Tag: 5 things i want to help you with

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Becoming Better, Creatively: Decorating Cakes & Cookies

Hey Sweeties,

Its week three of the 5 Things to Help You Become Better, Creatively.

If you’ve read the first post >>CLICK IT>>5 Things to Help You Become Better, Creatively<<READ IT<<, and the second post >>CLICK IT>>Becoming Better, Creatively: Baking & Understanding It<<READ IT<< you’re in the right place.

If you haven’t, don’t spoil it for yourself, go back and check them out before finishing up here.

Decorating Cakes

This is my favorite part. The best part of the things you love to do, is your favorite part. Especially when its your day off, all other chaotic things are out of the way. You get in the zone.

You might ask, Thelisha, why didn’t you talk about the brainstorming, planning and getting it done before this? That’s because we’re not ready for that. There is a time and place for everything and now ain’t the time or the place. You have to know for sure if you want to love this or not. We all see things that look fun and say, “Oh, I want to try that!”. We go out, get all the stuff, start it and be like, “Nah uh.”

You then ask, “Well isn’t this doing the same thing?” No, its not. When you put yourself in a space to take your time, you use what you have to practice. Before I started decorating cakes, I always had flour, eggs, salt, granulated sugar, powdered sugar baking powder, butter, milk, and vanilla. Thats because I was always a baker and there are other uses for a majority of these things. I already had cake pans, a hand mixer, and so on. All I needed to do was learn to make icing and decorate cakes. I had a lot of practice working in a bakery, but I wanted to make my own stuff. I wanted to step away from the store bought icing. I didn’t want to buy boxed cake and I didn’t really want to buy my kids cakes from the store anymore.

It’s a thing now. I bake and decorate cakes and I’ve been doing so for some time. That’s where The Sweets by Thelisha came from.

Decorating Cookies

I never wanted to decorate cookies. My mom tried to convince me for two years. She even bought me a beginners book. I looked at it and put it away. Two people asked me to make cookies for them, I tried it and I hated it. Not only was I horrible at it, but royal icing was the worst thing I ever touched. More time went by and I never thought about cookies again.

…some time later…after that more time going by…

My mom then found Julia Usher on YouTube or Pinterest. She showed me a baby rattle video made from cookies. She bought me the mold, I binged on Julia’s videos, I joined cookie groups, and I made the rattle. I got the hang of royal icing and started loving what I saw other cookie decorators do. Not long after that, I started selling cookies. I even got a call to audition for one of the Christmas dessert shows on Food Network. I didn’t make it, but it was fun to make cookies and do the interview.

Conclusion

Cookies, cakes or something else you love. The point here is to take it on. There are many things I want to try or have tried. Many of those things stuck with me or I left it alone. Don’t be afraid to make changes and try new things. You don’t have to like everything, you don’t have to master everything. Everything is not going to be your cup of tea. Don’t lose your focus. Learn from it. You can always take something from. Never think of it as a waste of time.

Check out some of my videos in the Thelisha Bakes Playlist on my channel. Soon I’ll have videos up on my new The Sweets by Thelisha channel. I won’t stop posting on the Where Baking & Craft Meet Channel, but the more detail videos will be posted on the other. All baking and decorating, all the time.

Join me next week for the next topic, Where Baking & Crafting Meet. Subscribe to the blog if this is your first time here and be sure to check my YouTube channels to see how I use my creativity in different ways.

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Becoming Better, Creatively: Baking & Understanding It

Hey Sweeties,

If you’ve read the first post >>CLICK IT>>5 Things to Help You Become Better, Creatively<<READ IT<<, you’re in the right place. If you haven’t, don’t spoil it for yourself, go back and check it out before finishing up here.

Today, we’ll be touching on the first topic of the original post, Baking & Understanding It. Now, as I said before, everyone reading this may not be a baker or crafter, but that doesn’t stop you from taking this in and analyzing whatever you discovered and taking it on. Remember, all this can be applied to anything. You have to have an open mind and the will to do it. So, let’s get started.

Everything we do has a recipe, whether we made it or it was already there. We know that every recipe can’t be one-size-fits-all. There is too much going on in the world for us to try to live with the cookie-cutter stuff made for us out here. What do you do? You learn it, you make it, and you tweak it. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves in talking about techniquing and tweaking.

The Recipe

Let’s say you have a recipe that goes as follows:

  • 2 eggs
  • 1 stick of butter or margarine
  • 2 cups of sugar
  • 1 cup of milk
  • 3 1/2 cups of flour
  • 1 Tablespoon baking powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Add butter or margarine, sugar, and salt in a large bowl. Cream until smooth.

Add eggs to a clean medium bowl and beat. Add vanilla and milk to the eggs and mix until combined.

Sift flour and baking powder in a clean medium bowl.

Add 1/3 of the flour mixture to the butter/sugar mixture. Mix until combined. Add half the egg mixture and mix until combined. Repeat this process, mixing 1/3 of the flour mixture, the remainder of the egg mixture, and then the last 1/3 of the flour mixture. Mix until combined. Be sure not to over mix.

Note: This is not a real recipe, so don’t expect it to turn out right if you make it. The point in tis recipe is to see how well you follow instructions and how much patience you have for what you’re working on or wanting to learn. How many of you would have taken a shortcut and threw it all in the bowl?

The Lesson

How much thought you put into perfecting your skill is up to you. You may run across people that don’t notice it, but NEVER, EVER stop perfecting your craft because someone doesn’t see or should I say doesn’t want to see it. Guess what, there a whole lot of people out there that WANT TO AND LOOK FOR “BangQuality.” I’m a BangQuality shopper and I make BangQuality products…. We’ll talk a little bit about what BangQuality is later.

You know, it took me about 3 years to get dough right. I didn’t go to school, no one sat with me and taught me anything. I put in the work and I got the doughnuts, the bread, the soft pretzels, etc.

I was so frustrated. I thought I needed someone because I was a lost cause…but nope. I bought a textbook, and I practiced non-stop. You wanna know how I know my doughnut dough was right? It was because it felt right. All I had was one picture in that textbook as a reference and with my imagination, I created what that dough was supposed to feel like.

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5 Things to Help You Become Better, Creatively

assorted color great board decor lot

Hey Sweeties,

Sometimes, it seems my blog has no direction, but it does. That’s ALL THINGS CREATIVE. I have cookies, cakes, and crafts. When you’re creative and have a head full of ideas, you get bored with doing the same things repeatedly.

In the same way, I wasn’t a crafter, I wasn’t a cake decorator or an artist, BUT I was always creative. Nothing ever stood in the way of my imagination and creativity. No one should stand in your way. So first, I learned to draw, then bake, I learned to decorate, and I soon learned to craft. I can take food and make paper or take paper and make food. Worded weird, but you catch my drift. There are many things I’ve seen that I like as a food or non-food and feel like I should bring them to the other side. And no, I’m not the only one out here doing this, but I’m the only me, doing it my way.

With that being said, this blog post will put you on the starting path of combining what you love and want to do and making it what you imagined. It doesn’t necessarily have to be baking and crafting. You can be a chef and a clothes designer. Here, I will use what I do and show you how to apply it to yourself.

Baking & Understanding It

Like anything else, baking is one of those things that some of us love but can’t do. Some of us don’t know how to boil water. It doesn’t have to be rocket science because it’s not. One thing I can tell you about baking is that everything matters. When I say everything, I mean eeeeeevrrrrythang!

The boring definition of baking is the process of cooking bread, cakes, etc. I define it as a form of cooking that requires you to be the most accurate, or what you’re making isn’t going to turn out right. It can be in adding the ingredients, the mixing, or it can be in the baking. The best thing to do is pay attention. If you’re reading a recipe to understand what you’re making, read it twice and look over it again. Don’t dive into it thinking you can throw stuff in the bowl and make a dessert. Yeah, there are one-bowl wonders, shortcuts, and substitutions, but before you think about a shortcut or substitution, learn the basics….that’s with anything.

Decorating Cakes & Cookies

I’ll show you my tips, tricks, and things I’ve learned from others on my cake and cookie decorating journey. For the non-bakers and non-crafters, you can apply this same thing to what you’re doing. It will take a bit of thinking outside the box, but you can make any “Technique With a Tweak” work when you’re getting creative.

Where Baking & Crafting Meet

Here is where it all comes together. For me, it’s where baking and crafting meet. (If you’re not baking and crafting) For you, it will be where your first love and your new love meet. Learn to merge the two and make them work together. You may not think this is important, but it will save you time and money when seeing how interchangeable tools are. It’s not all about shopping at a specific store or catching every sale (BangQuality)!

All-Around Crafting

My ideas are what they are, from the heart. When looking for inspiration, I can see forty different versions of the same thing but come out with something completely different. I’ll show you how to look for inspiration, make it for others, and not fall in the line of duplication; kids call it copycatting. Before anyone takes offense, there is nothing wrong with duplicating, but there is no growth or creativity in that. You want to be the creator, not the assembly line.

Brainstorming, Planning, & Getting It Done

You have the right the underthink and overthink everything, but doing too much of either can hurt your process. If you underthink something you want to create, you may not like the finished product. If you overthink it, you either don’t finish it because you’re overwhelmed or bored with it. There’s a reason people say “less is more” and “more is more.” I’m going to help you figure out if you’re a “less is more,” “more is more,” “balanced,” “chaotic,” or “moody” type creator. When you figure out what type of creator you are, we’ll go through brainstorming, planning, and getting it done.

  • We know brainstorming is when we generate ideas and put down things to figure out what we want to create.
  • Planning takes what we have and brings it all to one cohesive idea.
  • Getting it done is what it is.

Not to say we have to plan every little thing we do. We can wing it. Winging it is good when you want to get something off your chest, when you want to relax, and enjoy what you’re doing without thought. The only thought is to do it. Not saying you’re going to love it, but do it. Even our biggest, most well thought out plan doesn’t give us what we want at times. Don’t get discouraged.

Conclusion

I said all that above to say this. If you want to learn how to take your creativity to another level, not in one place but many places. Let’s see how far you take your imagination, not how far it can take you. So instead of letting your imagination lead the way, hold your imagination’s hand and walk by its side. You’ll never stop coming up with ideas, and you’ll never want to stop creating.

Over the next few posts, I will talk about each part mentioned above, how I apply it to my life of creativity, and show you how you can use it in yours. You’re gonna learn some crazy terms like “BangQuality” and “Technique with a Tweak.” There are a few things you’ll get used to as well, like “Learning How to Buy It.”

Join me for future posts, videos, and whatever else I have for this 5 Things to Help You Become Better, Creatively series. Make sure you subscribe to the blog and turn on your notifications. I’ll be posting once per week.

See Y’all Later!!