Cute Vampire

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Before I continue with the leftover royal icing series, I thought I'd do a short tutorial to give you an idea on how to use the eyes I made in the previous blog. Remember these?

I thought a cute, kid friendly vampire would be great. So let's get started! 

You'll need a circle & a heart cutter that are almost the same size, & a small star cutter.

Cut 2 circles, 1 in a pale flesh tone & 1 in black.

Place the heart cutter about one third of the way down the black circle & cut.

This piece will become his hair with widows peak. 

Attach the hair to the face.

Using a circle cutter, gently press to make a smiley mouth shaped indent.

Now cut a small white star & cut off 2 tips. These will be his fangs. So, colour the tips of the fangs using red food colour or an edible marker.

Attach to the mouth.

Now attach a set of royal icing eyes & he's all done!

Have a spooky Halloween everyone.
Until next time,
Jessica ❤️

Leftover Royal Icing Part 1

Although I mostly work with fondant, royal icing & I are good friends. It is the super glue or cement of cake artists everywhere but inevitably there always seems to be some leftover. I love anything that does double duty so instead of throwing it away I use it in a few creative ways that actually saves me time with later projects.

This first idea is perfect for Halloween which is just around the corner. 

Today we're going to be making eyes. Since royal icing decorations can last for months if stored in airtight containers & away from light, to prevent fading, these can be made months in advance. 

Keep some of the icing white & colour the rest in colours of your choice, remembering to also colour some black to do the pupils.

If you want to be really precise you could use a piping bag & nozzle but I'm just using ziplock bags so that I can seal each colour individually until I'm ready to use it. 

Lay out a piece of parchment paper to pipe on. It might help to sketch a few varieties of eyes that you want to pipe. Then slide that underneath your parchment paper. Tape down both pieces of paper to prevent it from moving as you pipe. 

Snip a tiny corner off the ziplock bag & start piping the white. Next pipe the iris in your colour of choice. 

Use the black to pipe the pupils. You could also add eyelashes & eyebrows if you want. Then with the white, add highlights. 

Use your imagination to create a variety of eyes in several different sizes. Leave them to dry thoroughly before carefully peeling them off the parchment paper. Then store them as I described above & the next time you're making face toppers, you'll have a selection of eyes to choose from. 

Pretty easy right? And it doesn't have to be just eyes. You could pipe bows, hearts, stars or flowers. Anything really, that you think you may use in later projects. 

I hope you enjoyed this & I'd love to hear your feedback. Join me next time for part 2 on how to use up leftover royal icing. 

Until next time,

Jessica ❤️