Jingle All The Way!

Here at Bumbleblue, everything is in full festive swing. It’s the last day of November and I already feel like I’ve painted a truck load of Christmas decorations!

As well as painting orders for my fabulous customers, I’ve been trying to carry on with experimenting and keeping my creative juices flowing. It was actually a Christmas song that inspired my newest little creation – This is a good twist of fate as now I can argue that festive Michael Buble is educational!

So, I had Jingle Bells in my head and fueled by a fresh cup of tea I opened my cupboard that holds a bit of everything and had a root around. At the bottom was a big bag full of my wrapping bits and bobs; rolls of pretty paper, bags of beautiful ribbons and tonnes of gorgeous tags.

Hmm, gift tags…

No present you wrap is complete without a tag. It identifies the sender, offers sentiment to the recipient and also makes the whole wrapping process complete. The more I thought about it, the more I started to feel sorry for the humble gift tag. We put so much thought into choosing which paper to buy, matching it up to ribbons and tags and when all’s said and done, we tear the package open and throw it all away.

A few more cups of tea and a few sketches and the ideas started flowing, I just needed one little thing to bring it all together…..

Bake Your Cake and Eat It

Sat at the Bumbleblue desk, I was hard at work painting some fabric Christmas puddings. In my cupboard that houses a bit of everything, I found some jute fabric and thought it would make a fabulous base for a Christmas pud.

I started to think about puddings in general and in particular, cake. By the time I got round to sticking the little red button berries on, I couldn’t stop thinking about cake so a little impromptu baking session was necessary!

I’ve still not mastered the art of baking the perfect cake but I’m keeping it simple and thinking that with a bit of practice, one day I will be whisking up sponges and fruit cakes a-plenty!

A little peek through the old cook books and I found what looked like a straight forward, no frills recipe to follow for a madeira cake. Feeling very adventurous and brave, I decided to add a few (a whole pot of) yummy cherries.

 

The fact that it came out of the oven looking like a cake was amazing – but even more incredible was it looked like a cake on the inside too! Granted all the cherries I put in had sunk to the bottom, but I had made a cake that looked, smelt and tasted like a cake so this wasn’t going to get me down.

Happy cake-baking days!