family

Octonauts Party

| davinabehinjones

I made a chocolate cake for my nephew’s Octonauts themed party. It was a blast! (This is long overdue, as his birthday was back at the end of December, but better late than never.)

Devil’s food chocolate cake with chocolate cream cheese frosting inside is so yummy, this is the second time I’ve made it for his birthday cake. I also like to put chocolate bee bees in the cream cheese layers for extra chocolatey crunchies. The outside frosting is Swiss meringue buttercream.

Using the colorful meringue frosting, I piped out the corals, seaweed, and starfish and froze them a week ahead. Then the night before the party I simply placed them on the cake along with the toy characters. Such a time saver!

The “sand” is made from graham cracker crumbs mixed with finely chopped pecans. I couldn’t resist using Goldfish crackers for the cute fishes swimming around the cake.

Captain Barnacles is his favorite character.
Assembling the cake layers with the chocolate cream cheese frosting.
Professor Inkling is one of my personal favorites.
I’m especially proud of the white and orange trims.

Unicorn Cakes

| davinabehinjones

For my nieces’s first birthday party, I made unicorn cake! And a little unicorn smash cake for her.

UnicornCakes

It was really fun to make these. The ears and horns were made using a gingerbread house recipe. I made extra horns for fear they would break. Ha! That gingerbread is so tough it was hard to bite into them!

The ears were coated in white chocolate colored lightly with red food coloring. The horns were wrapped in store bought caramels that had been rolled into “snake” shapes. Once the “spiral” looked good, my husband then sprayed them with edible pearl paint.

The eyes and little heart on the back are melted dark chocolate. I dipped a toothpick into the melted chocolate and drew the shapes onto wax paper and chilled them in the freezer.

The flowers were made ahead of time, frozen, then placed on the cake the night before the party.

It was hummingbird and spice cake in alternating layers with a cream cheese cinnamon frosting inside. The outside is my favorite frosting: vanilla Swiss meringue buttercream. So smooth and fluffy!

This was my first time attempting the rainbow swirled frosting effect. It was fun! I’ll definitely be doing it for more cakes.

Everyone said it was delicious.

Lula at the Park

| davinabehinjones

My beautiful niece turned one in June!

LulaPark_web

To celebrate her coming into our lives, I made a Crayola crayon portrait of this beautiful soul. She has the sweetest hugs! She has given us more love, more joy, and more DANCING than we know what to do with!

Keep dancing, you sparkling star!

 

If you’d like a look into how I made this fine art portrait using crayons, take a look at my patreon page:

Familiar Oddlings on Patreon

Paul and Andrew Portraits

Image | | davinabehinjones

For Christmas this year, I made crayon portraits of my two nephews on my husband’s side of the family. These adorable little guys are the sparkle in the family! Paul is three years old and Andrew will be two in February.

Portrait of Andrew, Crayola crayons on illustration artboard

Portrait of Paul, Crayola crayons on illustration artboard

 

I’m so happy to have them in my life. And on December 26th we welcomed a brand new little nephew into the family! I’m looking forward to drawing another portrait for baby Tyler.