Colorful things for gray days

The myriad—and unexpected—sources of inspiration never cease to amaze me. A few weeks ago, as I was watching how olive oil behaves when added to water (while making polenta), I got an idea that has led to a seemingly endless potential for decorative papers. Because of their spotted/marbled paper effect, the designs are perfect for my second A Letter a Week alphabet (which requires that dots/spots play some part in the design).

Here are some snippets of the decorative patterns (click for a larger view)...

I'll dedicate a post to more details on how these came about after I've done some more experimenting. But for now, here are some notes on things I've been doing with them so far...

Since this discovery coincided with preparations for my daughter's birthday, I wanted to incorporate some of the designs into something for her. My first thought was to use one for her birthday card, but that ended up taking another direction as I played around with some images my daughter been collecting (more on this in a moment). I also wanted to make some gift certificates for a few things that couldn't be given right away, and somehow those 'cootie catchers' (also called fortune tellers) that we used to make in school came to mind as a fun way to use the 'marbled' patterns and give the 'gifts'.

I folded a couple of square test papers first to help me in designing the layout, then cropped four of my colorful designs into triangles to create the template. I exported the file as a jpeg, then sized the jpeg to fit onto a sheet of A4 paper and added text boxes for each 'gift'. Below is the resulting 'folded gift card' before being trimmed/folded.

Click here for a refresher on the folds needed to make a fortune teller/cootie catcher.

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The design for the birthday card was inspired by this next image, which I found in a folder of my daughter's called 'Pictures to Print'. I wish I could credit it, but unfortunately she doesn't remember where it came from.

Somehow, from this creative music-inspired diagram, the birthday card began to take shape. I especially liked the overlapping multicolored curves, which gave me the idea to create eight ovals, each in a different color. I reduced the opacity so the colors would show through when layered, then 'grouped' the eight ovals, 'duplicated' the resulting 'group' so there were four different ones to work with, and altered their proportions and orientations to make them each unique. I realized later that the colorful ovals reminded me a lot of birthday balloons. In this season of little light and much rain, they have brightened my days as I've created a series of cards and postcards built on the initial concept. They will eventually be listed in my online shop, PaperSynthesis, although (with the backlog of things I'm working on for the shop) I'm not sure how much longer this may take.
 

 

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I had so much fun with these birthday-related projects that I wanted to share the files with anyone who might enjoy some color too. I explored several options for making them available online, since my former method for doing so (iDisk) has been phased out, but the only way to offer the files at their full size seems to be to send them via email. You can find my contact info in the sidebar at right (toward the top of the page), by clicking 'CONTACT'...I'd love to pass on the files for the folded gift card and/or the birthday card to anyone who's interested, so please feel free to email me.

 

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Here's a sneak peak at my second alphabet for the ALaW challenge, which incorporates some of the 'marbled' papers. The mini mockup cubes in the foreground are about a fifth of the final 7-cm size. One of the nine printed cubes, yet to be scored/cut out/assembled, can be seen in the background. This concept is considerably different from my original idea, but since the year is drawing to a close I decided to scale back from the twenty-seven-cube project I first had in mind. More on the alphabet as it comes together...

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And now, on a sweet note... Yesterday, in honor of my father's sixty-ninth birthday, I made caramel corn (he loves popcorn & caramel, so it seemed like a perfect melding of the two). Below is the way we make it, and of course you can customize it with your favorite nuts, popping techniques & personal touches. The caramel sauce is the one I've mentioned before (borrowed from the Simply Recipes website); click here if you'd like to see more detailed instructions for the method. I also like to add a little Himalayan sea salt to balance the sweetness of the caramel, and this works especially well with the popcorn.

A couple of final notes: You may not need to use all of the caramel sauce; after coating the popcorn there may be a few spoonfuls left over...store it in the fridge until you need some to drizzle on ice cream, fold into brownie batter, etc. Also, the caramel corn may seem a bit 'wet' as you stir it during the baking period, but it will harden once it's removed from the oven (so don't leave it in beyond the suggested hour in an attempt to dry it out).

This weekend we've also been busy getting ready for my daughter's birthday party with friends, which was finally today, and involved a carrot cake with cream cheese frosting. My daughter normally asks for devil's food cake, but since that's what I made for her actual birthday (and also what she made for mine a few weeks earlier!), she thought a change would be nice.

The concept of the multi-layer cake with gobs of frosting is rather foreign here, but over the years my daughter's Italian friends have developed an appreciation for our traditional American-style cakes. I used this cake & frosting recipe, and it came out beautifully. I did make a few small changes, like adding ground cardamom, cloves & orange zest and substituting dark brown sugar for light and olive oil for vegetable oil in the batter + sprinkling cinnamon on the buttered pans instead of flour. I wanted the cream cheese flavor of the frosting to be a bit more pronounced, so I halved the amount of butter and reduced the powdered sugar to just under three cups, and also added a quick squeeze of orange juice.

I never seem to get many pictures of birthday celebrations, tending instead to focus on enjoying the occasion, but thought I'd include this photo since the candles are in keeping with the 'colorful things for gray days' theme of this post.

{Last year's cake recipe can be found here.}