Last night I decided to look up when T’s Hebrew birthday falls this year, and I’m sure glad I did because it is today. Happy
Hebrew Birthday to my sweet, smart, cunning and hysterical big girl, T!
When T woke up this morning I sang her the Hebrew version on
Happy Birthday, Yom Huledet Sameach, and then she immediately asked me for
cake. Woops, I guess she already associates cake with her birthday. The association
is also probably my fault because last year as soon as T’s birthday rolled
around I made her a cake smash! Cake smashes have become increasingly popular
and are taking Facebook by storm. Most people hire professional photographers
to buy the cake, set up and area, take the photos and clean up the mess- but we
did it ourselves. It is a good thing that my husband is used to my crazy by now.
He was a really good sport and a big help during the cake smash festivities. If
you work together with a partner and own a decent camera – you too can
pull off your own cake smash!
A few days before the smash I bought fabric from a store
near work for $10. The fabric worked as a perfect background and also helped
contain some of the mess. The night
before the festivities began I baked a cake – heavy on the frosting. Next time
I do this I will use a whipped cream frosting so there is even more mess!
I set the fabric up by taping it to the wall and floor and
set the cake up in the middle. I was slightly insane and even ironed the fabric
a little. This was the first and last time I’ve used my iron in the 6+ years I’ve
been married. I don’t have professional lighting so I gathered all the lamps in
my apartment and set them up along the fabric. I then brought T out to start
the smash party!
It didn’t go exactly according the plan. T had never had
cake before that day and wasn’t really sure what to make of her surroundings. She
ended up poking the cake for a good 10 minutes before Daddy showed her how to
dig in. As soon as T shoved her arm into the cake and tasted it she was hooked.
The following Sunday at her birthday party she lunged at her birthday cake because
she thought she was supposed to smash that one too! Woops. She is now sweets obsessed, hence this morning’s
cake request and last night’s begging for a chocolate milk bottle before
bedtime (Don’t worry, I said no- and didn’t cave). I snapped a million photos
and some video and we all had the best time. And of course, the mess did not
stay contained as hoped. T likes to shake and clap and she loved watching the
cake fly everywhere.
I then used photoshop to create a cake smash template to use
for a canvas print. It is 20”X20”. This
was probably the hardest part of the entire project and I am happily sharing it
with you now, it is at the end of the post. If you want me to send you the original PNG or photoshop doc of the template, I
will but you will have to start following my blog and leave a comment with your
email address and which version you would like. If you know anything about photoshop
you should be able to use it. Just crop your photos to fit in the openings and
you are done! I also like the idea of including a box or three of text, which
is what I did.
If you are a photoshop novice here is a quick tutorial. Load
the template into photoshop. I think blogspot will convert this one out of its original
PNG format so you then need to use the magic wand tool to remove the white
boxes. The image will also download at a much smaller resolution. You will want to click on Image then Image Size and reset your resolution to at least 250/300 before you start adding your photos.You should then use the paint bucket tool to recolor the template to
match your photos. I find the best way to get a color you like it to use the
eyedropper tool to pick up a color from an actual photo. You will then need to
load each individual cake smash photo into the program and crop it to size.
Copy and paste each cropped photo into the template over the holes. Lastly move
the template to the top of the layers list so it hides all the mess and makes
the design look stream lined. Let me know if you can’t follow the above directions
and I’ll try to help you out!
I still think a cake smash is the perfect way to celebrate
your little love’s first birthday and introduce them to a world of sweets. Now
that T is 2 we will be celebrating with lots of messy projects and yummy treats
at her upcoming Bday party!
 |
| Click on the template to open it in the larger screen and then save the image from there. |
No comments:
Post a Comment