Pink apple birthday party printables

Inspired by a lovely tray of Pink Lady apples I designed some birthday cupcake toppers which would be suitable for a little girl's party. I'm thinking about design a LOT at the moment prompted by all sorts of things - in the supermarket, a flyer, an advert, blogs, toys, magazine clippings.....

It interests me to see what colours are used in packaging and branding. 

And font, well I'm becoming an addict. I love browsing Dafont or regular Font Friday blogs.

I love the cute Pink Lady tray, the swirly writing and the heart stickers. So sweet!

Click on the below picture to download the cupcake toppers.

Cut out each column and use a 2" craft punch to make your toppers. Attach to cocktail or lolly sticks and your done. They could also be used as favour or gift tags. I hope you like them.

{Apple clip art from Fashion Frog}

Spring's Silent Signs

Spring is peeking around the corner - the snowdrops and the crocus told me so. I saw it in the eye of a peacock's feather and in the ruffle of a fancy Bantam's tail.

The blossom whispered that I wasn't in for a long wait, whilst a carp by the waterfall jumped and showed me springtime with a flash of his scaly tail.

It won't be long now. Nature is telling us.

Little Bird's Bedroom Makeover

A Little Bird has had a cheery bedroom makeover.

Hooray for Ikea.

Hooray for Cath Kidston.

Hooray for clever Marmar Bird making beautiful soft furnishings.

Lots of primary colours.

Snuggly blankets, wooden toys - plenty of things to keep a toddler happy. He loves to play in here.

Great toys for counting and practicing our future musical skills.

First ever bed. Big smiles.

Toy boxes that double as a little reading nook with cushions and a canopy to make a den.

Vintage items for the shelves mostly from charity shops.

In fact I love it all so much I think I'll be cuddling up in here too.

Warm Vanilla

I had said absolutely no cakes would be baked for a while so I could lose a few pounds stone. However, I missed the mixing, the sloshing of vanilla extract, the chemistry and the 'Oh just bung it in and see what happens'. I rarely do exact measurements. 

So... in the past week I have baked a coffee cake and loosely based on blondies  although I substituted the sugar type as I only had golden caster sugar. See what I mean, throw it in and I'm sure it will be fine. They were actually very tasty even though I threw in white chocolate buttons and they all sunk to the bottom. 

Baking equals comfort, all warm vanilla tones hanging in the air, a quick dip of cake mixture, press of sponge and crispy bits on the side of the cake pan. Comforting. Homely. 

This weekend the question is, what to bake? A quick rummage in the back of the baking cupboard will surely throw up some forgotten ingredients - a jar of cherries, rose water, heaps of sprinkles and glitter, all ready to be thrown in to baking alchemy. I'll surely have some rough around the edges concoction to show you on Monday. 

Neon Hex Colour Codes

I have a strong attraction to neon, it reminds me of my 80's childhood and it's fun. Whilst thinking about my next blog style and some party prints I'm planning, I thought I'd use some neon colours but which hex codes to use in Photoshop?  I chose the below colours and thought I'd add them on here in case you want to add some neon too.

I adore the clashing colours of neons but I think for my future blog design, I'll just use one alone with a neutral - don't want it too hard on your eyes! Here is my little inspiration board I pulled together. Are you a neon yellow or a neon pink kind of person or do you despise them? 

It's Daddy Bird's BIG birthday this year ;) so I'm planning an 80's themed get together and I'll be using a lot of neon for the decorations. I've seen some neon in the shops recently too so here's hoping I find some bright pink legwarmers for my fun outfit. I can't wait!

Sweetie Hearts

Wishing you all a great Valentine's Day for tomorrow - if you are into that lovey dovey stuff. 
The day makes me cringe a bit I'm afraid. My least favourite holiday. 

 I'm just thinking all about Spring.

However, I like hearts and I like sweets so ermmm I suppose there is a little bit of Valentine's creeping into my house.

When my son is a bit older I'll help him make cards for his little sweetheart and maybe I'll sneak a heart shaped sandwich into his lunch box. 

I couldn't resist this cute heart tin full of fizzy Love Hearts. I haven't bought any of these sweets for a long, long time and it amused me how modern some of the messages are now with text speak ....LOL, L8R.  See.... all this Valentine's malarky is for the teenagers ;) 

Have a great day and I hope the postie brings you what you hoped for.

xxx

Vintage Valentines Day Cake Toppers

I'm not a big Valentine person but I bought a vintage card that was rather sweet and thought I'd make some printables with it.  Look at the sweet note inside - I wonder who they were and if they ended up together. Simple words giving the receiver a clue......

Click on the below picture to take you to the download. Use them as cake toppers using a 2 inch craft punch or perhaps tags or clip art.

XXX

Chilly Weekend

{Source:Wikipedia}

A chilly weekend but rather more ice than soft fluffy snow. The sledge still remains in the shed - I suspect for another year. I love snow but alas we just had the icy hail that made the footpaths hazardous and the roads not pretty.

We did our usual trip to the library where I found the My Daddy Cooks book and have been poring over that during the weekend. Foodie books are the best, I have a collection of some lovely ones, even if I do resort to the web to get a recipe every time!

A quick trip to the supermarket for treats - hot cross buns, hot chocolate and lots of massively reduced meat for Daddy Bird to throw into the freezer (not for me, I'm vegetarian) This is going to be a new Friday night ritual, we got a smoked gammon joint reduced from £7.49  to £1.89! Bargain! 

As usual I spent a long time reading blogs - I do this through Bloglovin now, especially since Google Friend Connect will be just for Blogger blogs going forward. I seem to always have about 500 blogs to read every time I check in and it's really stressing me out. I follow a fair few in addition to all your pretty blogs that are heavy going - techie, design, photography techniques and Photoshop blogs where I like trying out the tutorials meaning that I'm not commenting as much as I'd like. Forgive me. I'm being a student at the moment, learning as much as I can about coding and design.

I have two great blogs to recommend for blog help and trinkets etc. you may know them already:
Pugly Pixel and A is for Ampersand. The latter is where I got the bunting in my banner from. 

Finally, the weekend ended with watching The Wizard of Oz, recorded from over Christmas. I had never watched it before, I mean I know the songs but I had never sat and watched it straight through. Some great parallels with Alice in Wonderland, do you think so too?

Thank you for telling me about your wedding flowers, they all sounded lovely! 

Oh and I put fairy lights back up - the kitchen is all aglow and cheery again.

Back to my beloved Photoshop this evening as the world outside is shrouded in fog and looks like a spooky film scene.