Tawanda Faye's birthday cake

If you remember from last year, my daughter kindly provides me with a detailed sketch outlining the shape, color scheme, and flavors for her birthday cake each year. This year the theme is hearts (layer shapes), colors are white, pink and red, the ten layers include chocolate cake, coffee ice cream, vanilla soy ice cream, and homemade chocolate frozen yogurt.
The problem with ice cream cakes is that they spout leaks if you are not quick enough with the pastry bag while decorating the outside. In this case, I just stuck it back in the freezer for awhile and covered the coffee ice cream drip with white frosting later.
Cake recipe here.
Most incredible chocolate frozen yogurt recipe ever here.

I need a hug

my studio is intolerably cold

So I moved my workspace into the house for the sedentary parts of the process; painting, decorating, drawing, etc. Oh yeah, and wood-burning; eek!
The light is great, it is WARM, I can keep tabs on the bread rising, soup stirring, and other domestic parts of my day really easily, and did I mention that it is WARM?
Why didn't I think of this before?

Artist, name unknown

Needle Sized Art

http://www.guzer.com/videos/needle-art.php

If you have not seen this yet, prepare to be astounded.

Valentines

This is the valentine Mr. Cranky made for me this year. I have been messing around with wood-burning and the totem in the back is a test piece I made. Remember wood-burning kits from when you were a kid? I didn't like it that much then, but I'm loving it now. Finally, I have an interface with Mr. Cranky's wood obsession. More to come on this subject...
Here is the one I made for him. You haven't met these characters yet; the little mole is named Bothell and the raccoon is Clementine, but everyone calls her Clem. They are the perfect couple and that's why I made a valentine of them.
This is my valentine from Mr. Cranky from last year. It's made of clay that has been stained with iron oxide. It's about 3" tall.


This is the back side, the curve makes it more stable as a free-standing sculpture and animates it a bit.

Tales; Ranger's Fear

Everyone in Tales has a major fear. Ranger's is barbed wire.

Excused Absence~
I've been in the hospital with my daughter for the past week. She's on the mend and I am back to work in the studio. I have lots of things to put on the blog, so I'm excited.

Happy Valentine's Day from the whole crew

Tales; it's Malone's B-day

Malone gets in touch with his inner child on his birthday.

Tales; Little mends a broken heart

Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there some day.

Tales; Lucy is flattened

Lucy is knocked down by an unexpected arctic blast.

Tales; Bear is so cold

Bear steps onto an ice floe and begins to drift out to sea.
The cold is embedded within him.

finished tags

Remember these? They are fun~I want to make more; these are 6" x 3", but I may make some little ones.
Mr. Cranky wants to nail these up on trees to surprise people in the woods. I like that idea, but I would want more nails holes so they would stay put.

new work; blue and white tile

Lucy and Yeti have a baby boy. they name him Arturo. He's an adorable little otter.Yeti and Lucy have a baby girl. They name her Little. She is a pudgy wee bear. Lucy is a single mom. Arturo is six and Little is two. It's hard sometimes.
Bear and Little bought new bike helmets. Little has crashed with alarming frequency, so the helmet is always on now. She is considering sleeping in it..
Bear wins a race. He rides so fast, he has to wear goggles to keep the bugs out of his eyes.
Creepy Joe comes on the Bear on his first day of work. Joe is one of the chefs, but Bear refuses to be intimidated.Ranger whispers to Gwendolyn Fig. She is puzzled by the conversation. Ranger speaks so fast and has an enormous vocabulary; the way he strings words together is both stunningly creative and enormously confusing.

broken

This was the only thing that broke in the firing I unloaded today.
If you read yesterday's post you will know how sad this is and how my kiln mocks me at times.
Breakable~

Tales; all alone

Bear carries a heavy burden into the wilderness in winter.
Little howls.