Hedgehog Cookies

Hi friends! Christmas just passed, how fast, my previous post was just about Christmas still being a month away and before you know it, Christmas is over. Next would be the New Year! 2014 has been a great year for me, I hope 2015 would be just as good!
Anyway, today's post would be a baking one. I baked cookies today and designed them into cute little hedgehogs! Without further ado, here is how you make your own army of hedgehogs!

Ingredients:
75g of butter (softened)
30g of icing sugar (aka confectioner's sugar)
1 teaspoon of vanilla essence
85g of all purpose flour (aka plain flour)
A pinch of salt

For decoration:
Nutella
Digestive biscuit/peanuts
Rainbow sprinkles

(Makes about 45 little bite sizes hedgehogs) (How many hedgehogs you can make completely depends on how big you want yours to be)

Procedure:

1. Preheat oven to 170 Degrees Celsius.

2. Using a mixer (mixing with a spoon/spatula is fine too), cream together butter and icing sugar. Before you do this, leave butter at room temperature to soften.

3. Add in vanilla essence and mix well.

4. Sieve in flour and salt into the mixture in batches. (Do not sieve everything all at once, sieve a little, mix, then sieve a little again and mix)


By now your batter should look like this! Not too wet and not too dry :-)

5. Shape the cookie batter into little teardrop shapes. For mine, I've shaped them bitesized. Do not flatten the dough, they should be roundish.

6. Bake at 170 degrees for 12-15 minutes or until they've turned golden brown. The shape of the cookie should stay if your batter is correct.
You will have yourself a batch of teardrop shaped cookies!

7. Time for decoration! For my hedgehog, i used digestive biscuits as I'm not a fan of peanuts.You can use peanuts if you'd like, but for now everything would be digestive biscuits :-)
Crush the digestive biscuit into fine crumbs and leave in a small bowl (I used 2 digestive biscuits but was left with quite a bit so i suggest using 1 first)

8. Using nutella, spread over the rounded area of the teardrop shaped cookie. (I was supposed to use melted chocolate for this but the chocolate hardened even before I could spread it) (you can use peanut butter or whatever spread you like, as long as it is stiff enough to stay)

9. After doing the 'body' of the hedgehog, using a toothpick, draw 2 small dots as the hedgehog's eyes and a bigger oval for the nose, see image.
















10. This was how big my hedgehog was a compared to my hand! They were bitesized, I like bitesized snacks eheh. One tip would be to make them bitesized as these are butter cookies and eating too much of them at once may not feel very nice.
Also, you can use whatever you'd like to make the 'spines' of the hedgehog. For example, I've also used rainbow sprinkles as seen from the image :-)

I hope this blog post has been helpful! These little hedgehog cookies would make a great gift for any occasion! Valentine's day is in 1.5 months! Some ideas would be try making a girly hedgehog and a male one ! :-)

Painted Christmas Tree Bookmarks

Hi there! :-) The holiday season is here with Christmas approaching really soon! Okay not really now's still November but don't burst my bubble. In Singapore, it doesn't snow here so we don't have much of the 'Christmas feel' but I love exchanging gifts and having a huge Christmas feast together with friends and family!
This Christmas, like the previous, I've decided to mail out well wishes but this time I would be sending out hand painted and laminated bookmarks! Here is how you can make your own Christmas bookmark! It is a great and thoughtful gift, not to mention rather simple but lovely too!

Things you would need:

• Stationeries - paper, pen, ruler, scissors, hole puncher.
• Ribbons (colours of your own choice)
• Self laminating sheets (preferably A4 size- bought mine at popular)
• Paint (any kind is fine, poster, water, acrylic- I used acrylic for mine)

Procedure:

1. This is an optional step, for those who don't trust their sense of proportion, I suggest you sketch out the shape of a christmas tree before starting to paint, make it approximately 6cm tall.

2. Using dark green colour, brush the corners of the tree, brushing  creates a better effect, some darker and some uneven.

 

3. After filling the sketch dark green, add some brushes of light green. Do not press hard when adding the light green, dab lightly with your brush at random spots, see second image. 

4. Just like how light green was added, now ass little dabs of yellow, preferably near where you've painted the light green.

5. Next, to add the effect of snow (since its a Christmas tree) , add dabs of white at the sides of the tree and random areas.

6. Using the other side of your paintbrush where it is round, dip it into paint and spot the tree with different colours, these are the baubles on the tree.

   

7. Finally, using brown colour, paint a rectangular trunk of the christmas tree! And you have completed the painting of the christmas tree!
NOTE: If you'd like to leave a message for your recipient, after cutting out the shape, write your message at the back before laminating (see last attached)

8. You would need to cut out the shapes of the Christmas Tree before laminating them.  Laminating them is pretty easy, instructions are on the sheet itself! Dont worry too much about the air bubbles, it wont be a problem for this. After laminating, cut the laminated christmas trees out. A few points to note: 2. leave some space at the tip of the christmas tree, we would need this space later. 3. Leave enough space for the lamination sheet to seal, if too near the painting, it  may not seal well. 4. Make the edges round, you wouldnt want the person receiving the gift to cut themselves!

9. Now we holepunch the area above the painting, you could trim the edges after your holepunch to make it more even and smooth.

                                                

                                                    10. Attach the ribbon through the hole.

                                                         

There you have your completed laminated Christmas Tree bookmark! This simple gift looks lovely as well as thoughtful, an easy gift for the Holiday season! I hope you liked this tutorial! Wishing all of you a very merry christmas and a happy new year!!

Hello

Hi friends! This blog would be dedicated to art stuff I've done, it may be something I've drawn/painted a while back or even recently! I just want to keep track of my works because most of the time I give them away as cards and what not. Also I have a private blog which nobody reads except myself (😂) so I thought maybe it'd be nice to have an open blog for people to view :-) this URL was actually used for my sec 4 general art coursework, I deleted all of the posts and except my completed coursework piece eheh

In this blog I may post some baking stuff too (not that I actually bake a lot but yea) I shall upload a work I've done later Bc it's v late now and I need sleep zzzz

Oh! I suddenly remembered, my sloth picture up there hahaha I found the initial picture but it didn't fit well into the blog so I edited it and duplicated it I think it's v cool now yay

COMPLETED!!!!

I have completed my painting, too bad I can't show my whole art piece because that'd only be put up next week :-( but here is my painting!

When I look at my piece of work I feel many things,

1. Obviously, there's a huge sense of accomplishment. Never have I worked on a painting that is bigger than an A3 drawing block. Not only have I finished a huge painting, I also worked on canvas for the first time. All these added up together makes me feel very accomplished and very proud of my painting, it may not be the best piece of work among the others, but it is indeed MY best piece of work. 

2. I also feel very stressed haha. Now is the exam period but I've been spending so much time working on my painting, my preparatory boards and this blog. It has been fruitful of course but definitely very very very time consuming as well. I have much work to catch up on and looking at this painting reminds me of all my overdue work 😅

3. Of course with stress would come relief. I am very very relieved that this major coursework is finally over and done with. No more day and nights of worry, no more paint all over me and no more procrastinating!!

4. Finally, when I see my work, I feel very happy. This work is so colourful it makes me feel happy and joyful. This work has many fairytale characters adapted from my favourites it makes me feel very happy. This work guides me in life and shows me that I want to be happy in life regardless of whether I do something I love in life or I end up filthy rich throwing money around. I do think that happiness is the key to success and vice versa, do things happily and we would be able to achieve, when we achieve we gain more smiley points !