This weekend, one of my childhood friends had a
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cupcake-themed party for her daughter's 1st birthday. I was in Chicago for a
Stella & Dot workshop and had to miss it, which was too bad, because my husband and son said the food was amazing: sweet cupcakes of all kinds, meatloaf cupcakes with piped mashed potato "icing", and macaroni and cheese cupcakes. Heavenly!
For her gift, I bought the sweet birthday girl a hoodie from Gymboree with cupcake pockets and made her a little needle-felted cupcake for her tea set. I started with a sort of ball-shape from my all-purpose undyed white wool, then flattened the bottom and sides, trying to make the bottom a little smaller than the top, for that cupcake shape. Next was a layer of bubblegum pink over the sides of the cupcake (where the paper liner would be), and a thin layer of my toast-colored wool
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over that, so it would look like it had been baked. I then got to work felting vertical lines all the way around the sides to form the ridges of the "paper liner". This is tedious and I really had to pay attention to make the lines somewhat straight, but it was necessary for the look I was going for. After that was finished, I took tufts of fuchsia wool and laid them out on my foam pad, felted them together, and folded over the edges to make a flattened "blob" shape. This was draped over the rounded top of the cupcake and felted into place to make the icing.
The little rose was constructed the same way I made
Flapjack's scarf - a few layers of wool felted together in a long, rectangular shape. I rolled this piece tightly and attached it to the top of the cupcake. Then, two small leaves were easily made and felted next to the flower. If you were making a cupcake for an older child, it would be adorable to also add beads to the top for sprinkles.