Awesome Retro Social Media posters

My sweet friend Aaron (aka Skullx for the old Sluggite crowd) has been posting these on his google+, and they just keep getting better.  You can purchase them in his etsy shop!

My favorite are the Twitter ones, but they are all a bunch of fun.

While we are on the subject of social media, i might as well plug my own!:

Here are several more of the posters, and you can see more here: etsy

 

Random Goodness: Crafty & Foodie Links

A smattering of cool links from around the interwebs!

Just for Fun

always remember

always remember

deconstructed sushi bowl

deconstructed sushi bowl

hummus poppers

hummus poppers

Foodilicious

 

sparkly vamp stakes

paper bag stars

paper bag stars

DIY / Crafty

Winners of the Fabulous Flowers book!

Hi all! Thanks to those who entered the Fabulous Flowers contest…

And the randomly generated winners are:

Kathleen, who told us : “I hand sewed a wedding dess and vail for a real chicken. It was to take a picture of her all dressed up!”
and
Julianne, who told us: “I am recently engaged and am trying to plan a DIY-friendly, non-princess style Disney World wedding for Spring 2013!”
Thanks to all who entered, and if you missed out on your opportunity to share an interesting fact about yourself, feel free to leave it in the comments here, just for fun!

Contest Reminder… and more!

My quick attempt at a ZinniaDon’t forget to go enter the contest to win a copy of Fabulous Flowers craft book!   All you have to do is leave a comment on the other postwith an interesting fact about yourself.  There’s not too many entries yet, so act fast :)

In other news, remember that you can now submit your own recipes to Foodwhirl.  It’s a super easy way to instant fame and fortune!* Go here to do it!  (Here’s one I put out there recently – an easy and tasty roasted eggplant hummus)

And a few links for you too…

*Fame and Fortune sold separately.

Fabulous Flowers (Win a copy for yourself!)

CONTEST IS OVER! thx!

The lovely people at Klutz sent me a copy of their fun little craft book, Fabulous Flowers, to check out, and I get to pass along some of that goodness to you!

And in the true spirit of Dabbled, I have made myself a paper flower from the book so I can give you the full scoop.  That’s down below the contest, so read on…

It’s basically a bunch of easy to create paper flowers, with instructions and supplies all included.  Except for scissors, you really don’t need anything else.  The flower shapes are all pre-cut, making it much easier for kids (or adults without much patience, like me!) to get right to the creation process, without spending so much time on prep work.

All in all, it would be a great gift for a someone who’d like to craft, but who is a little intimidated to try things like this on their own.  The techniques are well explained and documented step by step.  It does require some patience, as you have to glue pieces together, but the paper cutouts are a great headstart in putting the flowers together.  It also encourages creativity, as it gives you different ideas for putting them together in different ways–not tying you to following everything step by step if you want to play around.  I could totally see this as a great gift for a tween aged girl.

It also gave me some cool ideas for other projects I could do, not necessarily from the book, using the techniques provided!

The Contest!

So, I have two copies to give away to you, my lovely readers (at least those with US/Canada mailing addresses).  I’d love to use this as an opportunity to learn from you guys, so to enter, just leave a comment with an interesting fact about yourself, or why you like to read Dabbled.  For an extra entry, tweet about this to your friends (I’m @dotatdabbled), share it on facebook, and/or go Like our Facebook Page.  It’s totally honor system–because you guys are honest, I know–, so just let me know in the comments which extra entries you did.

My Attempt:

Bottom line, the directions were easy to follow, and even though I did mine pretty ‘quick and dirty’, it still came out looking pretty nifty!

About the Book

Let your creativity bloom with this book of can’t-go-wrong instructions for life-sized, dimensional, paper blossoms inspired by our favorite flowers: roses, daisies, daffodils, hibiscus, zinnias, cosmos, poppies, and larkspur. Sparkly embellishments, fresh paper colors, whimsical design variations, and a custom shaping tool give these blossoms a twist that’s pure Klutz — and quite possibly, even prettier than the real thing.

As always, Klutz has packaged the book with everything you need to get started: 20 pages of ready-to-punch-out paper petals, sparkly flower centers, wrapped wire stems, glue, and of course, the custom winding tool — enough stuff to make bunches of flowers.

Ages 8+   $19.99

So, see the details above and enter to win your own!  Open to US/Canada mailing addresses only.

 

Angry Birds cupcakes won 2nd place! (and more cake tutorials)

I’m pleased to announce that my Angry Birds cupcake tutorial instructable won second place in the Instructables cupcake contest!

More photos of all the birds and pigs, and download the tutorial, here (Make Angry Birds Cupcakes)

Some of my previous cake/cupcake tutorials:

Perry the Platypus

Perry the Platypus Cake Tutorial: The Prep Work

My favorite photo from the other day

The Boy does love his diet coke.   Snapped on my camera phone.  Can any Atlantans identify the location?

Tutorial: Make Angry Birds Cupcakes

Angry Birds Cupcakes Tutorial

My son, he who inspired the Clone Trooper Cupcakes, Dragon Cake, and Perry the Platypus Cake, is obsessed with Angry Birds.  Well, he’s really obsessed with about a dozen games on the iPhone or Android when we’ll let him play them — and he got to play a lot while we were on vacation in Mexico.  And we had a 4 hour delay so I played my share of Angry Birds, too.  Anyway.  So here they are in cupcake form (here are a bunch of other Angry Birds creations, too).  Lots of fun to make, and quite tasty, too!

Wanna make them yourself?  They really aren’t that hard.  But I will warn you, they are definitely time consuming!

OH YEAH! Please go vote for these in the instructables cupcake contest!

More photos on Flickr

Basically, on top of your standard iced cupcakes, you place a bird.  The birds (and pigs) are made out of donut holes covered in marshmallow fondant, (the smaller birds are wrapped up mints or whoppers or similar).  It’s like playing with playdoh, and my 6 year old actually helped me make one of the set of 3 little birds (those are easier to make because with a hard center, you don’t have to be as careful while wrapping them).  Really, this is not that hard to do, it does take a little time and patience though, especially to kneed all those different colors into your fondant!

I wrote up an Instructable with everything step by step, and you can download it here: PDF: How to Make Angry Birds Cupcakes

Illustration Friday: Launch (Rooster Sketch)

And I’m back from my art hiatus with an Illustration Friday!!

Really, I have been so busy with web design stuff, that I haven’t taken the time to draw, and that’s just sad.  So I’ve had this robotic rooster in my head (he’s eventually going to be a big piece) and here’s my first attempt at a sketch of him.  Doesn’t it look like he’s just launched a football into the air?

 

robot-rooster = initial sketch

I really like this sketch so much I don’t want to mess it up by adding more…  but alas I need to keep working on it!  Does that ever happen to anyone else?

Tiny Prints cards for Father’s Day (and a free one for you, too!)

If you remember, Tiny Prints sponsored a great blog party for Dabbled and some fellow Atlanta bloggers last month for mother’s day.  Well, due to some technical difficulties, I didn’t have a chance to order mother’s day cards prior to the deadline for arrival by mother’s day, so I decided not to push it and order some cards for father’s day instead!  And they just came in, and they are lovely.  (Oh, and if you’re my husband stop reading this!)

(Want your own?  Go to the Tiny Prints facebook page and get a free card code for Liking them.)

father's day cards

I ordered 3 cards, for both granddads and dad (aka my hubby).  The quality was excellent, and I loved the ease of adding your own photos, not only to the outside of the card, but to the inside of the card as well.  For the 2 granddad cards, I did 2 photos on the front, then a big photo on the inside, opposite the text (see above).  Of course, since it’s all about the Grandson with them, all the pictures are basically of him, hehe.  One word of advice — have a selection of photos already picked out prior to starting the card creation process.  Then it’s easy to just drag and drop them in.

For the Dad card, I did 3 photos with captions on the inside, which I thought was a neat touch.  And much of the text–including the fonts– is customizable.

You can’t really see the envelopes, but they are nice as well, with an embossed To: From: and the addresses printed for you, if you like.

For me, the ultimate procrastinator, the best part is they will not only print the addresses on the envelops, they’ll and even stamp them for you (I never have stamps!) and actually even MAIL them for you if time is tight, for only the cost of the stamp.  Awesomeness.

So, get on over to their facebook and get your free card!.

I’m very selective on products that I will promote on Dabbled, because I respect you guys–the readers–intelligence, and I want to be sure that anything I talk about will be both relevant, and something I’d recommend personally.  Tiny Prints did spring for the party, and provided these cards for free, but any comments and impressions are mine, and if I didn’t like them, I’d tell you.