Hey, Who Ate My Cupcake?

Each November we put on an art retreat in beautiful Santa Barbara for a group of like-minded eraser-carving nuts. Besides our annual obligation of creating hand-stamped cards for each other based on our carvings, we also try to provide some fun projects to work on between trips to town, eating, catching up with each other's stories, and enjoying the peace and serenity of La Casa de Maria where we hold the retreat.   Is that a run-on sentence? Whew!  I'm the queen of run-on, ask anyone. 

 

Our first project this year was to make a felt pincushion in the shape of a delicious cupcake. When I asked Wendy (our teacher for the project) to do it, I wondered how many of our participants would like it.  What was I thinking? We were totally immersed in cupcake making. How did we bake these cupcakes? With the heat of our combined energy and all the hot air we were spewing as we excitedly bandied about baubles and beads.  The only down-side of this project was that most of us are of an "age" and had trouble finding the eye of the beading needles.  How we laughed about that!  Wendy had to help us out with this (she's still a babe among the crones).

 

Here's a pic of our finished cupcakes and a sample of the card I created this year for our exchange.   I had cupcakes on the brain after making it and decided to carve a cupcake and a needle and create a recipe card on how to make it.  The yellow pincushion in the pic with the three cupcakes is mine.  I was so proud of it.  Thank the Lord I took pics of it because when I got to Boston, it was devoured by Tuttle (the cute wirehaired doxie puppy).  You can see the results. I had 4 needles in it and only found 3 but we were sure that Tuttle didn't swallow it. Oy! I was so sad but couldn't be mad.  One look from Tuttle and you just had to smile at her naughtiness. Actually, I can't blame Tuttle totally, because Tigger (the cat) must have first knocked it off the table for short-legged Tuttle to have her appetizer.  She barked out YUMMY!