Nyan Cat Cake Extravaganza!

This weekend we attended Geekfest in Killeen.  Its a con sort of event where people dress up, they have Magic tournaments, a cake/cookie/cupcake contest, vendors, robot builders, and the best part is the location is part of a planetarium.  They have cool videos, star talks, and laser shows. 

This is only the 2nd year of the event, and I like that about it. Its fun to go and participate, but its not to big and annoying with lots of people.  I keep finding the older I get, the more my dislike of people outweighs my like of attending events.  This year we decided to enter "The Cake is a Lie" contest.  There are 3 categories, cookies, cakes, and cupcakes.  Our entry was 1/2 cake and 1/2 cupcake, but we were put in the cake category.  There was only 1 entry for cookies, so we decided if we do it next year, we are doing cookies.  We didn't win anything, but we had fun making our entry, and the "celebrity judge" was Peter Mayhew.  He is the man who wore the Chewbacca costume in the original Star Wars movies.  This made me happy in a nerdy way, he ate one of my cupcakes!


We were judged on taste as well as appearance.  We decided on doing matcha green tea cupcakes, with butter cream frosting.  Our design?  Nyan cat, of course.  First we had to make the base for Nyan Cat, and the cupcakes, which were to be the rainbow that follows behind him. 

We made these the weekend before, and froze them so that way all we had to do was frost everything.  The frosting part took about 4  or maybe even 5 hours, because we had so many different colors (11 colors, if you count white as a color!)

I made a HUGE batch of butter cream frosting (4 sticks of butter, 7 cups of powdered sugar!) and then colored smaller batches as needed to do the rainbow and Nyan Cat.

 

 Finally, after maybe 6 or 7 hours of total work, our creation is complete!

Clearly we are not professionals, but I still LOVE what we accomplished, and so did a lot of other people!  We had some pretty stiff competition though,  it was a small contest, but there were a few participants who seem like they are professional cake decorators.  

Above are the winners, and below are the other participants, that like us, did not go home a winner.  

I don't think this is going to make me jump feet first into the competitive world of cake decorating.  But we would like to do it again next year.  We have already been brainstorming on what we could do next year.  I like that ours was so colorful and creative. 

Nik <3

Perler Party! (a quasi tutorial)

Anyone remember using perler beads when they were a kid?  I do!  I remember one summer in particular, that my grandmother got me a bunch of them.  I spent all summer making different designs, but then after they were fused it was always "what do we do with them now?"

These days though, perler beads have assumed their own place in nerd crafts.  Now, if you do a google search for "perler beads" and then go to images, you will see all kinds of nerd crafts with perler beads!  Mario mushrooms, Zelda characters. Even the Geek Crafts book has a full scale Buffy the Vampire Slayer (from the show not the movie) portrait all made from perler beads!

J is a big fan of perler art, and he seems to have a knack for it as well.  The first time I went to his apt, he had mario mushrooms made out of perler beads on his door (which have since been stolen!) and space invaders on his cabinets (also made from perlers!).  I knew then that this guy was the guy for me!

Having a crafty boyfriend is so awesome!  They make you cool surprise bows for your hair, like this one:

 Now, when I said this was a quasi tutorial, I meant that by this picture you should be able to copy his design if you wanted a cute hair bow of your own.  If you are so inclined, you might be able to scale it down a bit even, if you wanted it smaller.  Here is what it looks like on the back, where I attached the hair clip.

I love wearing this bow, and have gotten TONS of compliments on it.  I did find though, that it is a little heavy.  When I would put it in my hair, it would weigh that side down, and it looked funny.  So, what I do to wear this bow, is clip it to a thin head band.  Like so:

 I hope you enjoyed my first (quasi) tutorial!  I plan on posting other designs that J has made with perler beads (his robots are amazing!). 

Later
Nik