LilyBel Studio

Ladybug Hug Party

Front and back of the 'Ladybug Hug' invitation From LilyBel Studio 

Welcome to the first post on the LilyBel Studio blog. I've decided to start with a little party I recently had for my twin girls 3rd birthday...I say little, but as always the guest list grew and by the morning of the party I was pulling my hair out and vowing to make next year's celebration smaller!

I decided to use my 'Ladybug Hug' theme from LilyBel Studio, as I thought it would be nice to use and work with the bold combination of red, white and black for a change. I started by sending out our 'Ladybug Hug' invitations in their bright red envelopes with matching envelope seals.

Anyway, semi meltdown and general preparation madness aside, the girls had a great time and that's really what it's all about!

The 'cake'...

The cake...hmmm on reflection not such a great idea to take this project on myself as I'm certainly not a professional cake decorator. The truth is I've never even taken a class but then that's probably pretty obvious looking at the cake, I'm just stubborn and decided to have a go myself! I covered the cake with red ready to roll pettinice fondant and cut out circles in the black fondant to create the ladybug spots. The white blossoms were made by pressing fondant into a silicone blossom mould and adding white sugar pearls as the flower centre. I got the ready to roll fondant and silicone blossom mould from Sandra at KiwiCakes. The super cute ladybugs were made out of sugar and I got them online at shopbakersnook in the States. To finish I added a black satin ribbon trim at the base of each cake.

Flower cookie pops

 These flower cookie pops were easy to make and proved very popular. I used a basic sugar cookie recipe and rolled the dough a little thicker than usual before cutting out the flower shapes. I found it easiest to insert the lollipop sticks as soon as the cookies came out of the oven, as they're still nice and soft at this stage. To help each lollipop stick stay in the cookie I dipped the end of each stick in royal icing first before inserting it so that as the cookie cooled and hardened so did the royal icing and it acted like a glue. To decorate them I used white marshmallow fondant icing that I made, as this tastes sooo much nicer than regular fondant for little people (and big people actually...), which I then brushed with shimmer dust before adding the sugar ladybugs. These cookie pops are fantastic on a party table but are also perfect as a 'thank you' gift for each little guest, simply pop into a cello bag tie the end with ribbon and attach a 'Ladybug Hug' gift tag from our range.

Fondant Ladybug sugar cookies

These ladybug cookies were also made from a basic sugar cookie recipe and I covered them in red and black marshmallow fondant. I layered the mmf fondant so the ladybugs had a slight 3D effect to them and finished them off with red and black glitter dust. These little cuties didn't seem to hang around on the plate for too long either, but then what little person doesn't love a cookie??!!