Polar Bear Cake DIY for Handmade Charlotte

Hellllo there, polar bear face cake with delightful fish dinner ready to be snacked on! This polar bear cake would be so cool (heh heh) for a kid's Arctic themed birthday party, right? Check out my DIY polar bear cake over at Handmade Charlotte for this beary nice cake idea. 

I think it's so fun to think about birthday party themes for Teddy's future birthdays. But who the heck knows what he'll be into each year... I can't realistically force him into having a cute Marimekko vintage car wallpaper themed party or pink French poodle party, can I? I hope I can steer him far away from video games... but I know how unrealistic that might be... well at least I hope he is interested in art and crafting - he already loves music and is very taken by instruments, so that's a plus!

Happy new year, everyone! All the very best for a sweet 2014. I've got a mega Top Cakes of 2013 post coming up with loads of cakey eye candy ... so do come back and visit soon!

xo Lyndsay 

Happy Holidays From Coco Cake Land!

"Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night - and God bless us, everyone!" When we were kids we watched the George C Scott version of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol every year on a rickety scratched up old Beta tape, taped off the TV, with brutal 80s commercials and all! We finally upgraded in the new millenium with a VHS version. I love Christmas, always have - I think that deep love for the holidays was instilled by my mom at a very early age. Later on we fell in love with White Christmas - oh, the drama, the romance, the costumes! And of course the music... and It's A Wonderful Life always gets me. Tears, I tell ya. Beautiful tears - I love Jimmy Stewart. 

What does Christmas mean to you? To me, it means spending time with my nearest and dearest, baking, cooking and eating, laughing, drinking and snacking, gifting and playing in the snow and gazing at twinkly lights on our Charlie Brown Christmas tree. And Christmas has been re-born for me since Teddy came into my life - watching him be dazzled and delighted by Christmas cuteness is the most amazing thing. We got him a super cute wooden play kitchen - I can't wait to play with it! Haha. 

Happy Holidays to all my cake pals, blog readers, lovely cake fans and passer-by! Hope you get to do something wintry, cozy and fun with those you love. 

xo Lyndsay 

Throw Me A Bone, Guys: Dalmation Dog Cake

Gad I LOVE this guy! He's so cute! I made this cake for Rachel for her sweet little cool guy Fox's 3rd birthday. Yeah, Fox! I love that name. I made Fox's 1st birthday cake in 2011 and it's always so nice to make cakes for previous clients - especially the super nice and cool ones! Fox is nuts about fire trucks so I suggested a dalmation dog cake and a hand drawn firetruck cake topper. And I threw the dog a bone, too - a bone cake flag, that is!

Thanks so much Rachel for the fun order and Happy 3rd Birthday Fox!

 xo Lyndsay

Mountains + Moon Snowy Cake For Poppytalk: Holiday Cuteness!

I'm in love with this super sweet cake topper DIY I made for Poppytalk - I want to face-plant into that white, billowy whipped cream and make, like, fifteen snow angels. Click here to see the full mountains and moon cake topper DIY.

You can find Coco Cake Land (me!) elsewhere this week over at ye olde Craftsy this week, too - with a helpful Cake Inc blog post on Tips On How To Write A Business Plan For Your Cake Business. 

More beauty on the internet - fave posts of the week: 

The coolest puffy sculptural honeycomb wreath DIY by Chiara over at Oh Happy Day.

Gosh darn it Amelia from The Homebook is such a funny, cool creative mama. Love her book-inspired gift wrap over on You Are My Fave.

Love this simple triangle wreath DIY over at Almost Makes Perfect.

Happy weekend, dear cake pals!

See you soon with more cakey cuteness.

xo Lyndsay

My Dad's 70th Birthday + Pineapple Wearing Sunglasses Cake!

I don't think you'd expect anything less than a pineapple wearing sunglasses cake. For my dad's Hawaiian themed 70th birthday party bash, of course! 

I started off with this guy. Coconut cake with creamcheese frosting. Casual, cool as a cucumber Mr. Pineapple Head cake face duder. 

Sunglasses were really the only choice. It had to be done. Gerry (my dad) is the COOLEST GUY EVER. And cool guys wear shades. James Dean, Magnum P.I., Gerry Sung ... you get the idea. 

And here he is, with my mom - beaming from ear to ear - we had a KILLER party at our house for him! Hawaiian donuts and fresh floral leis flown in from Hawaii via one of my dad's best pals, our awesome caterer Ronnie frying it up and BBQing in three huge woks and a charcoal grill in the backyard, over sixty people partying in our home - by the way, Chinese Canadian seniors know how to party.

And here I am with my dad, a.k.a. The Moustache. Happy happy birthday, dad! I love you so much - thank you for always loving me, supporting me in all of my endeavours, making me laugh, and for being the COOLEST DAD EVER! Here's to many more years of love, fun, health and happiness!

Love Lyndsay

Holiday Party Idea: Pink + Green Cupcakes

Make cupcakes for your holiday party this year! Update the classic Christmas colours with a party blaster of light pink, a fresh raspberry for contrast and green cupcake liners. Totally cute, totally party time and a nice modern feel.Find me elsewhere this week: Check out my post I wrote for Craftsy on how a blog may help your cake business! As you know,I'm a blog lover and fanatic - but along the way it's really helped Coco Cake Land grow! Plus my favourite holiday DIYs of the week: Sparkly sweet DIY geometric pastel garlands from La Maison De Loulou.This adorable and majorly simple gold triangle garland from Almost Makes Perfect!The cutest mini boxwood wreath DIY via Poppytalk. The most gorgeous photos of Linda's soft gingerbread cake with creamcheese frosting over at Call Me Cupcake - these photos will make you cry deep, beautiful Christmas tears, they're so lovely!Happy weekend, everyone!xo Lyndsay 

Melted Snowman Cake DIY

This guy! I love this melted snowman face. I was pretty much chuckling away while I was making this. I've seen this idea on sugar cookies before but hadn't yet seen it on a cake. Poor dude. Get the full tutorial for this DIY melted snowman cake over at Handmade Charlotte.

I would be so stoked if this guy became part of a family's yearly repertoire: "Mom's busting out the melted Frosty cake again this year for Christmas Eve!" I can't wait for my Teddy to have Christmas memories. We put up our Charlie Brown tree this past weekend and he can't stop pointing at the Banquet Atelier letterpress star and owl ornaments shouting "cahhr!" and "owrrrlee!" Makes me so happy.

Do you have any holiday cakes or cookies you make every year?

Happy Baking, cake pals! See you soon.

xo Lyndsay  

DIY ABC Stencil Cake + More Cakey Times

Loving this super cute, bright and cheery ABC stencil cake I made over at Handmade Charlotte! Perfect for a kiddo's birthday party - make 'em learn while they're eating their cake, right?

This is a fun post I wrote for Craftsy on how to use social media for your cake business! I hope you find some fun and jazzy tips in it. Let me know what you think! As I'm sure you know, I think social media is just too much fun - I love interacting with new friends and cake fans. I've met a lot of great people through it and I encourage you to use it for any type of business or just for pleasure.

I also wrote a post on Finding Your Niche within the cake design world - however, I think it can apply to all aspects of art and design! Check out my Craftsy post on Finding Your Niche here.

A few more posts for Craftsy:

Illustration based cakes - I am in love with some of these awesome drawing and illustration inspired cakes. Reminds me of my graphic novel/comic hoarding days.

Vintage Cake Design: Birdcage cakes. You'll be blown away by some of these birdy cutie beauties!

Plus, my super cute JOY silver fringe letter DIY and peppermint buttercream cake is featured on Poppytalk's 10 Festive Party Cake Ideas - click through to see all the MEGA cute holiday themed cake ideas she's rounded up for your holiday fetes. I have so many already on my Coco Cake Land Pinterest boards!

Happy Friday, everyone! Are you getting in the holiday swing of things yet?? 

xo Lyndsay

Cupcake photos by Amy Pelletier. All other photos by me! :)

Peppermint Party - Silver Fringe Letter Garland DIY

Today's post is sponsored by Minted.com 

Happiness and joy - I finally made something fringe! I admire my pal Kelly over at Studio DIY's magical wicked awesome fringed wonders all the time - I pin them and drool over them and say, oh yeah. I'll make that - but never get around to it! My peppermint party for Minted seemed like the perfect opportunity to make a silver fringe letter garland - since I'm nuts about lettering and typography, too. Plus, I'll let you in on an easy breezy supplies secret - (also known as: didn't have time to source silver mylar) - I used regular old tin foil and some recycled cardboard to make it. 

You can find everything you need to make this super cute JOY letter garland in your own home, bringing some wordy sparkle to your holiday this year. 

I was also inspired by the insane in the membrane crafty awesome Jenny over at Hank + Hunt - I saw her super cute LOVE letter garland and I... loved it. Hee! 

Here we go - get into the garland party zone!

You will need: 

• Tin foil, cut into strips - I cut mine into 1 inch tall strips. 
• Scissors
• Gluestick
• Cardboard
• String
• Tape

Step One: Cut out your letters from cardboard. I freehand drew my letters onto the cardboard - if you wanted a particular font you could always print out large letters off your computer, trace onto cardboard and work from there. My letters are about 8 inches in height. 

Step Two: Cut strips of tin foil off in 1 inch high strips. Start fringing away your strips - snip snip snip! Approximate the length across the letter you're working on and cut to the general size. Note that the tin foil has one extra shiny side and one more matte side. Glue down your first fringed tin foil strip, shiny side up, at the bottom of the letter and work your way up. Don't worry if your tin foil fringe length is too wide for the letter you're working on - you can trim it up later. 

Pretty fringey bits! You can save this for table confetti if you like - so shiny!

Step Three: Turn your letter around. Trim away the excess tin foil along the edge of your letter to regain the shape of your letter.

Oh joy, you finished! Yay! In the end I decided to cut a triangle V out of my letter "Y" to make it look more "Y"-like. Then I had a fringey little triangle shape, so of course I turned it into a cake topper.

 Step Four: Turn your letters over and adhere it to a nice piece of string or twine using good old scotch tape.

Minted has these ridiculously adorable and insanely easy to use tissue paper fans for sale that add so much cuteness to your party set up in literally twenty seconds. If you are familiar with my party design style, I like a simple mix of modern, vintage, DIY and playful. The tissue paper fans did the trick as a sweet backdrop for my JOY garland. 

It wouldn't be a Coco Cake Land party without a cake! I made a chocolate cake with mint green peppermint buttercream piped in a vintage style. That "V" shape? I taped it onto a wooden BBQ stick and BLAMMO - cake topper! :) I found those pretty pastel scotch winter mints in the bulk section of the grocery store. 

Minted makes the cutest custom holiday cards probably ever! Love how my card turned out with my little T-man. It was so easy to make, too - go internets go!

Ah, DIY love! What word(s) would you make into a shiny silver letter garland? That was fun - see you soon, cake pals!

xo Lyndsay 

This post was sponsored by Minted.com. Order your Minted holiday cards now - total cuteness awaits! Tissue paper fans, cake stand, little cake sign and holiday cards also provided by Minted. All opinions expressed are my own - yes, I do love Minted!