Frozen Hot Chocolate

I love hot chocolate! But it's too darn hot here in socal for it right now. I made this card for my sister and inside is a recipe for Frozen Hot Chocolate.

This Layout is from the Dirty Dare Callenge today. I kinda messed it up but it was a fun layout to play with.

The card and colors are inspired from the Penzey's Hot Chocolate Mix. (they have the BEST hot chocolate mix! try the mint too.) The label is chocolate with retro funky swirls and snowflakes in red. There is a super cute heart shaped rhinestone at the base of the peppermint stick.

Frozen Hot Chocolate

• 3oz dark chocolate
• 1 Tablespoon Hot Choclate Mix
• 1 1/2 Tablespoons Sugar
• 1 1/2 Cups Milk
• 3 Cups Ice
• Whipped Cream

Chop chocolate into small pieces and place in top of double boiler over simmering water, stirring occasionally until melted.

Add chocolate mix and sugar, stirring constantly until thoroughly blended. Remove from heat and slowly add 1/2 cup milk, stirring until smooth.
Cool to room temperature.

In blender, place the remaining 1 cup milk, room-temperature chocolate mixture and ice.

Blend on high speed until smooth and the consistency of a frozen daiquiri. Pour into a giant goblet and top with whipped cream and chocolate shavings.
Enjoy with a spoon or a straw.

I have totally cheated with this recipe and added 5 rounded Tablespoons of the Mix into heated milk instead of melting the chocolate. The melted chocolate version is much better though!

Beautiful Hands

It's been forever since I've posted or made anything. It's been a rough for many months with my little one recovering from surgery.

Sometimes I really hate photographing my projects! The paper is much brighter in person.



This is a photoframe that I made for a friend of mine. The picture is of her and her daughter's hands over the side of a pier. I made the photo sepia since there are alot of browns in the project.



The frame is one I found at Michael's, it's a dense matboard plain frame that is ment to be altered. This one is a 12x12 inch. I first painted the back and all the edges with broze and gold acrylic paint. I used a piece of scrapbook paper from my mind's eye, adhearing it with Crafter's Pick Ultimate Glue. I could have used modge podge but me and M/P never seam to get along that well. After it had dried a few hours i cut out the center of the paper where the photo goes and sanded all the edges. i also sanded lightly here and there to give it a distrested look. Then I sprayed MANY layers of clear matte acrylic spray paint over the paper. I wanted it sealed well and hate the streaky modge podge finish.



The next day I took watered down gold and bronze acrylic paints and brushed it lightly over the whole surface of the paper. I don't mind brushtroke marks as long as I want them there, lol. I then adhered brown fabic ribbon with Scotch Permanent Glue Stick. It is made for fabric and paper. After coating the back of the ribbon, placing on the frame and using a brayer to make sure it was even adhered there was NO seeping through the fabric!!! the fabric is still soft to the touch and stuck on there good (i even tried to pull it off a little to check).



I took apart and painted an orange silk flower with different shades of brown craft and chalk inks. I flattened a bottlecap, punched out a circle piece of paper, stamped LOVE on it, stuck it in the bottlecap and then filled/sealed it with glaze. After all the pices dried overnight i reassembled the flower and stuck it on the frame.

I may add some finishing brads or more embellishments but I haven't found the "right" ones yet.


I really hope my friend will like this!