Cooking with kiddie

Well here it is - the first batch of gingerbread men or rather Moomins made with my new cutters. There are Moomintrolls, Snufkins and Hattifatteners, and very tasty they are too. I just wish you could taste and smell blogs as well as read them.

The chef and her assistant (me) used a recipe from good old Good Housekeeping which we trot out every Christmas and make loads of Christmas trees, men, ladies and hearts. Some actually make it as far as our Christmas tree hung on a ribbon.

Evie decided she wanted 'the works' on her batch so out came the icing and hundreds and thousands. Her biccies all ended up with multi-coloured eyes and mouths. E-numbers rule!!!

Someone on the forum asked about resin today which reminded me about my past projects at college and Uni. In my Foundation course final project I used resin and I said I'd put the photos on Flickr. Unfortunately they've gone AWOL but here are some piccies of my HND final show instead, til I find the resin hearts.

The ceramic pieces on the floor around the trunk are also part of my installation, It was all to do with memories of childhood. There were loads of tiny ceramic shoes looking like they'd been unpacked from a trunk in the attic, some of them were broken. These were to represent my memories of my childhood - faded and fragmented.

The bigger, bolder fabric shoes and the HUGE baby dress were my memories of Evie's childhood - much more vivid as they are so recent.

Dress-making has never been my forte but I had to give it a go for this. I used one of Evie's baby dresses and scaled it up, creating a paper pattern. I screen printed all the fabrics myself using her birth certificate, ankle ID tags and other paperwork from her birth. I then smocked the bodice by hand. The back is fastened by four huge buttons which I made out of Fimo, as are the shoes.

I made the shoes in a similar way, taking a pair of booties to pieces and enlarging and altering the pattern to a really big scale. They also fasten with big Fimo buttons.

I do love these shoes and have made them in a range of sizes as prezzies. This is one more little design idea I have up my sleeve which I really want to start producing. One felt one is currently lurking around my work room at the mo. I will finish it soon and post a pic to see what you all think.

Hmm.... I've started to ramble now cuz I've got one ear on Holby City and half a brain on this.

And now it's time for Waking the Dead so I'm going to finish.

Tomorrow I'm going to Lichfield Cathedral to wave at the Duke of Gloucester with Evie's class. Does anybody who he is or what he looks like? I must go and Google him so I wave at the right person. Don't want to flap my flag at a bodyguard or, even worse, a tramp!! hehehe