Twenty One

20 eggs, 1kg sugar, bag of flour, 750g butter, 600g icing sugar, fondant, 3 bottles of food dye, 

1 bottle vanilla extract, 200g white chocolate and some rice paper later...

...3 layers Red Velvet Cake... 

...Shortbread "Chips"...

..."Double Cheese Burger"...

... and Alex's Birthday Cake was born.

(Terrible photos but I forgot my camera :)

Final Straight

Scarily there's now only around 3 months to finish everything for our Degree Show... (18th May 2012) 

Despite spending hours and hours and hours painting away I am yet to have any finished! I am slowly getting there's still a long way to go...

Studio Space

Donuts (45.5cmx61cm)

Party Rings, Flumps, Salt &Vinger, Freddo
(all 45.5cmx61cm)

The start of 'Happy Meal' painting (30cmx30cm)

Estonia - Tallinn and Finland - Helsinki 2011

One year ago I was here...

I want to go back

This is Halloween

Happy Belated Halloween!

This year I made Black Velvet Ghost Cakes to take to a party over the weekend. It was safe to say we had fun with them... A lot were eaten but as the night progressed many ended up smooshed into faces, crushed in drinks and I still can't get the icing off my heels! Oh well, icing tastes great licked from faces, right? 

I used Nigella's Red Velvet Cake recipe and just subbed the red food colouring with black and blue.

For the ghoooosts I made marshmallow icing and piped the faces on with black icing:


2 egg whites

4 tablespoons of golden syrup

100g caster sugar

1/4 teaspoon cream of tarter

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1. Put all ingredients expect the vanilla in a bowl over a pan of simmering water. Whisk with an electric beater until the icing becomes thick and holds a peak. [This should take around 5 mins]

2. Take the bowl off the heat and add the vanilla. Keep whisking until the meringue mix cools.

3. Pipe onto cakes and add faces :D

Feed My Memory - Grandma

What 70 something old women would be willing to use a 50 something year old wooden ladder to clean out the gutters from a two story house? Well my Grandma would...  She also owns the cleanest, fattest guinea pig in the world and mistakes quiche for pizza (but that's another story)... however she does - in my opinion - bake the best pies, tarts and cakes. Jam tart with "bobbly bits" of pastry, as we called it as kids, and the thinest lightest pastry made with lard hiding a tart apple filling were my favourites served with custard and whipped cream so thick you could stand a spoon up in it. Nothing will ever compete to my Grandmas apple pie!

4th and Final Year

So, quite unbelievably I'm now in my fourth and final year of my Fine Art course and working hard towards the Degree Show and, dare i say it, my dissertation. After lots of umming and aaahing I decided to carry on with my 'Food Memories' idea but this year making it a lot more personal to me by concentrating on my own memories instead of other peoples. Almost doing 'food portraits' of sorts by creating portraits of all the important people/moments that are in or have been in my life with the food that strongly connects with my memory of them. 

As well as painting this year I tend to turn some of my images into screen or litho prints, adding text to slightly explain my work, the idea being that this would eventually be turned into an artist book. 
I also have some big plans for the Degree Show next year but more on that later!

24hour

First painting of the year - donuts... Still a long way to go but the first few coats are down!

Feed My Memory - Pie And Bovril

The story of the love between Boy, Grandad, pie and football
size - A1. Oil on board