Grease is the word

   Grease is the theme that never says die as it remains forever popular amongst young and old. I guess it must be because the 50s were such a swinging rocking time and the musical captures this period in all it's glory. We recently were asked to do the decor and a cake for a 30th that was themed to Grease and we of course had to go all out and bring in all the spunk of the era.

The guests were greeted at the elevator to the venue by two giant strawberry milkshakes, an icon of the 50s. Well not giant milkshakes per say but a burger,fries and regular sized milkshakes at a diner was just about the staple diet of teenagers back then. Hmmm, not much has changed really. Of course having giant milkshakes when your company is called Vanilla Milkshake Events doesn't hurt either on the subconscious advertising side.





    

                                              

                           

 We decorated the walls with music notes, records and my favorite item from the 50s the juke box. These I cut out from corex and painstakingly painted by hand, which took a fair amount of time, but I was happy to do it for my beloved juke box and the end result definitely added some great color and fun to the room.But I was not yet all juke boxed out and with a little help from an outside source and a whole bunch of determination I also made a 3D juke box. The fun thing about this prop is that the "neon" lighting tubes are sprayed with neon UV paint so just add a little UV light and bam you have a glow in the dark juke box. 

                                        

The 50s just wouldn't be the same if it didn't have gum chewing waitresses on roller skates, so of course they were present in our decor. I decided to represent these ladies just as black silhouettes to add a little sleekness to the setup and not make things overly garish. But what's the point of waitresses on roller-skates if there isn't a diner so of course we had to have one of those as well.

With just a few simple things I converted what would later be the food table into a makeshift diner.

And don't worry we didn't forget about the all important Grease Lightning Car. The car acted not only as decor, but as an interactive piece as we placed a chair behind it and guests were able to sit on the chair as if they were in the car and have their photo taken.

The cake followed the same line as the decor with records, juke boxes, waitresses, burgers and milkshakes. And as a little something extra a few elements from the movie Grease.

With all the decor to set the scene and the cake to tie it all together we were ensured that the birthday 'girl' and her guests had a boog-e-dy boog-e-dy boog-e-dy 
boog-e-dy shoo-by doo-wop she-bop time...

a mAd affAiR

A couple of weeks ago we had a very mad weekend and not only because we were inundated with orders but because two of those orders were for Mad Hatter's Tea Parties. We had a 30th birthday cake and hen party cupcakes from different clients both wanting the Mad Hatter's theme.

Being slightly (under statement) loony myself this is really still one of my favorite themes to play around with. I wanted to do something a little different this time with the cupcakes instead of the usual plain teacups and teapots. I still had these of course but added a little twist by including a few elements that are not directly from the tea party, but are intrinsic to Alice in Wonderland.



            

I love the added touch of the teapot pouring tea. I feel like it captures a frozen moment of the chaos of the Mad Hatter's tea party. I added wooden signs to some of the cupcakes saying "this way" and "that way" as well as a few labels saying "eat me". 

A Mad Hatter's Tea Party is really not complete if the Mad Hatter's hat doesn't make an appearance so of course as usual the little green hat sat upon some of the cupcakes.

The final two cupcake designs were the white rabbit's pocket watch and a little bottle that urges Alice to drink it. A little deviation from the Mad Hatter's party, but still all in the spirit of the madness.


The client for the Mad Hatter's cake had a fairly good idea of what she wanted and sent me a reference picture. A two tier topsy turvy cake with a cheshire cat top tier, a draped bottom tier and then her own touch, a tea party on the very top. I'd actually never done a topsy turvy cake before, but was quite happy with the way it turned out. 

I used similar elements for the tippy top tea party that I used for the cupcakes. It featured the Mad Hatter's hat, tea pots and cups, yummy treats as well as a the number 30 which the client had asked me to include on the cake. My favorite part of this top tier is the way it looks like all the tea party goodies are in the process of sliding right off the cake. So typical of the Mad Hatter's tea party...

I've always had a strange love for the cheshire cat and was thrilled to be able to dedicate a whole tier to this mischievous being. This particular cheshire cat was inspired by the old school animated Disney version of the Lewis Carroll novel and not the new darker Tim Burton one.

 

Other features of the cake were a "this way" sign, some toadstools, three red hearts representing the Red Queen and what I thought was a rather fun touch was that the client requested that the words "a very merry unbirthday to you" be on the cake board.

I think I love the Mad Hatter's Tea Party and the Alice in Wonderland theme in general, because of it's silly playfulness and it's vast array of wonderous things to be inspired by. I guess all that's left to say is bring on the madness...

Buckets of Fun

 Not always having much time to blog I thought that by the time I finally had a chance to blog about the pool party we did in February it would be a nostalgic look back at summer. But it is not to be with Cape Town temperatures set to reach into the 30s and humidity already being high we are sure to have a hot and sticky day.


Growing up I always envied the kids whose birthdays fell in the warm summer months. I wished I could have my birthdays outside in the sun and just once have "you are invited to my pool party'" on my invite. But alas my birthday is not in summer and it inevitably rained on the day of my party banishing us to the garage. Of course my mom always transformed the dreary garage into a party wonderland and I only have the fondest memories of each and every one of my parties. But I never lost my love and jealousy of the perfect summer party and so now I take a more than normal enjoyment in creating them and living somewhat vicariously through the birthday child.


As you can imagine I was rather excited when we got this request for a pool party. Take a look at what we did to make this party a summer dream.

The main colour scheme for the party was lime and cerise with just a touch of turquoise as it was for a little girl. 

The party tables matched the colour scheme with cerise table cloths and lime green chair covers. We also used our pink and white plastic plates as well as our plastic wine glasses to add a cute girly touch. The serviettes also aided in picking up the colour scheme.

Although the party was a pool party, the theme was more island fun in the sun and a day at the beach so the party packs were beach buckets and a spade that of course also matched colour wise. Each pack had a spade tag thanking the guests for coming. 

For decor in the gazebo we hung colourful flags and a big smiling sun.

Other decor included cut out palm trees and surf boards as well as some hanging decor in the adults section.

One of the themed treats we made were marie biscuit beaches. The marie biscuits were iced and covered in crumbs to look like a beach and then of course we had to add little umbrellas to make them really authentic. 

We also made cereal treats in the shape of slip slops as well as some colourful cake pops.

The cupcakes were beach themed with beach buckets and balls, swimming costumes, slip slops and surf boards.

The cake followed a similar style to the cupcakes with everything fun and beachy on it.

We certainly enjoyed bringing the beach to a pool party and look forward once again to those wonderful summer months and sunny parties.

It's a Bunny Thing

We hope everyone had a wonderful easter weekend filled with candy delights and chocolate dreams. We certainly had a busy one with 5 cakes and over 200 cupcakes and of course our yummy bunny bags.

The bunny bags were filled with delicious wonders and worked well as an unconventional easter basket where the kids could store the rest of their easter stash.

Inside our bunnies we had cookies, chocolates, cupcakes and candy coated eggs, all of which of course had to be bunnies.

Our cookies were a simple vanilla biscuit with a glaze icing.

Our chocolates were also pink and white bunnies and packaged in pink cellophane.

We dressed up candy coated easter eggs to look like bunnies by adding fondant ears and drawing on faces with edible ink pens.


However my personal favorite has to be the bunny themed cupcakes we made, especially the little bunny bum with the rest of the bunny borrowing 'underground'.

You really have to love easter. What other time of the year are we able to unashamedly consume copious amounts of chocolate and other delectable sweet goodies? As makers of all things sweet it certainly works in our favour.