Peaches McGee: Over-The-Top Cupcake Topper

I’m currently trying to “re-learn” French (I used to be fluent), renewing my real estate license, attempting to be a good wife/mother, and trying to keep my blog updated, so when I came across an opportunity to combine two major events in my life, I had to do it.

As I wrote earlier, my BFF Lauren is moving to Cincinnati; and as her friend, I wanted to throw her and her husband a going away party. We chose to do it at our house and when I was freaking out over what to do for dessert, I remembered a project from Martha Stewart’s Encyclopedia of Crafts book that I wanted to tackle. It was for cupcake toppers… perfect!

When I originally read the instructions, it seemed very easy, but for some reason I combined the project with a project that was featured on one of my favorite blogs (www.howdoesshe.com) and one that I was planning on doing for Peaches McGee’s birthday. Which, in other words means, I made it WAY more complicated than it should have been.

Martha’s directions simply call for using a photo of the people you are celebrating, printing it out, and making sure to include a white border around it. You would then use double-sided tape to stick them together over a toothpick or popsicle stick, and voila!

My directions:

1. Spend entirely too much money on a flower-punch paper cutter that the project doesn’t call for, but that for some reason is what you have in your mind as the actual project

2. Find a picture without letting your friend know, which on the upside, means finding some photos from your wedding that you didn’t know existed

3. Format the picture using Publisher (making it black and white because who doesn’t look better in B & W) and then copy and paste it over and over

4. Print it out on cardstock

5. Use a paper cutter to cut each one out

6. Realize that it would have been WAY easier to not have any border around the pictures since you’ll have to individually trim each picture. Oh, and since there is one picture on each side of the cupcake, that makes 48 teeny, tiny little photos to cut out

7. Place it on the flower-shaped cutout that you spent too much money on only to realize that the picture looks too diminutive

8. Decide to use a circular punch (already owned) to make a true “flower” with the flower-shaped cutout and then place the picture on that

9. Glue the picture to the circle

10. Glue the circle to the flower

11. Repeat 48 times

12. Use two pieces of double-stick tape to sandwich a toothpick

13. Repeat 24 times

And it’s done! Easy peasy.

Why oh why do I have to make things so difficult???

I think they turned out okay, but I wasn’t thoroughly impressed by them. Next time, I think I’ll go the easy route and just use one picture with a white border around it. None of this flowery sh!t.