Cinderella....inspiration as old as the Fairy Tale

When I think of what inspires me to create a smocking design, I have to say the ideas come from everywhere.   

Before I started designing smocking designs, I actually had time to make special birthday cakes for my daugher Aimee.  While looking through a special recipe box recently, I came across a photo of Aimee's fourth birthday cake.....Cinderella!

The "carriage" is made using a sugar mold intended to make those wonderful Easter panorama sugar eggs.  It is nestled in a bed of pastel roses.  The "wheels" of the carriage are actually the top rims of  small Dixie Cups.  

I only wish I had saved the Cinderella topper.  Aimee wanted to play with it and we all know how that turns out.  It was a beautiful plastic figurine made by Wilton but was a copy of a porcelain Cinderella figurine by Lladro. 

Sadly, I have to say, I don't think we will see this quality in a simple little cake topper. 

  

Wilton still has the sugar molds. 

So....would you consider this to be "Vintage" as it was thirty years ago?  Like so many wonderful stories....it is vintage, but in the most special way!

This little cake was such a special memory and

that's what it was meant to be.

 Happy Smocking!

Gwen

Picture Smocking Graph Paper....to share

This summer has been packed with fun with my Grands! The house is quite....too quite....and I need to get busy working through designs that are long overdue.

In doing this, I'm amazed that I was able to get things done twenty years ago in record time that take me FOREVER today! That being said, I've had a productive few days working out the "kinks" in the revision of my Cinderella design. Who would have thought that putting Cinderella "in the coach" would be so tricky. I'm not complaining!! Twenty five years ago, all the graphs that I put into my designs were hand drawn. Thankfully, my light table sits alone in the corner of my basement collecting dust.

Bonus is that in the process of "taking a break" from the tediousness of creating the Cinderella graphs with horses and a carriage full of stitches, I made

Picture Smocking Graph Paper

I've used it in the past for small designs....usually the things I do are much too large for a single piece of paper...and decided this was definitely something that I can share. This little sheet of paper also took some time as with my graphs, the "scale" of my individual "cable" stitch was made to create a graph that closely resembles what the actual smocked figure will look like. If you're a smocker and have stitched a variety of different designer's work, you know that no two are alike. I have no explanation for this fact. In fact, I am changing my graphs to combine the color graph and the "numbered graph". Hopefully this will make picture smocking easier.

I, not being too blogging savvy, haven't been able to figure out how to link my pdf.doc of the graph paper to this particular post. Anyone with tips or tricks to share....I would be so thankful for your help. Until then, anyone wanting the pdf download .... just leave your email address and I will send it. The pdf.doc prints quite nice as you can see if you click the photo. I have so much to learn!

Happy Smocking

Gwen