughly 0.5″ apart, and 0.5″ down into the fabric.

The simple edging really gave the pieces a finished, yet still “handmade by Vikings” look. (In this light you can see my fur runs in the opposite direction from how the vest will be worn, oops!)

This is the inside of the pieces, for those who like that kinda thing. 🙂

I used the same black yarn to seam the two sides and the shoulders together. I did something similar to mattress stitch, butting up the two pieces to be joined and catching a loop from each edge all the way along.

Almost done!

Inside shot.

For a finishing touch I used white worsted-weight cotton yarn (dishcloth cotton) and made large stitches across the joined pieces. This is purely decorative, but makes it look like Vikings really made it! according to my 3 and 5 year olds, and I trust them.

This is Henri’s final costume- a green long-sleeved tee, brown cords, his new vest and the light-up plastic helmet. I may make a Viking axe if I have time/remember by Halloween.

Henri the Brave!

Back view.

He thought he was dancing for me. I just wanted to see the decorative stitches.

That’s one happy Viking!

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This post may contain affiliate links. This means I might make a small commission on purchases made through the links, at no cost to you.

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This post may contain affiliate links. This means I might make a small commission on purchases made through the links, at no cost to you.

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(Something about a 3 year old with tousled sleep hair in footie-pjs, amirite?)

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