Edinburgh jeweller

This year I attended a cupcake decorating workshop at the The Make Lounge (I blogged about it here , and there are some yummy cake pics to look at!). I don't tend to make cupcakes much, it's quite a lot of effort if there's just two of you, but I do enjoy baking. So I decided to make some cakes for my colleagues in three offices at work instead of sending christmas cards. I made them on Sunday so they would be as fresh as possible for Monday. It turned out to be a bit of a mission! I had wanted to make some chocolate cakes and some vanilla cakes but unfortunately, when I had just finished baking the chocolate cakes the oven door fell off! It wasn't a big shock because it's been on it's last legs for a while but it did mean I couldn't make the vanilla cakes (although Gary has now fixed the oven door so that it does still function for a bit longer!). Luckily my recipe made 37 cakes which is still quite a lot! (But I had two myself, just to quality check th...

 My friend Claire wanted to make some more lampshades for her new house, after our success at the  lampshade making workshop , so we decided to make a day of it. She is lucky enough to live in Greenwich, London (jealous, Greenwich is great!). So we met up an  Biscuit Biscuit , a ceramic painting cafe. It was a very rainy Saturday so it was quite busy in there but we managed to find a table in order to get on with our painting. Claire was very organised and had a Mondrian-inspired design for her plate (you can kind of see it to the right of the picture). I didn't have an idea of what I wanted to do. I chose the star bowl and had fun painting and sponging it. I'm looking forward to seeing how it comes out. We then went back to Claire's house to make the lampshades. She had already picked out the Paris fabric and another fabric she got from John Lewis. I met her new puppy Heidi (cute) and then we got to work (via a lemon cupcake!). We have now made four lampshades tog...

This week I went to The Make Lounge (I've been a few times before! ) with my friend Claire. It was her first time there and she was impressed. This time we were making lampshades with the help of the fabulous Suzanne. Claire and I studied for our PGCE together but it's been a few years since we've been in the same class. We were able to help each other a couple of times as there are some times when two pairs of hands are better than one! I really enjoyed this class and I am really pleased with the outcome. I think my lampshade looks really stylish and professional. I don't think you could tell that it was my first try. We've already got a Saturday scheduled to make some more lampshades and do some pottery painting so we've well and truly got the creative bug!

This week I have enjoyed two workshops at The Make Lounge . My friend Farzana and I had booked onto the cake decorating workshop a couple of months ago but then I saw the new paper cutting art workshop and knew I had to give it a go. It happened to be the day after the cake decorating but I couldn't go to the later dates that were scheduled so I just went for it! Cupcake decorating Photo by Gary Ullah photography The cupcake decorating was taught by Louise Hill of Love to Cake . Vanilla and chocolate cakes were pre-made, as was the butter cream icing. Louise went through her top tips for making cakes and icing first and then we got to work colouring the icing. We learnt how to ice using at least five different techniques, how to make marzipan shapes and roses, using different coloured icing and edible glitter. It was a really fun workshop and I feel I could confidently do it again at home. Louise is an excellent and engaging teacher. I thoroughly recommend this workshop to...