Friends, farewells and Devil Ducks

A wonderful WyzWmn commented on my most recent cake adventure and I was reminded of two adventures that she inspired long before I started chronicling my forays into cake decorating. The first one made a brief appearance on a post about piping gel transfers, but it rates a second visit as thank you to a very special woman.

Back in the day, she was my team lead at a call centre for a large American cell phone company. Our team had recently lost a contest due to a weird twist in the rules. We were all feeling pretty frustrated by the situation because the whole team had worked so hard and felt our defeat was unfair. Being the WyzWmn that she is, our team lead decided we needed to celebrate what we had accomplished even though we didn't win the prize. She bought us pizza and I made a cake featuring our team's mascot that another member had drawn. We'd all still tell you the same thing the cake said that day ... Devil Ducks Rock!

Much to our sadness, eventually our fearless leader announced that she would be leaving for a new job. We debated a cake with a picture of the Pickle (her green three-wheeled motorcycle) but back then I couldn't find anyone local to print on edible paper. So, instead, we collected a list of our favourite WyzWmn sayings, and I wrote them all over the cake.

While the words on that cake might not mean anything special to someone who wasn't a Devil Duck; for us, they are reminders of so many moments that made us laugh in the midst of a crazy job.

The call centre is long since closed and we've all moved on to new places and jobs, but I'm certain I'm not the only one who still has their devil duck sitting where it's a constant reminder of what we learned from a very WyzWmn.

Thanks my friend. I want to be just like you when I grow up.

Piping Gel might not taste great but...

... it's a life saver when you want to add some detailed graphics to a cake.

Since there aren't any new cakes planned for at least the next couple of weeks, I thought I'd add some old ones that are favourites using the same technique that allowed me to get a reasonbly accurate map of British Columbia highways onto a cake a few weeks ago.

When I took the Level 1 Wilton class, I thought the idea of using piping gel to transfer a pattern was a little bit silly.  The pattern they suggested using it for was a very simple rainbow on a round cake, not exactly rocket science or even much of a challenge.  Of course, it's normally considered a good idea to try learning a new technique on something simple but I've never been good at that as far as crafty things are considered.  When your first project cross-stitching on linen is a large Paula Vaughan design stitched for a friend's wedding, or learning hardanger while making a christening gown for another friend, or making my first real sweater knitted in the round with a pattern around the yoke, I guess you could say I get bored easily, or that I like a challenge. 

Given all the dragon books, she'd been reading,
the book cake pan was the obvious choice. 

While I didn't actually try doing the rainbow transfer, Wilton does have a straightforward explanation of the technique that might be helpful if you haven't seen this before.  The first time I decided to use the technique was for my niece's birthday cake.  She was turning 11 and had fallen in love with dragons through a variety of dragon-related books.  After hunting far and wide for an image that could form the basis of her cake, I actually ended up using Herald, a dragon from a Teresa Wentzler cross-stitch pattern. 



Piping gel and some edible glitter
worked pretty well for his crystal ball.

The combination of the pattern being designed to allow the stitcher to pick their own colours and a dragon searching out the future seemed the perfect combination.  One of these days, I should actually send in a picture of my dragon to add to the stitcher submitted versions on the website.  I suppose I could have "cross-stitched" the dragon onto the cake, but that's a story for another day.  This blog entry is about fun with piping gel transfers.

One my other favourites experiences using this technique was a cake for the team I worked with at a call center.  For eight hours a day, our team, known as the Devil Ducks, answered calls from business customers for an American cell phone company.  Definitely not the best job in the world, but thanks to a great team lead and a good bunch people to work with, we managed to have a lot of fun.  

 

Devil Ducks still rock!



One of our team members loved to draw and he created a super hero version of our team mascot (a little red rubber duck with black horns that sometimes rode around on top of our team lead's head).  When it was time for a celebration for our team, I volunteered to make a cake and we decided our Devil Duck had to be front and center.  I don't know what I would have done without the piping gel transfer!