Cats in my Garden Cupcakes

 Making some cat mini-cakes. Created with sugar flowers, passion fruit curd, vanilla cake, buttercream and molded chocolate cat face.

 

First I drew up some plans and sketches to get a rough idea of how big I wanted the cake to be. Then I got some supplies. Casting material, sculpting clay, small silicon molds for the cakes, round cookie cutters, white chocolate, sugar flower paste, passion fruit, petal dust, gel food coloring, and plenty of butter, sugar, and eggs.

After sculpting from clay I then made a mold out of silicone. 

 

Since the sugar flowers need some time to dry and would last a while I worked on them next. I used a pre-made sugar flower paste, but eventually I want to try and create a paste that tastes better and dries a little more flexible.

Testing cookie recipes

 

First I tried a shortbread recipe. The dough worked well in the mold and if I put it in the fridge for a while it released easily. After baking the dough with a higher parentage of butter lost a lot of detail. I added a bit more flour and these cookies ended up looking ok.

Next I tried a Springerle cookie recipe. The first recipe had too much baking soda and the cookies lost their shape after baking. The second version of this recipe worked better, but the shape of the cat head was too thick to cook all the way through. 

I ended up using melted chocolate in the mold as this had the most detail.

 

 

Mixing the buttercream and making the mini cakes.

The cakes were stored in the freezer while I worked on painting the cat faces. 

 

Mauzer and the Guttersnipe Warriors

Recently I have been inspired by the old-timey street gangs of London (something along the lines of Oliver twist). I have been watching a lot of Sherlock Holmes, Ripper Street, and doing some on-line research. There is something so grungy and primal about of the stories of those children that have been dealt the worst hand and manage to scrape and claw their way through the muck of London. Ripper Street is very similar to the Guy Ritchie Sherlock Holmes with beautiful movie sets based in the 1800′s. “Ripper Street” offers high budget filming locations and consuming that are dressed superbly in city soot.

In my searching I discovered a new show, Peaky Blinders. It looks like it may just be my cup of tea. This is BBC2's new epic British gangster period drama. The story follows of an infamous street gang, a terrifying Brummie mob who ruled the industrialized areas of Birmingham through the 1880s and early 1900s.

For a recent show, (Story Time) at the Monkeyhouse gallery, I created a character that was very much inspired by these shows.

This is Mauzer he lives in city a similar to 1920’s London. Mauzer is a “mouse hunter” he finds mice that are down on their luck and recruits them to join his Guttersnipe Warriors gang.

This group of misfits live on the dirty city streets banding together to make their way in the world. They sometimes fight crime, but they are also known to fight for scraps of fish by the docks. Mauzer’s lady-friend is Kitten-has-claws, she is a strong-willed spirited lady that is a pro at the slight-of hand.

When they travel to other cities, or need a little extra cash they will operate a side-show circus. This mouse gang will use their various street-smart skills to impress the carnival attendees.

In the future I may make a comic out of these characters, there are so many great stories to develop!

Froggies and Studio View

I've been working on tons of Kickstarter projects, what fun!
My art tables are filled with piles of little robot sketches, frog stickers and postcards.
I've also been working on some studio photos for a FPAC blog interview.

Recently I had a short interview on Questioning Creatives.
Also I have opened up a web shop at Society6.

Some sneak peeks: