Chocolate Transfer

Last weekend we celebrated my daughters 3rd birthday with my brother in law and his family since they were staying at our house for the weekend before leaving for Jamaica ! Yes the lucky ones ! Whish I was there right now.

First my daughter is a big fan of strawberry shortcake since October when she saw her cousin's strawberry shortcake doll. Since then, that is all she wanted for Christmas, after that there were strawberry underwares for being good at potty training, and finally the cake....Well first she wanted a chocolate cake, then after looking on the internet together for the one we stumbled across a strawberry shortcake green cake ! Well that was it, it was the one .

Here it is, with all its beautiful flowers and the green icing. Very important it had to be green ! :-)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pink_apron/2329103824/

I have to add that we do not like sugar icing nor butter icing...so momy had to brainstorm...and look for ideas on the internet...too late to buy anything...how could I make a strawberry shortcake ? hmmm and than I stumble across chocolat transfer, this is the tutorial that made my day

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kavingate/448999578/

I was up to it, bought everything and at 11h30 friday night I started. I finished at 12h45. So here are the steps I took. Sorry, unfortunatly I did not take any pictures this time.



STEP BY STEP


Step 1: Print a simple strawberry shortcake drawing in black and white

Step 2: I color it to give me an idea of the layering I would have to do

Step 3: I cut it out


Step 4: I put it on the bottom of my cake mold and covered it with saran wrap

. This kind of mold







Step 5: I melted my brown (semi-sweet bakers) chocolate

Step 6: I put the melted chocolate in a ziploc bag and cut a tiny bit of one corner.

Step 7: I traced like this

Step 8: Put it in the freezer for a minute or 2
Step 9: Then I melted my white chocolate
Step 10: I started with the red color. I added about 3-4 drops of food colorant in the part of my white chocolat that I had already put in a ziploc bag. DO NOT PUT TOO MUCH COLORANT else the chocolate becomes a paste.

Step 11: Put it in the freezer for a minute or 2
Step 12: I continued with the green color the same way as with the red.

Step 13: Put it in the freezer for a minute or 2
Step 14: I continued with the pink. but this time I covered everything. I put chocolate over the red and greens in the hat.

Step 15: I put and orange for the face and hands

Step 15: And then the final touch with the white chocolate on the t-shirt and over the name and age so everything would hold together.

I made a few flowers with the left over chocolate and everything went to the freezer for the night.

The next morning I made the cake with my daughter and we baked it. When she was napping in the afternoon, I made wiped cream with green food coloring and a berry cream following the recepy for "Crème pâtissière aux framboises" found here

http://www.ricardocuisine.com/recettes/gateaux/3686-gateau-rose-aux-framboises


Finally assembled the cake. Here it is, green cake with Strawberry Shortcake !

NOTE !!!!!

If you do write something like I did remember that you will turn the chocolate, I didn't and Emilie 3 was like if you were looking at it in a mirror. I put pink Icing to write her name over the original writing...Well lesson learned

The wait in hope

This a new project I'm currently working on. I've started a photo manipulation in photoshop with a picture that my family took while on a trip in Cuba.

Here is the original picture followed by my photo manipulation.

The story is of a women waiting  for her loved one, looking at large to see if he is coming back home....hoping that maybe that little boat out there is the one bring him back.

First I've drawn the women over my beloved mom and aunt that were a bit disappointed that I didn't keep them as models ! :-)  Doing so I had to redraw some parts of the branch and rock.

Than I soften the ocean a little and applied a filter but that didn't quite work out that well. I had to soften the ocean again. Once I had the desired texture I made some highlights in the sky. I added a sail which I took from a photograph that I found on google. I had to modify it a bit because the original was too dark and it didn't fit in with the light. In order to make the sunbeams believable I added clouds to create the illusion that the sun is hidden by them but its sunbeams are getting through.

Finally I added more volume to the shore on the right making it darker and steeper.

The white sage's hunt - visual step by step

The white sage's hunt - Step 7 and final

So this painting is finally finished ! I changed the sky again !!!! Only to the right of the owl to be a little less dramatic since there is sunlight coming in from the left. I added some frozen grass to soften its thickness and finally I added a bit more white to the snow and some blue shades to be constant with the rest of the painting.

Hope you enjoyed this walk through, here it is the final version

The white sage's hunt - Step 6

I made the grass I wanted. Now I'm not sure if something is missing, but it does feel like so. I will have to look at it for a few days and decide if this is my final touch or if I could do something more. One thing that bothers me, I guess a beginner's mistake, is that we can see the snow's texture now in the grass I've added. I loved the texture, but I wasn't able to cover it well with the paint for the grass. Comparing the digital with the oil, I feel that the oil is a bit empty. The owl was better positioned in the digital piece. The digital has also more depth in the grass and the ground in the right corner. Well I guess I just answered myself, and that is what I will have to work on.

Previous version

New version (color differs because of lighting during photo take)

Digital version

Dragon growth chart - Final

So here it is the final product ! Since step 4 I have darken the dragon's nose and under his eyes to add a little shading. I also added flakes to give the dragon some texture. I changed the wings color to red instead of green, the green made then look like leaves ! I added knees in a cartoonish way with swirl for each one.

I hope you enjoyed this little walk through.

Dragon growth chart - steps 3 & 4

In step 3 I cout out the dragon shape in the wood following my dark line I made in step 2. Here it is

For smoothness, I sanded the sides and for security I rounded the pointy wings by sanding htem as well.

To continue with step 4 I decided that would not use primar since I wanted my daughter to paint it with me today and colors so much more fun ! Because my sun's bedroom's accents are orange, the dragon had to be orange as well. Here is our first coat of orange.

We than when on coloring the horns, the belly, and the wings. During her nap I applied the second coat everywhere and added some details to the wings. There are still some touch ups to be made but here is the almost final product :-)

After these 2 steps I still have a few painting touch ups and the growth chart to draw and vernish the final product and its ready for wrapping ! 

In my next post I will show you the final product.